The Stepford Wives (1975)

I love this movie so much

The Worst Film Ever

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

You remember the existence of the Christian Right, the MRA, pro-lifers, the gender pay gap, the sexual harrassment scandals all over the world and the fact that no older actress ever gets to play the lead hottie like the boys do. Suddenly the film seems a lot more relevant in 2018 than we'd like to believe, doesn't it? Makes you wonder why anybody thought it needed parodying in 2004. Were we pretending women had equality, particularly in the industry the bulk of the scandals have come from?Creepiest line in the film? Walter's comment to Carol's husband: " She looks as good as she cooks, Ed" within hours of arriving in Stepford. Walter KNEW before he moved his wife there!

So I watched both versions of the Stepford Wives back to back. And, of course, the original is better but not for obvious reasons. Basically the newer version is a wannabe Tim Burton movie that fails on all levels.But whatever, this is a review for the original, which is a well made semi-horror film. But the film doesn't work if you know the ending because the film is more of a mystery than a horror. You know something isn't right with the wives living in Stepford, but you don't know just what and you're trying to figure it out with the lead actress. But woah, this film must have sparked a lot of controversy back in the days. Even by today's standards it seems almost as extreme as "Get Out." And boy how we need "Get Out's" with all the madness going on, must have been the same deal with women back then, or maybe Hollywood was late to the party considering this came out in the late 70s. Whatever. It is an entertaining film if you go into it knowing as little as possible.

Ira Levin wrote the book. It involves the town of Stepford where a male dominated culture reveals that all the wives are completely under the thumbs of the men, devoting their lives to pleasing them. The predictable turn of events is that a woman who is quite amazed at this gets into the mix. When she tries to befriend these women in a time of liberation, she is astonished at their willingness to act in this way. However, we find out that there's much more to their actions than she supposed. Somehow we have a kind of manipulation of the women, even replacement with androids, that sets the rest of the film. The problem here is that when dealing with human beings, the secrets seem impossible. The men are the ones I see as blowing the lid on this thing. it's an interesting premise, but awfully hard to swallow.

The film charged, indirectly, to the invasion of technology and chemicals to be creating new -adaptables- human beings. This was thought in 1975. Today -2015- the discussion is virtually closed : the technological dictatorship and large laboratories already have created a new customizable humanity. Not only that discussion is closed: also the "liberating weapon" -embodied in the film by the intervention of a psychoanalyst- is prohibited (no university in the world has courses on Freudian psychoanalysis). Unfortunately, the film ends poorly, avoiding giving these ideas to the public.I wonder if the director Bryan Forbes or the film's producers were afraid to express these ideas clearly. Anyway this is the best version of the three that have been made (not even worth mentioning "The Stepford Children" ... a horrific stupidity).