Underrated Movies: The Stepford Wives (1975)

The lovely Katharine Ross in The Stepford Wives

The Stepford Wives, was published in 1972. It caused such a sensation that the movie studios wanted in on it. The Stepford Wives was written by Ira Levin, who's book Rosemary's Baby had been made into a successful film just four years before. Director, Bryan Forbes read the book and immediately had the idea for how he wanted the movie. He called it "thriller in sunlight." It's one of the most unusual horror/sci-fi movies ever created. The look of the movie is beautiful. The colors and saturation is almost exaggerated, but the audience can sense the evil lurking just in the darkness beyond. The beautiful color scheme, like the wives themselves, are a mere illusion to distract us from the truth, a truth that the heroines of the film learn too late.

Never has a trip to your local grocery store been so scary. 

The film revolves around a housewife named Joanna (Katharine Ross) who moves to the town of Stepford with her husband(Peter Masterson) and two children. She almost immediately notices something is off about the wives of Stepford, they are obsessed with treating their husbands like gods, succumbing to their every wish and whim. It's literally like a bunch of June Cleaver's running around.  All these sex doll looking, mannequin-esqe wives do is cook, clean, and give their husbands mind-blowing sex. After her husband joins the local Men's Association, Joanna notices a dramatic change in he's personality and the company he keeps. The husbands of Stepford are just as you can imagine. They're all giant douche-bag looking mother fuckers. You know what I mean, the kind of guy who always talks about how big his dick is and thinks he's extremely better than you. The kind of guy who peaked in High School, and still acts like he's that Senior quarterback that all the girls want to fuck, The kind of guy who's mugshot you would see on the news for getting picked up for soliciting hookers. Those are the men of Stepford. She wonders if he, like the other men in the town, wants her to be a perfect, frozen, BJ giving machine like all the other wives of the town. Soon Joanna's best-friend and only ally(Paula Prentiss) becomes one of them. Joanna must find out the truth, before she too is consumed by the perfection surrounding her.

Like I said before, the movie is stunning to look at. Beautiful colors and lovely lighting. You wonder how this could be a horror film. Like Levin's work, Rosemary's Baby, this movie deals with paranoia and rationalization. Levin fans will notice quite a few similarities between Rosemary's Baby and The Stepford Wives. Like his earlier work, Stepford keeps the audience guessing if anything eerie really is going on, or if it's simply in the heroine's head. Like Rosemary, Stepford also deals with the thought of "Do I really know my significant other?" It's a terrifying suggestion to think that the the person you have fallen in-love with and have chosen to spend the rest of your life with has turned into someone dark and unrecognizable. 

Room full of gross.

Joanna and her friend Bobbie have moments where they think they're going crazy, and the way the actresses play their roles is flawless. Katharine Ross is unbelievably perfect. Diane Keaton was originally cast, but dropped out, and I must say I'm glad she did. Ross' career has been somewhat anti-climatic. Her career took off in the late 60's with movies like The Graduate and Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid. It was her later career that was rather low key. Paula Prentiss, who plays the fun-loving Bobbie, is an actress I fell in love with in this movie.You grew attached to her and wanted things to work out for both Ross' and Prentiss' characters. 

"I'll just die if I don't get this recipe."

Unlike Rosemary's Baby, The Stepford Wives strays heavily from the original novel. If you've read Rosemary's Baby, you'll notice the 1968 film is page for page. The Stepford Wives is the complete opposite. Screenplay writer, William Goldman and Director Bryan Forbes had many disagreements on how The Stepford Wives should be done. This disagreements ultimately lead the script and overall movie to suffer. Even today it's noted by critics and fans alike that the script/screenplay could have been much stronger and carried out far better. 

Like most horror movies of the 70's, Stepford moves at a leisurely pace. It's a definite slow burn with little things that clue you in on the truth of the wives. The ending is horrifying and chilling. All the beautiful settings and saturated colors fade as Joanna learns whats really going on. If you haven't seen this, you must! Rent it! Buy it! I don't care just watch it. Unfortunately, this movie might seem boring to some because of the high packed action crap we are subjected to today. I was hoping when they remade this movie( The 2004 remake starring Nicole Kidman.) it would draw attention to the original and it would finally get recognition, but the remake flopped and if anything made people want to run from the original.

If you're one of those people who goes into a horror film expecting blood and explosions thrown in your face, keep walking. This is not the movie for you. This isn't the Saw, torture porn shit of today, this is REAL terror. It leaves you with the thought, does your significant other love you for who you are, or if they could change one thing about you with a push of a button... would they?