Based on an Ira Levin Novel
I decided to watch the 1975 version of the movie The Stepford Wives on Youtube. It was based on the novel by Ira Levin. I have seen the newer version of this film, but I like this vintage, seventies movie version because it feels so nostalgic. I was ten years old in 1975. This movie version is a drama with a tinge of eeriness and horror because Joanna Eberhart senses something weird about this Stepford community, from the first day at their new house. The neighborhood feels very quiet and peaceful, very different from living in noisy downtown NYC. Joanne, Walter, their two young daughters, and their small dog immediately become involved with their new environment. Joanne is a photographer, which helps her discover clues in the random photographs she takes at the Stepford community.
As Joanna meets different neighbors, she notices some of these people act strange. Walter enjoys his all-men association club. One man worked for Disney and Joanne felt he had a dark personality. But the movie appears to be about women’s lib and feminism. Joanna becomes close with one of the women, Bobbie, and they decide to create a women’s lib group with the women in the community. One woman, Charmaine, played by Tina Louise, complains about her husband and his all-men club, agreeing to their bitching session. During the women’s group, the women go blank, not knowing what to say, and Joanna is the only woman talking to start a discussion. The other women seemed scared to speak up because it was like they were mind-controlled to be submissive and stupid housewives. After Joanne opens up about her issues, each woman started to talk about their issues of constantly working at being the perfect woman, with the perfect look, and performing exceptional housewives duties.
As Joanna takes the family dog on a walk at night, Walter invites some men over. The dog is off his leash, and he walks into the area where the men’s clubhouse is located. Joanna follows him to put his leash back on, and she runs into a policeman. The policeman warns her not to walk into this clubhouse location. She needs to be careful where she walks at night.
Joanne and Bobbie find out that there was once a women’s club, but it was dismantled.
There was a scene where the small dog was inside a cage on the back of the pickup truck, and he was being taken away somewhere. At home, Joanne suddenly notices the dog is missing, and she goes to search for her dog with her friend, Bobbie. But the dog seems to have disappeared. At Charmaine’s house, construction workers were destroying the tennis court because her husband doesn’t want her playing tennis anymore. Joanne and Bobbie drive around the area, noticing the Stepford community is filled with electronics, computers, and chemical companies. They decide to meet Joanne’s ex-boyfriend to test their water because they feel their water supply is being drugged via their water system. He doesn’t notice anything in the water. Instead, he hits on Joanne because he isn’t happily married. But she ignores his advances.
Joanne isn’t happy with living in Stepford. She discusses it with Walter, and he appears to agree with her, telling her to search for a new house. Joanna and Bobbie go house-hunting. Joanne often works in her darkroom, developing film. She takes her photographs to a NYC art gallery and gets positive feedback.
She returns home to tell her friend Bobbie about her experience at the art gallery. But Bobbie seems to be in her own world. She notices that Bobbie has changed into a robotic Stepford wife. She drives home recklessly in the street, telling her husband about Bobbie’s sudden change. He gives her a hard time about their house always being a mess, and she needs to be more like Bobbie and the other women. He tells her to see a psychiatrist. Unlike the other women, Joanne is very independent and has her own mind. But she ends up seeing a female shrink to make him happy. She tells the shrink about the men and their club trying to control the women, as well as about her fears of being changed into a Disneyland robot, like the other Stepford wives.
She returns home to see her husband drunk and her kids at a friend’s house. They fight together. On a rainy day, she sneaks out to go to Bobbie’s house. She argues with Bobbie about the changes, but Bobbie continues to be a robotic model from a coffee commercial, exemplifying the perfect housewife. Bobbie starts to suddenly malfunction after Joanne stabs her and notices there is no blood.
In her frustration, Joanne becomes violent, demanding the truth. She returns home and hits her husband in the head with a golf club, before demanding the whereabouts of their two daughters. He tells her they are at the association clubhouse. She goes after them in the stormy night. As she lurks through dark hallways, she hears her daughters calling her and she eagerly follows their voice, up the ornate staircase. It looks like an elegant, ornate hallway and staircase. She opens a door to notice the voices are coming from a recorder playing her daughters’ voices, and the man who worked for Disney is waiting for her inside this room.
As he is about to do something to her, she runs away from him, frantically running through hallways and rooms. She sees her small dog inside one of the rooms, before seeing a different version of herself with black eyes walking towards her to strangle her. The other version of herself actually looks like a demonic AI robot.
Inside a grocery store, the women, or Stepford Wives, walk around mindlessly with their shopping cart to do their grocery shopping. They all look fashionable, feminine, and poised, wearing long dresses and wide brim sunhats. I also noticed that all the women are very thin, similar to fashion models. The men have turned the women into robotic AI housewife puppets, like sex dolls and arm candy, to serve their personal needs.
Directed by Bryan Forbes and written by Ira Levin and William Goldman, this movie starred Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson, Tina Louise, Nanette Newman, Carol Rossen, William Prince, Patrick O’Neal, Carole Mallory, Toni Reid, Judith Baldwin, Barbara Rucker, George Coe, Franklin Cover, Robert Fields, Michael Higgins, Josef Sommer, Remak Ramsay, Mary Stuart Masterson, Ronny Sullivan, Dee Wallace, and Tom Spratley.
There is also a 2004 Stepford Wives movie version. It is a black comedy, directed by Frank Oz, written by Paul Rudnick, and produced by Scott Rudin, Donald De Line, Gabriel Grunfeld, and Edgar J. Scherick. It starred Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Roger Bart, Faith Hill, Glenn Close, Jon Lovitz, David Marshall Grant, Mike White, and Lorri Bagley. In this movie version, Joanne and Walter have a son and daughter, and Joanne’s job was a business executive. The women in this version tend to be more successful than their husbands. Joanne is more assertive in this version because she did more detective work. This version ended with the women taking their power back and making the husbands their slaves. It was funny because the men looked completely helpless inside the grocery store. But this version had a different twist at the end, where it was revealed that one of the women was involved in creating the perfect AI robotic people in the community, and she was married to a male AI robot who acts as her perfect husband.
I have read the Ira Levin novel, The Stepford Wives, a couple of years ago. The novel is better because it involved more details. The movies are a little bit different because they seemed to be adaptations of the novel. But the 1975 version is closer to the novel.
