La fabbrica delle mogli

This movie holds up surprisingly well, nearly twenty five years after its first release. The premise could still intrigue today - there are still men who would like nothing better than to have the women in their lives be less human. I guess now women want the same things and this is known as progress.

Anywho, the movie is great and if it were up to me, Katherine Ross' birthday would be a national holiday. She is terrific and beautiful and is matched by best buddy Paula Prentiss. Tina Louise and Nanette ("I'll die if I don't get this recipe") Newman are also memorable. The final shots of Ross are chilling, and top off a memorable movie.

Katharine Ross gives her best performance in this modern day horror / science fiction masterpiece. For odd, but explainable reasons, the Stepford Wives looks a little like Suspiria and I Spit on Your Grave. Since it was shot in the 1970's, the movie is somewhat of a time machine that allows us to look back at a different time. The ending's climax makes the movie a true horror movie as the hallway's of the Men's Association looks a lot like the Girl's Dance Conservatory in Suspiria. The look of the movie seems low budget at times, but this simple use of direction and story telling adds to the setting of Stepford. Ross is perfect for the role. It is a giant slap in the face when Ross sees her robot-like self with bigger breasts that her. This adds to the idea of Men wanting to control their wives and wanting certain things from them. Even for the 1970's, this is a giant push back to the 1950's with human / women's rights. Scary and utterly horrific by the end, the Stepford Wives is a success as the movie makes its audience think.

"The Stepford Wives" certainly isn't the greatest thriller ever made, it isn't one of my all-time favorite movies, yet I've probably seen it 25 times and I'm always willing to return for more of its creepy, seductive ambiance. Director Bryan Forbes has created a funny/sinister atmosphere surrounding a secretive society of men in suburbia who exchange chilling glances and lines when they are alone ("She cooks as good as she looks, Ted."). It does however feature a very moody and unhappy Katharine Ross at the center, and it's easy to see why somebody might want to bump her off: she gripes, she complains, she stalks out of rooms flicking her long, thick hair out of her face. When Patrick O'Neal tells Ross at a social gathering that he used to work at Disneyland, she balks, "You don't look like someone who enjoys making other people happy." This just after meeting the man! Thank goodness then for happily crass and vulgar Paula Prentiss as Katharine's gal-pal Bobbie. Prentiss overdoes it a bit, but she comes into the picture at the right time and gives it an extra lift. The scenario (a squeaky clean Connecticut community) is gleefully turned inside out to reveal sinister underpinnings, and I loved Ross' sequence with the psychiatrist (who seems convinced by Katharine's outlandish story, which is a nice change of pace). No, it isn't art (or even the black comedy screenwriter William Goldman says he intended it to be), but "The Stepford Wives" is smooth, absorbing and enjoyable. It cooks as good as it looks. ***1/2 from ****

I watched this film without knowing too much about it beforehand, which is the best way to get hit by its surprise revelations - so, as another reviewer suggested, don't read any reviews before seeing it, they'll probably spoil it one way or the other. It is fueled by the same fear that pervaded the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" films - the loss of one's individuality. The director's careful, methodical pacing and his attention to detail may make the film seem slow to impatient viewers, but they pay off in some really chilling moments. Katharine Ross is extremely engaging in the lead....and (not to give anything away but) I'll never forget the image of the woman with no eyes. (***)

She is a meticulous housekeeper, flawless cook, thrifty shopper, adoring mother, perfect wife, always well groomed, always ready to please. But not, of course, a career woman, particularly if her success makes her husband feel belittled. Even today, more than thirty years after Ira Levin's bestseller startled the reading public, we are likely to refer to such a woman as "a Stepford wife"--a creature who seems both perfect and perfectly shallow.

The 1974 film version follows the Levin novel quite closely. Joanna Eberhart is a beautiful young woman of the era in which the women's moment had come of age: intelligent, forthright, and meeting her husband on equal terms. Then she, her husband, and their children move from New York to the small town of Stepford, where she is dismayed to find that most of the neighboring women seem engaged in a competition to have the neatest house, the best-groomed children, the most satisfied husband. Joanna is relieved to find women like herself in newcomers Bobbie and Charmaine, but even so, it seems... odd. So odd that she begins to question her sanity.

The film works on several levels, not the least of which is the macabre sense of humor with which director Byran Forbes endows the film: it is often very funny in a disquieting sort of way, as when Joanna and Bobbie's efforts to start a women's group results in a gathering of perfectly manicured women exchanging recipes and comparing floor polishes, or when Joanna and Bobbie accidentally overhear a Stepford couple making love. But for all the wittiness involved, THE STEPFORD WIVES is rooted in the women's movement of the 1970s, an era in which "a woman's place" was hotly debated on a national level. Just what is "a woman's place?" And to what lengths might men go to keep their women in traditional roles? Unlike many similar films, THE STEPFORD WIVES has tremendous restraint--and moreover a truly exceptional cast. Katherine Ross' talents were never before or after so well used, and Paula Prentiss gives perhaps her single most memorable performance here as Joanna's friend Bobbie. The supporting cast is equally fine, most particularly so with Patrick O'Neal as the unnerving "Diz" and a nice turn by Tina Louise as Charmaine.

Ultimately, THE STEPFORD WIVES is something of a "one trick pony:" it works best on a first viewing, when you don't know what's coming, and on subsequent viewings the film tends to read as unnecessarily slow. Even so, it is an interesting little cultural artifact, an "almost classic" that is sure to give you pause the next time your better half announces he is joining a men's club. Recommended.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer