Joanna Eberhart (Katharine Ross) agrees to move to the suburban clean town of Stepford Connecticut with her husband Walter (Peter Masterson) after he is offered a prestigious new job. But, more than that, referring to politically-active conservative women as Stepford wives undermines the feminist argument of this novella. Discover (and save!) A 1996 version called The Stepford Husbands was made as a third television movie with the gender roles reversed and the men in the town being brainwashed by a female clinic director into being perfect husbands. When it comes to pop culture, sometimes the most entertaining families are the freaky ones. Creepy, unsettling, horrific, made me want to sit and fume and hate men for a bit. It's a satire! The community of Stepford, Connecticut from The Stepford Wives, adapted from the novel by Ira Levin (described in more detail under Literature). The men deny the accusation and ask Joanna if she would believe them if she saw one of the other women bleed. A TV reporter arrives in Stepford to do a story on the American town with the lowest crime and divorce rates and the tightest real-estate market. My goodness, I read this so, so long ago. Did you like the OLD or NEW STEPFORD WIVES??? The original is genuinely creepy. An eternal warning about how men truly want to deal with issues around the gender equality? Or has it already in some places ...? A very complex book: a commentary on the way we look at women and the role women have been assigned for centuries. The show is at pains to present the wives and girlfriend as strong women. It's a "campy" comedy! THE STEPFORD WIVES is a creepy little satirical novella that proves (some) men are pretty shallow or really were afraid of the Women's Liberation Movement! And it may be, for the male half of the population, but as Joanna Eberhart discovers when she and her family move to Stepford, there’s something wrong with the women. The Stepford Wives is a slick high-concept premise writ large, and one can only imagine its techniques and subject matter might be more effective during its era than they could ever be forty-five years later. In spite of its PG rating, The Stepford Wives gets dark – there are real scares and violence in this thing, particularly towards the end, as Walter gets nasty and violent, and we’re treated to the empty black eyeballs of… well, let’s not spoil it. The point, one assumes, is to emphasize that these are not Stepford Wives, not chronically subservient to … Yeah, you probably wouldn't want to schedule a play date with Danny Torrance. You gotta love that fresh perked coffee! I was in the mood for an 80's horror novel and had this one on the shelf. Being the staunch feminist that I was and still am, I was furious at the ending. Levin's writing is no-nonsense and terse, but lively and incisive. That's creepy. The new version has nothing on th... One of the best horror movie scenes! Creepy Hollows Specific; Mystery; ID #1804 Stepford Wives ~ 0 min. In this version, there is no subtlety or building up. As Peter Straub points out in the introduction to this book, a lot of people miss the point. The Stepford Wives (2004) I really don’t know what posessed them to remake this classic movie as a black comedy. The best scene in the movie comes near the end when we see a "malfunction" of a stepford wife and a rather than show circuits and smoke we hear robotic music, really cool. They’re fast friends who, after consulting with another new-to-town wife, Tina Louise, decide to start a women’s group. I think that’s what makes the Stepford Wives so “creepy”. The Stepford Wives is most like Get Out beat for beat, as it follows a couple who move in to a suburban neighborhood where everything seems a little too hunky dory, and there’s a shocking reveal at the end.. And just like Get Out, The Stepford Wives is largely satirical, as it pokes fun at society and the upper-middle class. Katharine Ross stars as a city woman who moves with her husband to Stepford and is startled by how perpetually happy many of the local women seem to be. We’d love your help. Her husband Walter (Matthew Broderick) resigns from the same network, where he worked under her, and moves with his wife and two children to the gated community of Stepford, Conn. She visits the library and researches the pasts of Stepford's wives, discovering that some of the women were once feminist activists and very successful professionals and that the leader of the men's club is a former Disney engineer and others are artists and scientists, capable of creating lifelike robots. A modern classic, whose ending many of you will already know from the movie? The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who suspects the submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands. The Stepford Wives is a social commentary on the horrors of misogyny and mind control, and, in spite of the tension between the creators, the film is sufficiently scary and thought provoking. For one thing, her vocabulary is too large. Ira Levin's Stepford Wives was a groundbreaking book, and the 1975 movie version is creepy AF. Wilton is a "step" from Stamford, a major city lying 15 miles (24 km) away.[1]. It's low on the gore and high on the paranoia. They corner her in the woods, and she accuses them of creating robots out of the town's women. The Stepford Wives is most like Get Out beat for beat, as it follows a couple who move in to a suburban neighborhood where everything seems a little too hunky dory, and there’s a shocking reveal at the end.. And just like Get Out, The Stepford Wives is largely satirical, as it pokes fun at society and the upper-middle class. Women who are utterly controlled by their husbands but look quite normal, fashionable even as they no longer (have to) wear hijab. The Stepford Wives is a beautifully written, nasty little piece of work, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Succesful network president, Joanna Eberhart, suffers the presures of her career and moves to the suddle-planned community of Stepford, Connecticut. In 1975, the book was adapted into a science fiction thriller directed by Bryan Forbes with a screenplay by William Goldman and starring Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss, Peter Masterson and Tina Louise. This clip expresses the ideologies of uniformity and household labor that are associated with the suburban landscape. I actually walked out of the remake, it was that awful. This is more sci fi, and here the conspiracy is bigger (the whole town! There’s many open-ended questions to the film. To see what your friends thought of this book. You get so used to those creepy smiles that it's almost scary to not see them. Oh, There’s A Movie Review In Here? She asks her husband to let her leave but he takes her car keys. “, The Stepford Wives, a story of women who have no means of self-expression, might have been the story of real women in Jordan, Syria or Yemen. This resulted in the fact that, after Ann Romney's recent speech at the RNC, I was asked whether I thought she was "like a Stepford Wife." Hama first appears as a kind but slightly eerie and mysterious old woman. Ira Levin's scary novel about forced conformity in a small Connecticut town made for this compelling 1975 thriller. When Johanna, Walter, and their children move to Stepford, everything seems perfect. Unable to fulfil this desire in the usual ways of living, they result to extremism. The Stepford Wives is a social commentary on the horrors of misogyny and mind control, and, in spite of the tension between the creators, the film is sufficiently scary and thought provoking. The Stepford Wives / 9780062037602 "The Stepford Wives" is one of those rare horror novels that reads even more creepily when you already know the twist at the end. This version has so many talented actors- Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Glenn Close, Christopher Walken- and it's directed by Frank Oz. your own Pins on Pinterest Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read. Discover (and save!) The Stepford Wives is a 2004 American science fiction black comedy film directed by Frank Oz from a screenplay by Paul Rudnick, and stars Nicole Kidman, Matthew Broderick, Bette Midler, Christopher Walken, Faith Hill, and Glenn Close.It is based on Ira Levin's 1972 novel of the same name and is the second feature-length adaptation of the novel, following the 1975 film of the same name. If you don't know it, stay away from the trailer, which gives it away. The new script by screenwriter Paul Rudnick has the women being transformed into carefully controlled cyborgs rather than being murdered and replaced with robots. BTW that malfunction scene was as good as any I have vertigo seen in a horror movie. There’s many open-ended questions to the film. Everyone knows what a “Stepford Wife” is and what that entails. But it's the story instead of American women whose husbands would like to control them in the same way and, like Arab men, have no controls on themselves whatsoever. Celebration earned comparisons to the creepy Connecticut idyll in the thriller The Stepford Wives, in which the identically docile wives are robots created by their husbands. Bobbie's husband and son are upstairs, with loud rock music playing as if to cover screams. In the story's epilogue, Joanna has become another Stepford wife gliding through the local supermarket, having given up her career as a photographer, while Ruthanne (a new resident in Stepford) appears poised to become the town's next victim. The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical novel by Ira Levin. In terms of film, by two favorite satires are. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret—a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same. Written by Ira Levin and published in 1972, this is a chilling novel about a town where . In this film, instead of being androids, the wives underwent a brainwashing procedure and then took pills that kept them hypnotized. It's an enticing premise, an opening for wicked feminist satire, but the 1975 movie tilted toward horror instead of comedy. “That’s what she was, Joanna felt suddenly. A little too perfect, in fact. I had forgotten that this movie is about job loss! The story concerns Joanna Eberhart, a photographer and young mother who suspects the submissive housewives in her new idyllic Connecticut neighborhood may be robots created by their husbands. It is not "the easy satire on the banality of suburban housewives that it is commonly taken to be - a misconception that has installed its title in our language as shorthand for those homemakers who affect an uncanny perfection." There's a frightening secret in the town of Stepford, and Joanna & Bobbie hope to get out of Dodge before it's too late, but the Men's Association is powerful and time is running out. However, eventually, Bobbie is also transformed into a docile housewife and has no interest in her previous activities. Jan 18, 2013 - Stepford Wives 1975. Her husband, who seems to be spending more and more time at meetings of the local men's association, mocks her fears. In the early 80s, I took a college course in feminist theory. Nicole Kidman stars as Joanna Eberhart, a high-powered TV executive who is fired after the victim of one of her reality shows goes on a shooting rampage. Reading this book is like getting kicked in the chest by a really angry karateka. The Stepford Wives is a 1972 satirical novel by Ira Levin. I witnessed the machinations of the Trump White House and the legacy of Hollywood's casting couch approach to providing women with work to see how relevant Levin's little book continues to be. In The Stepford Wives, husbands are shown as desiring to restrict the independence of their wives, and obedient and stereotypical spouses are preferred. No wonder it bombed! Wouldn’t that would make for a great sequel! Is their a conspiracy afoot or are Johanna and her friend Bobbie imagining things? No, she's not. This is just a glimpse inside the mechanics. "Stepford" redirects here. Joanna agrees to this, and they take her to Bobbie's house. In this version, there is no subtlety or building up. In a March 27, 2007, letter to The New York Times, Levin said that he based the town of Stepford on Wilton, Connecticut, where he lived in the 1960s. In a 1987, a television sequel/remake titled The Stepford Children, both the wives and the children of the male residents were replaced by drones. Or at least, any more than screenwriter Paul Rudnick and director Frank Oz did when they remade the film decades later, reworking it into a quirky comedy and copping … Dec 24, 2013 - This Pin was discovered by The Stepfordlife. It was directed by Frank Oz and featured Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Matthew Broderick, Christopher Walken, Roger Bart, Faith Hill, Glenn Close and Jon Lovitz. Discussion in 'Movie Alley' started by DontUknowIamDA1, Jun 4, 2020 at 9 :25 AM. After a fruitless search to find that perfect place, they meet up with an instantly creepy real-estate salesman, Martin (Jonathan Aris), an automaton straight out of “The Stepford Wives,” to Yonder, a housing tract where all the identical, pale-green starter homes and their white picket fences look copy and pasted on a seemingly endless horizon of astroturf. The scene ends as Bobbie brandishes a knife at her former friend. Stepfordlife. Related quizzes can be found here: Stepford Wives, The Quizzes Stepford, Connecticut (The Stepford Wives, by Ira Levin) A beautiful town filled with beautiful wives, Stepford, Connecticut looks like a great option for families ready to escape the rat race. The Stepford Wives is a refreshingly low-tech science-fiction movie with no real special effects to speak of. 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