The first time I saw The Stepford Wives, it was on ABC, in, I think, the fall of 1975. Since then, I've seen TSW about a half dozen times, and I still am amazed at how unsettling this sci-fi/feminist Gothic can be.
I don't think of myself as a feminist--the levels of anger and hostility are a turn-off--but I got the point of the movie. Stepford is a grown-ups' movie because it has the audacity to tell an uncomfortable story, one of possessiveness and mass-murder in a sleepy New England community.
The futuristic technology in the movie was dated for a long while, but with the advent of that Scarlett Johansson robot in the news, the end scene in TSW seems eerily prescient.
In my childhood, I expected the good guys--or in this case, the heroine--to win. I won't give anything away, but the ending of The Stepford Wives is easy to see coming as an almost senior-citizen, but as a high school senior, I was stunned at how the story ends.
Some years ago I read the Ira Levin novel. There is a moment in the book that, if I had been a 17 year old, I would have found incomprehensible. The main character and her husband are drifting away from each other, and, one night, the husband starts masturbating in bed while his wife, who he thinks is asleep, is very much awake. She lays still with her back to him. He is crying while he's manipulating himself, and she's horrified but silent.
Here is his wife, 6 inches away from him, but the distance could easily be 6 miles. They're no longer married. She's dead to him.
Heavy stuff, dude.
Johanna Eberhart's husband, Walter, holds a secret so monstrous, his wife's horror at his self-gratification would quickly vanish if she knew her fate.
So, when I sat down to watch the movie again some 10 years ago, I was startled at how deeply disturbing the book was and how the movie almost gets it right. The cast is both acceptable and believable, and my only quibble is that, as things wrap up, The Stepford Wives starts to veer dangerously close to a clichéd mad slasher flick.
And that's my only complaint. My favorite moment in the movie is when one of Katherine Ross' friends, I think it was Tina Louise, mocks suburban wifey-wifeness by sneering through cigarette smoke, "Personally, I'd rather not squeeze the goddamned Charmin."
That line is my take-away from this well-made, unpleasant, and disturbing little horror flick.
I don't think of myself as a feminist--the levels of anger and hostility are a turn-off--but I got the point of the movie. Stepford is a grown-ups' movie because it has the audacity to tell an uncomfortable story, one of possessiveness and mass-murder in a sleepy New England community.
The futuristic technology in the movie was dated for a long while, but with the advent of that Scarlett Johansson robot in the news, the end scene in TSW seems eerily prescient.
In my childhood, I expected the good guys--or in this case, the heroine--to win. I won't give anything away, but the ending of The Stepford Wives is easy to see coming as an almost senior-citizen, but as a high school senior, I was stunned at how the story ends.
Some years ago I read the Ira Levin novel. There is a moment in the book that, if I had been a 17 year old, I would have found incomprehensible. The main character and her husband are drifting away from each other, and, one night, the husband starts masturbating in bed while his wife, who he thinks is asleep, is very much awake. She lays still with her back to him. He is crying while he's manipulating himself, and she's horrified but silent.
Here is his wife, 6 inches away from him, but the distance could easily be 6 miles. They're no longer married. She's dead to him.
Heavy stuff, dude.
Johanna Eberhart's husband, Walter, holds a secret so monstrous, his wife's horror at his self-gratification would quickly vanish if she knew her fate.
So, when I sat down to watch the movie again some 10 years ago, I was startled at how deeply disturbing the book was and how the movie almost gets it right. The cast is both acceptable and believable, and my only quibble is that, as things wrap up, The Stepford Wives starts to veer dangerously close to a clichéd mad slasher flick.
And that's my only complaint. My favorite moment in the movie is when one of Katherine Ross' friends, I think it was Tina Louise, mocks suburban wifey-wifeness by sneering through cigarette smoke, "Personally, I'd rather not squeeze the goddamned Charmin."
That line is my take-away from this well-made, unpleasant, and disturbing little horror flick.