The Stepford Wives

Ira Levin's savagely satiric sci-fi novel The Stepford Wives provided fodder for one of the biggest moneymaking films of the 1970s. Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves with husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and their children to the "ideal" suburban community of Stepford, Connecticut. Slowly (perhaps too slowly) Joanna deduces that something is amiss; most of the other housewives are vapid creatures who speak in trivialities and live only to please their husbands. Together with new friend Bobby (Paula Prentiss), she investigates this curious status quo. When Bobby also succumbs to sickly sweetness, Joanna discovers that Stepford's husbands have conspired with male chauvinist scientists to replace all the wives with computerized android duplicates. The final closeup is a gem of compact horror and black comedy. Earning $4,000,000 domestically, The Stepford Wives opened itself up for sequel treatment, but the subsequent Stepford films were cheapjack TV movies unworthy of the original.