Rating: 
Summary: Synthetic Pleasures
Review: This socially aware, camp-thriller holds up quite well and looks great on DVD. The 70's were a fascinating blend of social criticism and synthetic style. The Stepford Wives could have only been made in America, as it is so silly and serious at the same time. The final scene in the supermarket made me scream, it's so over the top. Katharine Ross and especially Paula Prentiss give the performances of their careers.
Rating:
Summary: A modern classic
Review: After hearing references made again and again to The Stepford Wives, I decided to take a chance and buy it on DVD. It was only 12.99, so I figured I had very little to lose. The film is shot and directed in a very 70s style, which can be hard to follow or even annoying for younger, Gen-X viewers (like myself...I was born the year the movie came out) but if you just sit through it, it eventually gets EXTREMELY good. I did not know how the movie ended or what the plot even was, so I found the film particularly thrilling. I paid attention to the foreshadowing, but I figured that the Stepford wives were tamed into submission by coercion, beating, threats, or some other plausible method. It becomes obvious when Ross's character's best friend becomes a "Stepford Wife" that they are being replaced by robots. The sight of Ross coming face to face with her hollow-eyed double, a robot that is not quite finished, is terrifying. People my age don't have the cultural or historical perspective to understand what this film meant when it was released, but 25 years' worth of hindsight allows my younger generation to make the film our own. Feminists were extremely annoyed with this film, saying it was anti-woman, but I think the opposite is true. It is not exactly pro-woman, but it is definitely anti-man. The message I got was that men were too insecure to cope with their wives' growing independence during an era of cultural and sexual liberation, so they simply replaced them with robots.p.s. watch out for Mary Stuart Masterson...this was her first film.
Rating: 
Summary: This movie is a blueprint of what husbands (really) want!
Review: I've seen this movie a dozen times, and my gist of it is the following: the message that it was giving at the time it was made,(HELLO, SEXUAL REVOLUTION!!!) was this, MEN WANT WOMEN THAT THEY CAN BRING HOME TO THEIR MOTHERS, WOMEN THAT ARE NUTURING MOTHERS FOR THEIR CHILDREN, GREAT HOSTESSES, BUT ,MOST IMPOTANTLY GREAT ...IN THE BEDROOM. Hey, but what do I know, I'm an MTV 80's baby, raised by Madonna. But back to the movie, it is a great thriiler/feature about a city wife/mom trying to make it in the suburbs, when she finds out, her out-of-town efforts just aren't up to Stepford status. Ouch!!!. It still gives me the hee-bee-jee-bees!!! See it, Katherine Ross is one of the great Hollywood babes and IT IS STILL ONE OF THE GREAT MODERN CLASSICS!!!
Rating:
Summary: THE CYNICAL LAWS OF ROBOTICS
Review: The adaptation of Ira Levin bestseller required sensibility and a certain european touch in order to keep alive the strange mood of the novel. In my opinion, Bryan Forbes did a good job by directing Katharine Ross, Paula Prentiss and Nanette Newman with the much praised british delicacy. The argument of the movie has lost a great deal of impact nowadays but I can imagine the reactions of our female companions in 1975 when watching the fate of the poor Stepford wives. However, one may still appreciate the cynicism of the movie and the performances of the feminine cast that is excellent. As for the DVD, Anchor Bay has done another great job and presents apart of the trailer and a french dubbed version (very, very bad !), recent interviews of the cast including the producer and the director. A DVD zone Asimov.
Rating:
Summary: Still delivers the chills
Review: Okay, you're married to Katharine Ross or possibly to Paula Prentiss. Naturally life is so unbearable with either of these Lena Hyenas that you'd want to kill your wife and replace her with...something better. Unlikely as the scenario sounds, it works in The Stepford Wives. It works so well, in fact, that "Stepford" has become an adjective nearly on a par with "pod" and meaning about the same thing: An emotionless simulacrum of a human being. This 1975 film will strike modern viewers desensitized by over-exposure to Michael Bay films as a bit slow, but it still delivers the chills.
Rating:
Summary: Eerie and compelling fim classic finally on DVD
Review: What can I say that hasn't already been said? Well, first of all, I hate the fact that most of the people give away the surprise of the film. The first time i saw this film, I had NO clue what was going on in Stepford. I followed Kathering Ross' character Joanna as she tries her best to fit in with life in the small New England town that her husband move her and their children to. I felt her unease at the things she saw. I felt her frustration at not being taken seriously. And like Katherine's character, I didn't know WHY I felt so uneasy. This was the perfect town, wasn't it. NOT BY A LONG SHOT. This is a movie that unfolds at its own pace, occasionally droping clues to the viewer, without them even realising. It is only through repeated viewings that you realise how much you missed. I have watched this movie over and over, with people who have never seen it before, and they walk away with the same unease that I felt. Although not a "horror" film, in the classic sense, this movie is horrifying in its implications. Enjoy it for what it is, a bit of film history that has spawned 2 (bad) sequels. This is the first, and it is the best.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull Dull DULL...and Pointless
Review: This film is an unoriginal variation upon Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, people are being systematically replaced by unemotional drones and the lead character attempts to uncover the truth. Only in this case, instead of aliens targeting the population of earth, a men's club in a small town is replacing its members' wives with robots. This could be the perfect setup for both a good horror movie and for a social satire on the battle of the sexes. However, unlike the brilliant Body Snatchers, this film is neither good horror or good social commentary. Basically, as soon as any family moves to the sleepy town of Stepford, even the most loving of husbands turns into such a male chauvanist pig that he becomes willing to kill his wife and replace her with what must be a multi-million (maybe even billion) dollar robot. What is it that makes the men in that town so upset with their wives? Why, they do things like play tennis in their spare time and get together to drink iced tea when they aren't cooking and cleaning! Apparently, the men want wives who do nothing more than clean the house and take care of their kids (it appears the husbands don't even want sex!). Of course, it would be a lot simpler for the men to get divorced and hire maids instead of resorting to multi-million dollar technology and murder, but every single character in this movie is so one-dimensional and stupid that such behaviour is actually consistent with their characters. There is no real suspense since you know what is happening almost from the beginning and the lead female is the only even slightly sympathetic character. Personally, I could not tell the difference between most of the original females and their replacement robots (except for the fact that the robots occassionally break down). And suggesting that this movie is social commentary is like suggesting that a discussion on who's stronger, the Hulk or Superman, is a valid and worthwhile discussion about national defence capabilities. The characters and town in this movie have absolutely no connection to reality whatsoever. There is the occasional unintentional humour which makes watching this movie bearable, ...
Rating:
Summary: A MASTERPIECE WITH SERIOUS UNDERTONES!
Review: I can't understand some of the reviews awarding this great movie fewer than five stars. Some of us are in danger of taking ourselves too seriously. Lighten up! It's only a movie and a darned good one at that. This was filmed in 1975 and so obviously you will see the clothing and big hair, etc. of this period. And the premise, that of the good old boys club conspiring for their perfect combination of gourmet cook, housemaid, and all-around mindless drone, is timeless. The acting is first-rate as you might expect from Katharine Ross. Paula Prentiss is perfect as the wacky, fun-loving friend who senses something is not quite right in the serene little town of Stepford. There is much irony in this film. Many of the husbands, while demanding perfection in their wives, appear hopelessly prosaic themselves, particularly in physical appearance. However, any "statement" made in this film never overshadows its pure entertainment value. So grab the popcorn, jettison political correctness for the night, and enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: more chilling now than when I first saw it
Review: "When you hire Bryan Forbes, you get Nanette Newman," says the producer of the Stepford Wives in the revealing featurette interview. (Actually you seem to get the entire Forbes family on this one -- their young daughter, who later went on to introduce BBC kids programmes, makes one or two silent appearances in the movie.) And therein hangs the cause of much of the internal wrangling in the making of this film. Writer William Goldman said that the film would have done much better at the box office if Nanette Newman hadn't appeared in it. (OK, so she's no great actress, and her American accent is crummy, but she's not bad as a robot.) In interview, Forbes says how offensive he found that remark and that he has never spoken again to Goldman. Goldman was perhaps more offended that Forbes re-wrote much of the Oscar-winner's script. But as one of the interviewees says, bringing in Newman forced a substantial re-write of the script. The original idea of these Barbie babes who never age would have been best illustrated by tight, sexy clothes. But Newman would not have looked good, and this forced the switch to frilly long dresses. Forbes in interview seems unsure whether the movie is a feminist movie or not. He's right to say that it's certainly not anti-feminist. My favourite scene, though, is when the three real women finally get around to hold what they euphemistically call a "consciousness-raising" session, and it turns out that they just want to complain about their husbands. My least favourite scenes are towards the end at the Mens' Association because it seems such a cliche to stage the climax in a gothic mansion. If they ever remake this movie, you would surely see some of the hi-tech labs where the robots are manufactured. I've only seen this movie once before -- in the late 1970s -- and I thought that Katherine Ross's character actually did break into one of the many computer companies parked just outside Stepford. Shows you how poor my memory is; I must have been confusing this with Woody Allen's SLEEPER! But I was such a confused teenager in the 1970s that I thought THE STEPFORD WIVES must have something to do with THE ROCKFORD FILES. Sad, isn't it? This is a cult movie, but I'm not sure it's a great movie. It may be too low-budget and, for a sci-fi movie, lacking in special effects for today's youth audiences. These days I like things to be clarified for me. Why are the Stepford men -- who are presumably non-robotic -- nearly as dreary as their wives? Why wasn't more made of the psychotherapist, who comes across very ambiguously as only partly human? You really fear she's going to turn Katherine Ross over to the men anyway, but she never gets that opportunity. I regard this as a movie for occasional viewing despite my only recently joining the Katherine Ross Appreciation Club.
Rating:
Summary: Two Gingers!
Review: This is the only movie I know of that has both Tina "Ginger" Louise, AND Judith Baldwin who played Ginger in the TV reunion Rescue From Gilligan's Island. Add the Beautiful Katharine Ross, weird "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" type story, and 70's fashions, and you've got a night of pure entertainment.
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