One of the Best Sci-Fi Horror Movies of the 20th Century Just Turned 50, and It Is Still Relevant
Its legacy can be found in many modern projects.
Bryan Forbes' movie The Stepford Wives is half a century old and shows no signs of aging. It's a science fiction thriller about men who are afraid of women's emancipation and build their own utopia in a separate town where they kill their wives and replace them with robots.
The Stepford Wives Novel Was Written by the Author of Rosemary's Baby
Bryan Forbes' movie is based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin. His other paranoid thriller Rosemary's Baby was previously successfully adapted for the screen by Roman Polanski.
The main character of The Stepford Wives is afraid of literally losing herself, and the men of Stepford are afraid of women who demand equal dialogue.
Robots are dream wives: non-talkative and happy to serve men. Through the grotesque and satire, the author reveals the abnormality of women's situation, their alienation and depression.
The Stepford Wives Was a Metaphor for a Pressing Social Issue
Behind the ominous satirical tone of Levin's novel lies not only an ideological message, but also a real problem of families in the 1960s and 1970s.
Endless housework, thankless jobs, and indifferent husbands provoked neuroses in housewives. Pharmaceutical companies volunteered to help and began producing tranquilizers.
By the 1970s, Valium had become the best-selling prescription drug among women. The drugs were promoted as a way to get rid of anger, stress, and anxiety, and women became addicted to the miracle drug.
The sedative effect helped them to calm down, to lock their problems deep inside, to become emotionless robots whose suffering and depression did not poison the lives of their eternally tired and busy husbands.
The Movie Was Criticized at the Time of Its Release
The Stepford Wives seems to be a radical feminist sci-fi horror film for its time, shedding light on the situation of oppression.
However, contemporaries did not like the movie. Critics panned The Stepford Wives for its genre weakness: they said that because of the fantasy climax, what happens in the movie could be considered fantasy, detached from reality.
The Stepford Wives Had a Huge Impact on Pop Culture
Despite the criticism, the movie has gained a foothold in the public consciousness. Levin's novel was revived in 2004 in The Stepford Wives by Frank Oz.
Nicole Kidman plays a successful TV producer of a reality show aimed at breaking gender stereotypes. After she is fired and has a nervous breakdown, the woman's husband suggests they move to Stepford.
The film follows the same plot: the husband is afraid of a strong woman and wants to make her the ideal wife, except that some comic adjustments are made to the plot to lower the level of tension.