Bryan Forbes’ filmization of Ira Levin’s The Stepford Wives is a quietly freaky suspense-horror story.
Katharine Ross (in an excellent and assured performance), husband Peter Masterson and kids depart NY’s urban pressures to a seemingly bovine Connecticut existence. Trouble is, Ross and new friend Paula Prentiss (also excellent) find all the other wives exuding sticky hairspray homilies and male chauvinist fantasy responses. When Prentiss finally changes her attitude, Ross panics but cannot escape.
Patrick O’Neal heads a local men’s club that somehow is involved in the unseen, sluggishly developed but eventually exciting climax.
The black humor and sophistication of the plot is handled extremely well.
