The Stepford Wives (1975)

I'll Just Die If I Don't Get This Recipe...

‘Immaculate kitchens, supermarkets and crunchy gravel drives…’

Mention a 'Stepford Wife' in Britain or America and anybody with a brain in their head will know what you're talking about. Immaculate kitchens, crunchy gravel drives, supermarkets (Waitrose in Britain), trouser suits (Liz Taylor)- and perfect children. There are two films based on Ira Levin's novel- a sort of feminist science-fiction fantasy, written at the height of the Women’s Liberation movement with more than a smidgin of horror, which, perhaps, defies description.

‘Ira Levin; a writer’s writer…’

Ira Levin! A writer's writer if ever there was: there’s a A Kiss Before Dying (1953), a dark psychological thriller; the occult classic, Rosemary's Baby (1967) made into the definitive film by Roman Polanski; The Boys from Brazil (1976), that’s the one with the mini Hitlers; the comedy-thriller Deathtrap, also made into a film starring Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, and, of course, The Stepford Wives, first published in 1972. From a cinemantic point of view, the latest incarnation of The Stepford Wives came out in 2004- but, as is so often the case with remakes, it ain't a patch on the Bryan Forbes original- which hit the silver screen back in 1975.

‘The sunnier climes of Stepford, Connecticut…’