The Stepford Wives

William Goldman's leisurely script and Forbes' dull direction never quite capture the subtleties of Ira Levin's novel about an idyllic Connecticut commuter village where the housewives are a bunch of domesticated dummies. Ross and Prentiss play a pair of newly-arrived wives who are puzzled by the excessive clubbishness of the men and the unquestioning docility of their wives. The final revelation is marred by a melodramatic, sub-Hitchcockian showdown that dispels the more subtly unnerving atmosphere of polite menace. That said, the final supermarket scene does at least have the courage to see the original premise through to its logical conclusion.