Preview Episode (Stepford Wives)

PODCAST:

S3P1 – Preview Episode (Stepford Wives)*

Listen to the podcast here (click to play/right click and select “save target as” to download)

 

SUBJECT MATTER:

Book: “The Stepford Wives (1972)” by Ira Levin

“The internationally bestselling novel by the author of A Kiss Before Dying, The Boys from Brazil, and Rosemary’s Baby With an Introduction by Peter Straub

For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town’s idyllic facade lies a terrible secret — a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same.

At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.” (from Amazon.com)

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Film: “The Stepford Wives (1975)” by Bryan Forbes (Katharine Ross)

“Ira Levin’s savagely satiric sci-fi novel The Stepford Wives provided fodder for one of the biggest moneymaking films of the 1970s. Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves with husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and their children to the “ideal” suburban community of Stepford, Connecticut. Slowly (perhaps too slowly) Joanna deduces that something is amiss; most of the other housewives are vapid creatures who speak in trivialities and live only to please their husbands. Together with new friend Bobby (Paula Prentiss), she investigates this curious status quo. When Bobby also succumbs to sickly sweetness, Joanna discovers that Stepford’s husbands have conspired with male chauvinist scientists to replace all the wives with computerized android duplicates. The final closeup is a gem of compact horror and black comedy. Earning $4,000,000 domestically, The Stepford Wives opened itself up for sequel treatment, but the subsequent Stepford films were cheapjack TV movies unworthy of the original.” (from Amazon.com)

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Film: “The Stepford Wives (2004)” by Frank Oz (Nicole Kidman)

“A woman moves from New York to the town of Stepford, a town where the women are too perfect and pliant to be real.” (from Amazon.com)

* DISCLAIMER: Please be advised that the views and opinions of the hosts and guests of NDIOS are completely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and beliefs of the other hosts and guests or that of NDIOS.