Last night on A&E, I caught about the last 45 minutes or so of “Stepford Wives”.
Okay, a few questions?
What exactly DID they do to the wives? They killed them and built robots? Or they fused them with the robots? And what was up with the Joannabot not having eyes?
What was the deal?
I think in the movie, it was pretty clear that they built robots. The Joanna-robot wasn’t finished; that’s why the eyes weren’t in place. Most of the unknowing wives were killed and replaced with the robots. Joanna was too nosy, and figured out what was going on, and had to be killed before her robot was finished.
In the book (which of course was much better than the movie), it was more ambiguous about just what happened to them (totally robot or a cybernetic being), which makes for a scarier story.
Great movie! Here’s the deal. . .
The husbands concocted a program to kill their wives and replace them with robots. They taped the wives speaking a list of selected vocabulary so that the robots would speak like the wives. The wives were not killed until the robot replacement was finished and ready to go. Because Joanna was causing so much trouble for the men, they speeded up the timetable to kill her before the camping trip when she was scheduled to be killed. That’s why the robot Joanna had black eyes–the eyes weren’t finished yet.
If you want more detail, check out the novel by Ira Levin that the movie was based on.
Yeah, I read the book, but it was so long ago I can’t remember.
I also saw one of the sequels, Stepford Kids. Only in that one:
They only temporarily had robots. I think the kids were then scientifically made into the perfect kids. Or something. I don’t remember
There was an incredibly bad made-for-TV sequel to the Stepford Wives, one in which the women weren’t killed and replaced by robots. The women were simply brainwashed… but that brainwashing could be undone.
What a copout!
I caught it last night too. I hadn’t seen it in many years and I guess I remembered it wrong.
For some reason, I had it in my head that they couldn’t get the robot’s eyes right, so they used the real women’s eyes instead, which was why the Joanna-bot had black eyes–they had to get the real eyes from the real Joanna. Not sure why I thought that was the case. It certainly wasn’t in the movie! Maybe I’m confusing it with another one.
Someone over at the nitpicker’s site mentioned this, and I think it’s a pretty good point-if the guy is so good at making these human like robots, why not go and make them as servants, sell them and then make a fortune?
Oh cool! At the IMDB, there’s gonna be a remake next year!
Well, yeah (and definately yeah if the brainwashing could be undone) but altering the person would still be creepier than just replacing them. A living death being more horrible than just ordinary death.
I was kind of dissappointed by the robot thing.