VINTAGE FILM The Stepford Wives

There’s a reason everyone knows what a “Stepford Wife” is, and it’s not the 2004 flop with Matthew Broderick and Nicole Kidman – it’s this 1975 classic based on Ira Levin’s satirical novel about when happens when a clique of clever men try to create a suburban utopia for themselves. Despite a teaser campaign urging women to see it “…before your husband does,” the film grossed only $4 million at the box office, but – perhaps a harbinger of the Fifty Shades craze – it gained new popularity after the invention of a certain nobody-knows-what-I’m-looking-at-but-me device called the VCR.