Joanna Eberhart, a young wife and aspiring photographer, moves with her husband Walter and their two daughters from Manhattan to Stepford, Connecticut.

Joanna is also bewildered by her neighbor Carol Van Sant's sexual submissiveness to her husband Ted, and her odd, repetitive behavior after a minor car accident.

Along with trophy wife Charmaine Wimperis, the three organize a women's liberation meeting, but the gathering is a failure when the other wives continually divert the discussion to cleaning products.

When Charmaine returns from a weekend trip with her husband as a devoted wife who has fired her maid and destroyed her tennis court, Joanna and Bobbie start investigating, with ever-increasing concern, the reason behind the submissive and bland behavior of the other wives.

Their fear reaches its pinnacle when they discover that all the women were once strong, assertive, independent, and staunch advocates of liberal social policies.

After leaving the psychiatrist's office, Joanna returns home to pick up her children only to find that they are missing and Walter is evasive about their whereabouts.

The Joanna-replica smiles as it brandishes a nylon stocking and calmly approaches Joanna to strangle her as Dale looks on, confirming that the real wives have all been murdered.

During the end credits, photographs show a smiling Walter driving the family car and picking up his new "Stepford wife" from the supermarket with their children in the back seat.

"[15] Additional stresses were caused when actor Peter Masterson secretly called his friend Goldman for input on scenes.

Most applaud the "quiet, domestic" thrills the film delivers in the final third and earlier sections as "clever, witty, and delightfully offbeat".

[20] As for the satire in the film, Roger Ebert wrote that the actresses "have absorbed enough TV, or have such an instinctive feeling for those phony, perfect women in the ads, that they manage all by themselves to bring a certain comic edge to their cooking, their cleaning, their gossiping and their living deaths.

"[21] Jerry Oster of the New York Daily News awarded the film a middling two out of four stars, describing the screenplay as a "tedious" and "padded" adaptation of the source material.

[22] Variety summarized the film as "a quietly freaky suspense-horror story" and praised Ross's performance as "excellent and assured.

"[23] John Seymour of the Santa Maria Times also gave the film a favorable review, deeming it an "epic nightmare" boasting "gripping drama.

"[26] Anchor Bay Entertainment issued The Stepford Wives on VHS on March 10, 1997;[29] they subsequently released a non-anamorphic DVD edition on December 3, 1997.

[30] In 2001, Anchor Bay reissued the film in a "Silver Anniversary" edition, featuring an anamorphic transfer as well as bonus interviews with cast and crew.

[31] In 2004, Paramount Home Entertainment re-released the "Silver Anniversary" edition, which featured the same bonus materials and screen menus.

", was legally sampled on the song, "Hey Music Lover", by British dance act, S-Express, becoming a big international hit in 1989.

[35] The film influenced the development of the character Bree Van de Kamp in the successful series, Desperate Housewives (2004–12), played by Marcia Cross.