It brings a whole new meaning to the 'Think of the children!' line, doesn't it? This is The Stepford Children, a 1987 TV Movie Sequel (maybe) in the Series. TV Movies were the name of the game here as the previous one- Revenge- was made for TV and the next one- The Stepford Husbands- was as well. If I can find a decent copy of the latter, I'll talk about it. For now, let's focus on this Film. The Plot involves a new family in Stepford- naturally- that sees how odd things are. However, one of them is a life-long resident and is working against them. What freaky goal do the Men in Town have? They've already replaced their wives with Fembots, so what is next? Of note, the Film proudly features Barbara Eden, which wasn't so much a big get by this point. It also has another odd Star, but I'll cover that later. For now, let's see what you don't remember/never saw of this mostly-forgotten 3rd entry in the Series...
A woman- Barbara Eden- is trying to be a Lawyer and also moving to Stepford with her Husband and 2 kids. I guess she needs to set up her figurative Third Act in the Film's First Act.
Stepford- I guess we're ignoring the last Film where the men were overthrown- is up to some new shenanigans- turning their kids into robots now too!
This guy tricks his Son and terrible hair (see Stinger) out on the Lake to capture him. I think he's trying to look conflicted here.
The Men are still in charge here and we get some curious continuity with this. In the meantime, let's retread the original Film.
...in particular, our Wife- Eden- finds a new friend with another recent Town Member that doesn't fit in.
Guess what happens to her.
The Stepford High School is all about achieving- both your goals and conformity.
While our Leads stand out as cliche '80s kids, the rest are more like '50s kids.
On the plus side, they have Dick Butkus as their Football Coach!
As more kids start to change and our Leads question things, Eden begins to learn some secrets about her Husband.
For instance, his last wife 'died' in 1968 (7 years before
Wives), but nobody has the story straight.
The Son's girlfriend is scared of her Dad and flees with him, but nearly dies in a crash. We jump to the original Ending early as her black-eyed Robot wakes up with him in the Room.
Nobody believes his story about her having 'wires in her,' but does believe that she miraculously was fine the next day?!?
She's now a vacant Robot and he's really worried.
This is finally enough push for him to investigate things and Eden gets her push when her Daughter comes back as a Stepford kid after 'going shopping with Dad.'
The Film oddly excises a key scene- the son escaping from Dad- and seems to have one out of order- they mention Eden going to a Cemetery before she actually does.
Regardless, she finds out that they are all Robots, but her Daughter's wasn't done and she escapes with the Son and Mom when the Building blows up.
No, not Dick Butkus!!! The End.
A weird, barely-creative Film. The idea- expanding the Mythos to include them snotty Teenagers- is solid. The problem is that so much of this is just so familiar. We get retreads of all of the major beats. New Family, opinionated Mom, Friend who doesn't fit in and gets converted, reveal of the Robots- all here. They have anything new? Well, yes. There's a strange bit where they 'make' the Stepford Children try to dance to rock-and-roll and it causes a riot. There's a recurring thing where they harass the Daughter to get all of the angles/info they need to copy her as a robot. Hell, there's a brief Motorcycle Chase Scene. The problem is that we've seen so much of the surrounding stuff that there's very little in the way of the surprises. The building dread of knowing what is happening only accounts for so much. Like the original, it seems to run short on time. In that Film's case, that's just a '70s Film thing. In this case, it was them trying to get the big pay-off solely in the last Segment- gotta milk those commercial breaks! The Acting is alright, but so much of this is just meh. It's a decent Sequel that could have been so much more. The Culture Clash concept is barely-utilized here and that's a shame. Speaking of shame, this hair cut that just reminds me of Lanny Luthor...
Next up, I cover a strange Italian oddity courtesy of Amazon Prime. If you can rip off one Film, why not two? Stay tuned...
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