The Incredible Shrinking Man

The Incredible Shrinking Man
File:Incredible-shrinking-man.jpg Original film poster by Reynold Brown
Directed by	Jack Arnold
Written by	Novel: Richard Matheson Screenplay: Richard Matheson Richard Alan Simmons (uncredited)
Produced by	Albert Zugsmith
Starring	Grant Williams Randy Stuart April Kent Paul Langton Billy Curtis
Cinematography	Ellis W. Carter
Edited by	Albrecht Joseph
Music by	Uncredited: Irving Getz Hans J. Salter Herman Stein
Distributed by	Universal Studios
Release date	1957 (1957)
Running time	81 min.
Language	English
Budget	$750,000

The Incredible Shrinking Man is a 1957 science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold and adapted for the screen by Richard Matheson from his novel The Shrinking Man (ISBN 0575074639).

It won the very first Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant and will be preserved for all time.

Plot

Scott Carey (Grant Williams), is a businessman who is on vacation on a boat, off the California coast, with his 5 ft 8 in (1.73 m) wife Louise (Randy Stuart) when he suddenly is contaminated by a radioactive cloud. At the time, Louise was below deck getting refreshments, so she wasn't affected. Subsequently, Scott, who is 6 ft 1 in (1.85 m) tall and weighs 190 pounds, thinks little of the cloud and doesn't appear to have been affected by it.

However, one morning, six months later, he notices that his shirt seems too big. He blames it on the cleaners. His wedding ring falls off his finger. As this trend continues, he believes he is shrinking. At first Louise dismisses his fears as silly, but he continues to lose weight and height. Noticeably, this is shown when he looks her, previously six inches shorter than him, in the eye.

He visits a prominent research laboratory, and after numerous tests, learns that exposure to the radioactive mist and some normal pesticides caused his cells to shrink.

He continues to both shrink and lose weight. His story hits the headlines and he becomes a national curiosity. He also has to give up his job and stop driving. To make ends meet, he sells his story to the national press.

By this point he feels humiliated and expresses his shame and impotence by lashing out at Louise. She is reduced to tears of despair at his fate.

Then, it seems, an antidote is found for Scott's affliction: it briefly arrests his shrinking when he is 36½ inches (93 cm) tall and weighs 52 pounds (24 kg). Despite halting his diminution, he is told that he will never return to his former size, unless a cure is found, and that the antidote will only arrest the shrinking. Still, he seems relatively content to remain at three feet tall, and begins to accept his fate.

At a circus, he briefly becomes friends with a female midget, who initially is identical in height; she is appearing in a side-show and persuades him that life isn't all negative being their size. Although their relationship is platonic in the film, it becomes romantic in the novel. During one of Scott's conversations with his new small friend, he suddenly notices he has become even shorter than her, meaning the antidote is not working. Exasperated, he runs away. He continues shrinking, and eventually is reduced to living in a dollhouse. After nearly being killed by his own cat, he winds up trapped in a basement and has to battle a voracious spider, his own hunger, and the fear that he may eventually shrink down to nothing. After defeating the spider, he accepts his fate and (now so small he can escape the basement by walking through a space in a window screen) is resigned to the adventure of seeing what awaits him in even smaller realms.The film's ending monologue implies he will eventually shrink to atomic size; but, no matter how small he does so, he concludes he will still matter in the universe and this thought gives him comfort and ends his fears of the future.

Reception

The film was very well received by critics. It has a fresh 88% on Rotten Tomatoes.

In addition to its selection for the National Registry in 2009 by the National Film Preservation Board, it won the 1958 Hugo award for that year's best science fiction or fantasy dramatic presentation.

Sequel and remakes

Matheson wrote a script for a sequel titled Fantastic Little Girl, but the film was never produced. The script, in which Louise Carey follows her husband into a microscopic world, was later published in 2006 by Gauntlet Press in a collection titled Unrealized Dreams.

The Incredible Shrinking Woman, a credited comic remake in which Lily Tomlin played the wife of an advertising man who shrinks as a result of exposure to household products was released in 1981.

Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment are currently slated to produce a remake starring Eddie Murphy. It is still very early on in pre-production and no formal release date has been announced.

Legacy

Little Archie #35, "The Incredible Cat-Caper" (1965) by Bob Bolling was an homage to The Incredible Shrinking Man. Little Archie shrinks and fends off a cat with a sewing needle.

DVD release

The Incredible Shrinking Man has been released on both Region 1 and Region 2 DVDs by Universal Studios.

See also

• The Incredible Melting Man

External links

• The Incredible Shrinking Man at IMDb
• The Incredible Shrinking Man at AllMovie