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	April 1, 1957
Running time	81 min.
Language	English
Budget	US$ 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).

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), a 6ft 2in, 190lbs, businessman, is on vacation on a boat, off the Californian coast, with his 5ft 8in wife Louise, when he is contaminated by a radioactive cloud and pesticide. At the time, Louise was below deck getting refreshments, so she wasn't affected by it.

At first, he thinks little of it, and nothing happens for a time. However, one morning, six months later, Scott notices that his shirt seems too big. He blames it on the cleaners. However, this trend continues, and Scott 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 his wife, previously six inches shorter than he, in the eye.

Scott visits a prominent research laboratory, and after numerous tests, learns the mist carried radioactive pesticides, causing his cells to shrink.

Scott carries on shrinking. His story hits the headlines, and he becomes a national curiosity. He also has to give up his job and stops driving.

When he's three feet tall, Scott begins to feel humiliated. He expresses his shame and impotence by lashing out at his wife. Then at a circus, he briefly becomes friends with a female midget, exactly the same height as him, who is appearing in a side-show. She persuades Scott that life isn't all negative being that size. Realizing that he has nothing in common with his now comparatively gigantic wife, he leaves her for the midget. Then, an antidote is found, which briefly stops Scott from shrinking, and although he is told that he will never return to his former height, and all that the antidote will do is arrest the shrinking, he seems relatively content to remain at three-feet tall.

However, when he later notices that he is shorter than the midget, Scott then leaves her to return to his wife. He carries on shrinking, and eventually is reduced to living in a dollhouse. After nearly being killed by a 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, Scott accepts his fate and (now so small he can escape the basement by walking through a space in a window screen) looks forward to seeing what awaits him in even smaller realms.

The original novel differs slightly in content and tone from the film. In the novel the story is told through flashback. It describes Scott's life in the basement up until his battle with the spider. Scott Carey and his wife Louise have a five-year-old daughter named Beth. He encounters a drunken pederast when he's 42 inches tall and some teenage toughs when he's three feet tall. He experiences some disturbing sexual tension in his dealings with his daughter's 16 year old babysitter, Catherine, when he is under two feet tall and has to cope with a strained relationship with his wife. The soliloquy which closes the film is not found in the book but was added to the script by the film's director, Jack Arnold.

Production

File:Incredibleshrinkingman3.jpg

Scene from The Incredible Shrinking Man

The camera work and effects were considered remarkable and imaginative for their time.

The theme of size-changing was explored in several other movies of this period, including Jack Arnold's earlier Tarantula, in which a synthetic food causes several animals to grow to massive size. Them! (1954), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Beginning of the End (1957), and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) explored the opposite idea of uncontrolled growth. Attack of the Puppet People was rushed into production by American International Pictures and Bert I. Gordon in 1958. Other notable films of this genre include Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Fantastic Voyage. The final permutation (female shrinkage) eventually appeared in 1981 with The Incredible Shrinking Woman, a credited remake in which Lily Tomlin played the wife of an advertising man; she shrinks as a result of exposure to household products. Currently there are plans for an Eddie Murphy comedy film titled The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Quotations

• "That's silly, honey. People just don't get smaller." (Louise reassuring her shrinking husband, Scott)
• "See how funny I am? The child that looks like a man. Go on, laugh, Louise, be like everybody else, it's alright. Well, why can't you look at me? LOOK AT ME!" (Scott, three feet tall, slamming his tiny hands on top of a coffee table)
• "The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle." (Scott, to himself)
• "And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears locked away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God there is no zero. I still exist." (Scott, to himself - last line in movie.)

Sequel

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. However, there appears that a sequel is currently in production, and that the sequel is expected to be released in 2010.

External links

• The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) at IMDb
• The Incredible Shrinking Man at AllMovie
• Review by Science Fiction Weekly
• Book to Movie comparison