The Incredible Shrinking Man

Infobox Film
name = The Incredible Shrinking Man


caption = Original film poster by Reynold Brown
director = Jack Arnold
producer = Albert Zugsmith
writer = Novel:
Richard Matheson
Screenplay:
Richard Matheson
Richard Alan Simmons (uncredited)
starring = Grant Williams
Randy Stuart
April Kent
Paul Langton
Billy Curtis
music =Uncredited:
Irving Getz
Hans J. Salter
Herman Stein
cinematography = Ellis W. Carter
editing = Albrecht Joseph
distributor = Universal Studios
released = flagicon|USA April 1, 1957
runtime = 81 min.
language = English
budget = US$ 750,000
amg_id = 1:24721
imdb_id = 0050539

"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).

Plot

Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is contaminated by a radioactive cloud and pesticide, and he slowly begins shrinking. When he's three feet tall, he briefly becomes friends with a female circus midget but then continues to shrink, eventually being 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, the hero 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 ever 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

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)
*"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.)

Trivia

Goofs

There are three noticeable mistakes within a two minute segment of the film. When the cat attacks Carey in the doll house, it puts its left paw through the window. The cut to the inside shows its right paw. Then, Carey pulls the lamp off the table. The shade lands upright, but the next shot shows it on its side. Also, when the lamp hits the floor, there is the sound of glass breaking, although nothing on the lamp broke.

equel

Matheson wrote a script for a sequel, The Fantastic Shrinking Girl, which was neverproduced. However, the script (in which Louise Carey follows her husband intoa microscopic world) appeared as part of a collection called "Unrealized Dreams"published by Gauntlet Press in 2006. Stephen King's non-fiction book "Danse Macabre"featured a chapter based upon "Shrinking Man"; he talked to Matheson who told himabout the plans for the sequel which never came to pass. A new film titled Incredible Shrinking Man will be released in 2009 or 2010. It will star Eddie Murphy and is inPre-Production. A brief description of the film was released saying a magician starts to shrink. He must find a way to get to previous size before he ceases to exist.

External links

*imdb title|id=0050539|title=The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
* [http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue250/classic.html Review by "Science Fiction Weekly"]
* [http://badmovieplanet.com/duckspeaks/reviews/2004/the-incredible-shrinking-man/ Book to Movie comparison]