ALL SCI-FI

[The Spike]

So close, the infinitesimal and the infinite.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is directed by Jack Arnold and adapted to screenplay by Richard Matheson from his own novel The Shrinking Man. It stars Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton and Billy Curtis. Cinematography is by Ellis Carter and music is scored by Irving Getz, Hans J. Salter and Herman Stein.

While out at sea enjoying a break on a boat with his wife, Scott Carey (Williams) is suddenly enveloped by a mysterious mist. Thinking nothing of it at the time, Scott finds that once he returns home he starts to lose weight and appears to be shrinking.

Confounding the medical people, it's believed that he was subjected to some sort of radiation poisoning that causes him to shrink to only a couple of inches. Pretty soon Scott must battle to stay alive in his new world down in the basement.

One of the greatest sci-fi films of all time, an intelligent and scary picture that subverts the creature feature marker of 50s sci-fi.

There used to be a creature or being growing large to bring terror to the human race. But now it's a man forced to confront a world that is getting bigger — a world where the once harmless pet cat is now a monstrous threat to his life, a basement spider is now a fearsome foe, a mousetrap becomes agonizing conundrum, and climbing up a wooden crate is like trying to scale Everest.

Everyday things such as pins and scissors — so mundane to us — are now weapons of war and tools for survival. The science is strong, the prose of pesticides and radiation dangling deftly in the narrative, the fear of the atomic age knocking at the door.

Yet it's not all about the small world that Carey ultimately finds himself struggling to survive in. Matheson's literary bent takes us on a journey of substance. Time is afforded the effects of Carey's illness on his marriage, on society and the medical profession.

It's not just a physical journey, but a psychological one. Hope is dangled, both medically and in the meeting of someone of his own kind. But Scott Carey is a victim of cruel fate, a man in the wrong place at the wrong time, thrusting him into a world he can't control. Can he survive and adapt? If so, he may be opened up to some sort of revelation, where metaphysical existentialism can come crawling through the gloom to reveal itself.

Scott Carey's world is brilliantly realized by director Jack Arnold and his team, with over-sized props, nifty special effects and a miniature POV filming style that lets us in on the terror and angst of a man forced to evaluate his place in the universe.

Grant Williams is excellent, begging the question as to why his career didn't reach better heights. The mental transformation of Scott Carey is smartly layered by the actor, and his oral narration pulses with emotion and reasoning. All told it's a great production, a great film. Don't be fooled into thinking it's a piece of sci-fi schlock. It deserves better respect than that — as does, Jack Arnold in fact. 9/10
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The quality of mercy is not strnen.

[Bud Brewster]

I really hate the fact that I missed seeing this one in 1957, when I could have gotten the full soul-changing effect of being a nine year old kid immersed in a fantastic experience through that magic gateway -- a giant movie screen.

Instead, I was a teenager who saw it in the 1960s on a b&w television, and even though I enjoyed it, there's no comparison between the thrill of sitting in a large audience in a movie theater (or the backseat of the family car at a drive-in) and the comparatively mundane environment of the den in your home.

I missed my chance to be truly transformed by this movie. Oddly enough, I saw one of Jack Arnold's other movies one year later, The Space Children, at a drive-in theater and it became my favorite science fiction movie of all time! (And now you know why I chose my user name . . . )

IMDB trivia says this: Several of the gigantic props (the scissors, nails, and mousetrap for example) were part of the Universal Studio tour for several years.

I took that tour in the mid-sixties with my parents and remember the guide pointing to the giant scissors mounted on the wall of a prop storage warehouse the tram drove through while he told his passengers what films they were used in.

While looking for a picture of those scissors I found this shot and several other interesting items.



The Incredible Shrinking Executive?



IMDB trivia: Richard Matheson had originally written a screenplay for the sequel called The Fantastic Shrinking Girl in which Louise Carey begins to shrink. Universal had planned to produce it but the project was eventually scrapped.

This is just a cute publicity shot, not a behind-the-scenes picture from the unfilmed project mentioned above.



"Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." But is bigger really better? When it comes to mouse traps, does size matter?



A scene from the movie? No, not unless newspapers started downsizing much sooner than we realized.



This would make a great picture for a poster that read Children, never play with matches!



Examine the photos below. One real chair and two reduced-size props?

Nope, same chair and two reduced-size Grants. Look closely for the clues: in the middle picture, the chair's legs cast a fairly sharp-edged shadow, but the shadow created by Grant's leg looks suspiciously fuzzy.



And where is his right leg!

In the right picture, the butt depression is not under his butt. I think something heavy was placed on the chair to depress the cushion (a bowling ball maybe?), but it was positioned a bit too far forward to line up with Grant's Incredible Shrinking Caboose!
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You're absolutely right about this movie, Spike. It presents a story that fully explores the concept and gives the audience an amazing experience. I think I'm ready to jump into my combination time-machine-and-age-regression device so I can leave 2015 as a sixty-seven year old man and arrive in 1957 as a nine-year-old kid.

Then I can beg my parents to take me to the drive-in to see The Incredible Shrinking Man.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ralfy]

This is a remarkable movie because of the ending.

[Pow]

This is a very fine movie. Kinda gets lost among the great sf films of the 50s like Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, War Of The Worlds, etc.

The final narration is powerful, poignant.

[Phantom]

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

Based on Richard Matheson's gripping novel and pared down to essentials, the movie is a genuine classic of science fiction that transcends the decade of the fifties and still resonates with audiences today.

The book is written as a series of flashbacks containing much background story that was jettisoned by the author when he wrote the screenplay. Gone are two episodes dealing with Carey's confused daughter and an encounter with a babysitter that doesn't turn out well for the Carey marriage (as if shrinking wasn't enough), neither of which are crucial to the film which moves along at a fast 81m clip.

Grant Williams may or may not have considered the role a plum project. The road to stardom via horror and science fiction films is paved with the bones of many an excellent actor. Given the fact that Williams is the sole human being for three quarters of the running time, acting only with giant props and a green screen, he delivers a tour de force performance. As others have said, he should have become a star. So, what happened?

Katharine Hepburn, when asked what star power was, replied, "I don't know. It's either some kind of energy or some kind of electricity. But whatever it is, I have it."

Williams, with his good looks and intelligent acting, was missing that crucial component that could connect with a wider audience and elevate him to star level, and he remained for the rest of his career in the ranks of fine actors like Jeff Morrow and Richard Carlson who provided competent steady characters when the b-level scripts called for that kind of gravitas.

Randy Stuart as Carey's wife probably has the most difficult acting moment in the film. After all, how does one react to the knowledge that your six-inch high husband has just been eaten by the family cat? Short of all out losing your mind like Freda Jackson in Brides of Dracula (He's free! God help us!), it's an impossible idea to convey, so if Stuart doesn't quite pull it off, she can be forgiven.



A bit of uncovered trivia. Grant Williams actually swears in this scene. As he reaches for the nail, he misses and says, "son of a b....." In the movie and on the dvd it's covered up by a bit of audio distortion, but I can plainly hear the words on my Blu-ray machine.



I sometime wish Carey would try an escape down the drain. But that would be a whole 'nother movie. I get chills just thinking about it.



I saw this at the age of 10 in the summer of '57, on a full size theatre screen, which is probably the way it should be experienced, thrilled beyond measure by the sheer spectacle of it all. The film germinated in my mind for many years afterward, even though I didn't see it again until well into adulthood when perceptions had changed. I was gratified to see just how much it had held up.

But there was always something stirring in the back of my mind that I was seeing and missing something at the same time. And it wasn't until I was watching it for the umpteenth time on dvd that I suddenly sat bolt upright on the sofa and realized what had been lurking in the id all those years.

After Carey has vanquished the spider, he walks wearily to the web and stabs the needle into the dried cake. It's as if he is no longer Scott Carey, he is Jason claiming the Golden Fleece.





Now, I'm not claiming that Matheson's novel is on the level of Classical Literature or that he was even thinking along those lines. But all the elements are there. Carey is chosen by God, or Fate, or whatever it can be called to go on a remarkable journey that takes him into a strange, hostile land. Along the way, he loses his family and his comfortable world, fights a horrible monster for survival and questions his own humanity and his existence. In the end, triumphant, he is given his reward, knowledge of the universe beyond the range of normal men.



In his review of the movie which was published in Famous Monsters of Filmland, Forrest J. Ackerman was negative about Carey's final monologue, on the basis that Carey was far too pragmatic a survivor to suddenly begin spouting religious philosophy. But who can tell?

There are many stories of people who, faced with incredible stress, have experience some kind of epiphany that altered their way of thinking, and sometimes their lives. So, who is to say that Carey did not undergo an existential transformation? He certainly went through the requisite stress.

A person doesn't have to believe in God or religious conviction to appreciate the majesty and poetry of the Biblical saga. And so, as many times as I've seen the movie, I can never get through the final monologue without tears in my eyes.

In Matheson's novel, Carey "runs into his new world" and becomes a microbe. In the movie, Carey reaches the point of zero inches, but because the camera can no longer follow him, we are left to speculate on his further adventures and ultimate fate.

[Bud Brewster]

Damn fine review, Phantom!

I wish I'd seen this one as a kid, the way I did with a few other fifties favorites, but I enjoyed it when I finally did see it.

I too read the book and enjoyed it, although the parts where he was about three feet tall and living in the basement to avoid being seen by the babysitter were a bit kinky. He developed a sexual fixation on the teenager and peeked at her through the windows of his own house.

I don't remember much else about the book.

But that scene in the movie when Scott battles the spider is magnificent, even by today's tough standards.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Custer]

Richard Matheson's contribution to science fiction and fantasy, in books, movies, and television, really has been immense.

As Wikipedia notes, he may be known best as the author of I Am Legend, the 1954 horror novel that has been adapted for the screen four times, but six more of his novels or short stories have been adapted as motion pictures: The (Incredible) Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return (filmed as Somewhere in Time), A Stir of Echoes and Button, Button.

And don't forget that he also wrote quite a few television episodes of The Twilight Zone for Rod Serling, including "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" and "Steel".

And he later adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" as a screenplay, which was directed by a young Steven Spielberg, getting his career off to a roaring start. It was inspired by a real-life experience in which Matheson was tailgated by a trucker while on his way home from a golfing match with his friend Jerry Sohl on November 22, 1963, the same day as the John F. Kennedy assassination.

The short story, in Playboy, was shown to Spielberg by his secretary, who apparently read the magazine for the stories... unlike most people, who read it for the interviews, yes?

[Bud Brewster]

[Custer]

Something like that. I'm pretty sure that, not only have there been books full of selected stories from Playboy, such as The Playboy Book of Science Fiction edited by Alice K. Turner, there has been at least one collection of the interviews. But that sf anthology, according to its contents listed on isfdb, has a very impressive roster of authors...

The photographic sections have probably been reprinted a bit, too...

[orzel-w]

The ending of The Incredible Shrinking Man was a pretty heavy dose for a little kid to swallow at a Saturday matinee. My friend with whom I saw it for the first time was totally down on any movie that didn't have everything tidily wrapped up and solved at the end.
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...or not...

WayneO
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[Gord Green]

I first saw this at the drive-in in '57 and was blown away by it. I was also into the books by Ray Bradbury and stories in Weird Science and Weird Fantasy from EC. That led me to Richard Matheson.

Along with Bradbury, he had a very poetic prose style...a real mastery of language and emotion. I think the last monologue was verbatim Matheson.

[Bud Brewster]

Famous Monsters of Filmland published a wonderful article about this classic in issue #13. The text below is easy to read if you zoom in close enough.

Enjoy!

Click on each page here to see a large, easy-to-read version you can zoom in on. Click on the large version again for the maximum size!











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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[johnnybear]

As an arachnophobe I can tell you I love this bloody movie! That spider though is absolutely hideous! It's the same wee beastie that was the star of the 1955 movie Tarantula, but here it looks even more nasty as it chases poor old Scott Carey into a matchbox! It's slavering fangs kept me up one or two nights after I can tell you!
JB

[Bud Brewster]

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I totally agree that the spider scene in this movie is the most terrifying cinematic moment involving an arachnid!

And thanks for calling my attention to fact that my post with the Famous Monsters issue above was an early effort and did not use the method I recently discovered, which involves an embedded link in each jpeg that leads to a much larger, easy-to-read version.

I've corrected that problem, so now everyone can enjoy the improved version of the article in the post above.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[orzel-w]