Main Cast: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton, Raymond Bailey
Release Year: 1957
Country: US
Run Time: 81 minutes
Plot
The screen's great existential science fiction film, The Incredible Shrinking Man stars Grant Williams in the title role. While catching some rays on his brother's yacht, Scott Carey (Williams) is enveloped by a mysterious dark cloud. Soon after, he discovers that he's getting thinner -- and smaller. Despite the assuring attitude of his family doctor (the inevitable William Schallert), Scott is losing an inch's worth of height with each passing day. It is finally determined that he has developed an "anti-cancer," a by-product of a new strain of insecticide. By the time he's reached the size of a small boy, Scott has become world-famous. But the phenomenon has adversely affected his personality, turning him into a tyrant, lashing out at the world in general and his faithful wife in particular. An anti-toxin briefly halts the shrinking process, whereupon Scott joins a midget troupe, where he is briefly "accepted" for what he has become. But before long he's shrinking again, becoming so tiny that he is forced to live in a dollhouse. When Scott is attacked by his pet cat, his wife assumes that he's been killed; in fact, Scott, by now so minuscule that even a garden-variety spider poses a deadly threat to him, is hiding in his cellar. By film's end, Scott is no larger than an atom. Uncertain of what is in store for him, he steps out into the mists, summing up his newfound philosophy: "Smaller than smallest, I meant something too. To God there is no zero. I still exist!" Adapted by Richard Matheson from his own novel, The Incredible Shrinking Man is enhanced by its superb special effects. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
The notion of a man who shrinks to the size of a ChapStick and finds himself hunted by his own pet cat would seem to be the height of comic absurdity, but screenwriter Richard Matheson and director Jack Arnold had the good sense not to play it as a traditional horror/sci-fi story. Instead, The Incredible Shrinking Man emphasizes the psychological side of the character's dilemma alongside his obvious physical problems; Scott Carey (Grant Williams, in the best and best-known performance of a sadly misbegotten career) finds his view of himself and the world radically challenged by his extreme reaction to a radioactive cloud. As Scott slowly begins to shrink, he first loses touch with his masculinity as he begins to look more like his wife's son than her husband, and then begins to question his humanity, as his home turns into a horrific netherworld and he's eventually reduced to the size of a molecule. Director Arnold and his special effects crew do fine work, making Scott's situation look as realistic as possible given the circumstances, and they turn his struggle to emerge from the basement into an adventure to reckon with. But it's Matheson's perceptive script that sets the film apart; plenty of monster movies had an ordinary guy turn into an unrecognizable creature, but few faced the psychological and even theological implications of a man transformed into something unknowable. The result was the most intelligent movie of the 1950s "atomic mutation" cycle, and, along with Them!, the one that has best stood the test of time. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
William Schallert - Dr. Arthur Bramson; Frank Scannell - Barker; Helene Marshall - Nurse; Diana Darrin - Nurse; Billy Curtis - Midget; John Hiestand - TV Newscaster; Lock Martin - Giant (cut); Regis Parton - Bit; Luce Potter - Midget
Credit
Robert Clatworthy - Art Director, Alexander Golitzen - Art Director, Jay A. Morley, Jr. - Costume Designer, William Holland - First Assistant Director, Jack Arnold - Director, Al Joseph - Editor, Irving Gertz - Composer (Music Score), Fred Karlin - Composer (Music Score), Hans Salter - Composer (Music Score), Herman Stein - Composer (Music Score), Fred Carling - Composer (Music Score), Elliot Lawrence - Composer (Music Score), Joseph E. Gershenson - Musical Direction/Supervision, Bud Westmore - Makeup, Jack Kevan - Makeup, Ellis W. Carter - Cinematographer, Albert Zugsmith - Producer, Russell A. Gausman - Set Designer, Ruby Levitt - Set Designer, Clifford Stine - Special Effects, Everett H. Broussard - Special Effects, Roswell A. Hoffmann - Special Effects, Fred Knoth - Special Effects, Leslie I. Carey - Sound/Sound Designer, Robert Pritchard - Sound/Sound Designer, Richard Matheson - Screenwriter, Richard Alan Simmons - Screenwriter, Fred Carling - Screenwriter, Richard Matheson - Book Author
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 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
Scene from The Incredible Shrinking Man
The camera work and effects were considered remarkable and imaginative for their time.
"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.[1] 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.
