shot of limitless ocean and sky gives way to a lone pleasure boat floating at anchor. Onboard are Scott Carey (Grant Williams) and his wife Louise (Randy Stuart). After some gentle jousting about who will wait on whom, Louise agrees to fetch her husband a beer from belowdecks. This move leaves Scott alone to be engulfed by a mysterious sparkling cloud racing in from the horizon. There seem to be no ill effects from this phenomenon until some time later. Back home, Scott notices that his clothes are becoming looser and looser on him, and he's shedding weight. An initial visit to the family doctor results in some reassuring denial of any problems. But soon even the skeptical doctor can no longer deny the mysterious truth: Scott is shrinking.
Visits to specialists follow, as Scott continues to diminish in stature. Eventually it is determined that accidental exposure to powerful insecticide some months earlier, combined with the effects of the radioactive cloud at sea, have caused Scott's very molecules to compress. His case seems hopeless, and he and his wife retreat to their home. When Scott has reached the height of three feet, with his life turned into a media circus and neighborhood freakshow, the doctors announce a cure. An injection seems to stabilize Scott at the midget level, and he tries to plot out his future, with the help of a fellow small person, Clarice (April Kent). But then the disease recurs, and Scott abandons hope.
Soon Scott, only inches tall, is living in a doll house. One day his own pet cat threatens his life, chasing Scott into the inescapable prison of his own basement. There, Scott embarks on a Crusoe-like existence, fashioning replacement clothing and a matchbox home. Equipped with common-pin weapon and grappling hook, he finds a food source in a piece of discarded cake. But a nemesis awaits in the form of a large hairy spider. Near-rescue by Louise and Scott's brother Charles (Paul Langton) is stymied by a chance flood from the water heater. Finally, man and spider face off in a deathly battle, which Scott wins at some cost. But his shrinking continues and, emerging through the interstices of a common screen onto the lawn of his house, he confronts his final significance in the face of an infinite universe.
Ambitious, understated and intelligent
Today, The Incredible Shrinking Man still stands as a model of what the economical, ambitious, understated and intelligent SF film can be. Filmed in five to six weeks for a cost estimated at between $700,000 and $800,000 (probably equivalent to two to three million dollars in current scales), this movie offers several pleasures. Convincing special effects based on nothing more than split screens, matte shots, rear projection and oversized props. An intriguing premise with at least some attempt at honoring rational explanations and the scientific method. Symbolical undertones relating to the zeitgeist. A dash of cosmic philosophy. Strong performances by relative unknowns without a lot of star-power posturing. Beautiful cinematography (by Ellis Carter). And assured direction.
The last-mentioned feature is no surprise, since Arnold had previously helmed such B-movie gems as It Came from Outer Space (1953) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). But his mastery here is evident in practically every frame. The creepy overtaking of Scott Carey by the billowing cloud; the extended chase scene with the housecat; and, of course, the climactic battle with the spider, where Scott stabs it from beneath and is covered with gushing blood. To achieve what he did in the face of recorded interference and hostility from notorious hack producer Albert Zugsmith is even more remarkable.
Although this film does not embody the uneasy attitudes of the paranoid '50s as deeply as does, say, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, there is still a sense of outer cultural oppression being harmful to the soul of mankind, and somehow responsible for Scott's problems. This is made explicit when Scott speculates that it is not he who is shrinking, but the world which is enlarging. In other words, the daily obligations and challenges of modern life have become too big for the average man to handle. He can, in fact, barely deal with his own cat and household pests.
Of course, an equal share of the credit goes to Richard Matheson and his admirable script, proof that when you employ a talented genre writer to bring his own vision to the screen you can count on quality. The famous and, to some, unsatisfactory mystical ending, when Scott draws the infinite and the infinitesimal into a circle, really was the only logical step (short of depicting some subatomic world) on the course of diminution charted so inflexibly in the rest of the film.
Influenced by such classics as Henry Hasse's "He Who Shrank" (1936) and certainly influential in turn on the adventures of DC Comics' '60s hero The Atom, this film makes the case that less is more.
