ord by word, the title pops onto the screen, each word in a larger typesize than the previous one, for a punchy climactic effect. Next, a stream of Army vehicles wends its way through the Nevada desert, while a voice-over informs the viewer of an imminent "plutonium" bomb test. The scene at the test site is a mix of activity and nervous waiting. The technicians twiddle dials while a resonant-voiced soldier recites a countdown. But in the trench where common soldiers are huddling as guinea pigs to simulate "battlefield conditions," no one can do anything but sweat nervously. When the bomb does not ignite on schedule, the tension is ratcheted higher. The men are warned not to move, for ignition might come at any minute. But then, a civilian plane intrudes, crashing down, and Lt. Col. Glenn Manning (Glenn Langan) cannot resist jumping from the trench for a rescue. Alas, he is caught out in the open as the bomb explodes, and we watch his clothes and flesh seared away in the horrible blast.
In the hospital, Dr. Paul Lindstrom (William Hudson) tends to the battered but still living Manning, who has experienced third-degree burns across his entire body. Not much hope is held out, and Lanning's fiancee, Carol Forrest (Cathy Downs), prepares grimly for the worst, although she maintains some shred of optimism. The very next morning, her faith is rewarded: Manning has miraculously regenerated his entire epidermis and looks normal, though he remains in a coma. Carol is thrilled, but the doctors are only perplexed. That night, Carol receives a visit from a security officer, who informs her that she will not be allowed to visit Manning any longer.
Refusing to accept this dictate, Carol manages to track her fiancee down to a secret desert hospital. After sneaking in, she encounters a sight that causes her to scream and faint. Manning is now a giant beyond any previous record, some 18 feet tall. When Carol recovers, she is briefed by Lindstrom and others. The plutonium blast has sent Manning's natural regenerative faculties into overdrive. He's growing 8 to 10 feet per day, with no end in sight.
Carol manages to get permission to stay on as a helpful assistant, in the attempt to soothe Manning while a cure for his condition is pursued. But Manning, once he awakes from his coma, is not a happy camper. He's surly, despairing, mocking and nihilistic. We learn that his mental state is being influenced by lack of blood, due to a heart whose growth has not kept pace with the rest of his body. This condition, Lindstrom informs Carol, will eventually bring about Manning's death. After one particularly contentious argument, Manning deserts his circus-tent quarters and begins to wander the desert.
Incredibly shrinking logic
Reputedly filmed in a mere 10 days by the unassuming journeyman Bert Gordon (who had helmed such previous "masterpieces" as 1955's King Dinosaur and, earlier the same year, The Cyclops) as a response to the success of The Incredible Shrinking Man, this movie lacks the mystical depth, suspense and eye-candy thrills of its inspiration. (Although the B&W cinematography by Joseph F. Biroc is indeed noirishly crisp.) It's a curiously sedate and placid film, more interested in the events of the lab than in the actions of its monstrous antihero out in society. When you combine less-than-stellar special effects (ghostly matting, unconvincing tiny props) with some scientific howlers (the major one being the characterization of the heart muscle as "a single cell"), you have a film which can best be appreciated by shutting off certain critical sections of your brain.
And yet, as noted cinema fan and historian Bill Warren remarks, "Somehow the movie is better than its effects and trappings, greater than the sum of its parts." It does not leave you feeling as if you'd wasted your time, but only as if you would have liked to see the concept executed by more capable hands.
Chief among the film's pleasures is Langan's portrayal of Manning as an unrepentantly bitter brute. Unlike the nobility exhibited by the protagonist of Shrinking Man, Manning's attitude is a much more likely human reaction to such a bizarre tragedy. He feels that he's always played by the book, and does not deserve such a freakish fate. He searches his past for any "sin" that might have earned him this condition, and he refuses to accept the sugar-coated words offered by Carol and others. With his bald skull and diaper-like breechclout, Manning has been infantilized at the same time he's outgrown all other adults, and he throws tantrums with rich abandon. When he's terrorizing Vegas and leers into an apartment window at a woman taking a bath, he exhibits a kind of preadolescent sexuality. And of course, when he strides across Boulder Dam clutching Carol, the whole King Kong/Fay Wray dynamic gets another workout.
But otherwise, there's not a lot to savor. The offhand riffs regarding Cold War paranoia and security madness never jell to any level of intensity. The lone reference to perceptual reversal (is Manning growing or the world shrinking?) is a total throwaway. The attempt to depict media sensationalism (a lone announcer sits in a studio narrating events from time to time; his nameplate weirdly reads H. WELLS) is primitive. The ravages Manning enacts on Vegas are trivial. And what I perceive to be a minor subtextual message—that America's postwar gigantism threatens old ways—has to be pried out with a crowbar. In the end, even some decent dialogue and decent supporting performances are not enough to redeem the nonsensical ending.
