The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Jack Arnold

Writers:

Richard Matheson (screenplay)
Richard Matheson (novel)

Release Date:

April 1957 (USA)

Genre:

Horror | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Almost beyond the imagination . . . A strange adventure into the unknown ! [UK Theatrical]

Plot:

Whe Scott Carey begins to shrink because of exposure to a combination of radiation and insecticide, medical science is powerless to help him.

Plot Keywords:

Insecticide | Cat | Cellar | Spider | Giant Spider

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Grant Williams	...	Scott Carey
Randy Stuart	...	Louise Carey
April Kent	...	Clarice
Paul Langton	...	Charlie Carey
Raymond Bailey	...	Doctor Thomas Silver
William Schallert	...	Doctor Arthur Bramson
Frank J. Scannell	...	Barker (as Frank Scannell)
Helene Marshall	...	Nurse
Diana Darrin	...	Nurse
Billy Curtis	...	Midget
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Lock Martin	...	Giant (scenes deleted)

Runtime:

81 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

Spain:T | Australia:G | Finland:K-16 | USA:Passed | West Germany:12 | Sweden:15

Company:

Universal International Pictures (UI)

Trivia:

When Louise is on the telephone, asking the operator for a new unlisted number, the radio is on and the music playing on the radio is the theme song to Written on the Wind (1956), which was made at Universal the year before this film, and also featured Grant Williams.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Look carefully when Scott is running from the cat and from the spider. In the close-up shots Scott has a shadow. In the distant shots he has no shadow because he wasn't really there, he was just placed on top of the film!

Quotes:

Scott Carey: My prison, almost as far as I could see, a gray friendless area of space and time, and I resolved that as man had dominated the world of the sun, so I would dominate my world.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Back to the Black Lagoon: A Creature Chronicle (2000) (V)

An Unbeatable Sci-Fi Classic!

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (4 outta 5 stars) Not many of those hokey-looking old sci-fi movies from the '50s are still as effective 50 years later... but this one definitely hasn't lost any of its power. Great script written by Richard Matheson, who later went on to do much good work for "The Twilight Zone" and even today is still producing scripts for such films as "Stir of Echoes" and "What Dreams May Come". The story is fairly simple- after passing through a mysterious cloud on the ocean, our hero Scott (Grant Williams) discovers that his clothes seem to start feeling looser. More time passes and he discovers that he is now shorter than his wife. Day after day, he becomes smaller and smaller until he becomes so small that an ordinary housecat becomes a terrifying threat to his very life. The special effects might seem unconvincing to modern eyes... but the otherwise high-quality of the editing and direction make the action scenes as effective and suspenseful as anything you likely to see spewed out by today's CGI factories. I was totally unprepared for the ending of this film... you'd never see a movie end this way nowadays... but you never too many of them end this way back in the '50s either! A classic!