The Incredible Shrinking Man

• Directed by Jack Arnold
• February 22, 1957 (Globe Theatre) / March 27, 1957 (Los Angeles) / April 1957 (US)
• Based on Richard Matheson’s 1956 novel The Shrinking Man

A man begins to shrink due to a combination of radiation and insecticide with medical science unable to help him.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is a movie that plays on fears of science and radiation that were prevalent in the 50s. Conversely this is the same era you could buy radium cream to make your skin look good. Weird how that worked. This uses some questionable science which in the 50s was not so questionable to a public lacking the level of access to info we have. The premise itself sounds silly to the modern audience but was less so then. The Japanese had Godzilla. We had stuff like this.

There’s nothing too special about the main character and perhaps that was the point with them. He and his wife were what was seen as a stereotypical couple for the time. There is little noteworthy about the husband Robert (Grant Williams) until he starts to change. He is average to the point of being bland.

While the wife Louise (Randy Stuart) is most certainly a housewife there is an equality between the two. She’s the emotional rock for her husband and a little more than just window dressing like in some older films. He doesn’t call her by her first name but rather by the casual nickname of “Lou” which effectively and quickly demonstrates their relationship.

At the start, The Incredible Shrinking Man is not about the weird event/scenario but about the effects on the man and those around him-at least initially. Jack Arnold and pals do their best to focus on the impact on the man’s life. After we get through the first half or so of the film it become a series of distinct short adventures.

There are moments of survival against spiders and water which to a normal sized person would be nothing but to a shrinking individual are serious threats. It looks silly at first but once they start focusing on the tiny elements like when he’s fighting that giant spider or facing a torrential flood in his basement you forget that it’s a tiny spider or a leaking water heater. A credit to Jack Arnold.

A limitation of composite shots is that you can see the separation of the two images or even the one image through the one image that is imposed on top the other. These were cutting edge to special effects for the day, but cutting edge does not mean perfect. They linger too long rather than just enough to let you know causing you to be taken out of the illusion.

One thing that always bother me about this movie is there is a scene where the main character speaks to a little person working in a carnival. That’s not the problem. The problem is they use the same perspective shots to make a normal sized woman short as they do to make Grant Williams short. I’m not sure how it could’ve been accomplished but it’s a glaring difference between real life and fakery.

Considering the story is narrated by Robert in almost a flashback fashion, how was he able to relate his ultimate fate considering he kept shrinking? Much of what occurs is related as if it is being read it out of the book the character was writing. Come up with some kind of way for him to have relayed the story or don’t do the voiceover to get over certain narrative humps.

Some parts of The Incredible Shrinking Man may be hokey today, but it has a creative start by focusing on the impact of the event rather than strangeness before moving to how inconsequential things become dangerous. Entertaining.