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 You have your "ordinary businessman" mixing it up with a "mysterious
radioactive mist" while he is on a boating trip. This results in his life
taking
a "bizarre and frightening twist." The dude starts shrinking and soon he is
only about two inches high. He ends up "battling cats and spiders." 1957, 81 minutes, VHS
One of the classics of 1950s science fiction, The Incredible Shrinking Man holds up still today as an involving adventure story (that admittedly only
takes place in some guy's basement) thanks to the good special effects and the
able work of Grant Williams as a dude that keeps getting smaller and smaller.
It's infinitely much better than the Lily Tomlin (who is it that finds her
funny? Steve Martin?) updating filmed several decades later as The Incredible
Shrinking Woman. That movie is chiefly remembered for having quite the
obnoxious theme song (Galaxy Glue, Galaxy Glue, life would go to pieces without
Galaxy Glue) and really it's best forgotten all together (although the idea of
shrinking Lily so small so that we couldn't hear her anymore does have a
definite appeal). Luckily, The Incredible Shrinking Man plays the gimmick
seriously, never for a moment forgetting that if you really did shrink down to
Inch High Private Eye status, it wouldn't just be riding around on flying ants
and sneaking in the girls' locker room. Scott Carey (Williams) has a life
before this little problem (hehehe). It's a good life. You've got vacations
on a boat (albeit with a chartered course straight into a mysterious
radioactive cloud - but that's probably nothing), a sexy wife who is very nice
and understanding, and a family house cat named Butch, who just can't wait for
you to
shrink down to mouse-size so that he can eat your ass. Much of the film
deals with Scott's emotional breakdown at the loss of all this (though I think
it's safe to say that it's his wife that matters most to him and not that no
good traitorous cat). Despite his seemingly hopeless situation, he keeps
pushing on, struggling to survive, because he just wants to be reunited with
his wife (we'll forget about the flirting he did with that carnival midget) and
resume his normal life.  Like another of author Richard Matheson's work (the classic 1960s science
fiction movie, The Last Man On Earth), the main character also serves as narrator and much of the action involves
the main character struggling to survive in an alien world where he is the only
human. Of course, this time instead of bloodthirsty vampires, you have a cat
and a spider. It all started so innocently enough when Scott took his
brother's boat out for a three hour cruise, a three hour cruise (come on, you
know the words) with his 1950s hottie of a wife who goes by the handle of
Louise (an unflattering name that is shortened to the even more unflattering
Lou - it always makes me think of Lou Costello). They're just lounging around
trying to decide who gets to go below deck and bring up another 30 pack of
Keystones. He finally convinces Lou (ugh!) to go do it on the promise that
he'll get her dinner later (riiiiight! Would that be tube sausage or trouser
snake?). What follows is like something out of the hit TV show, TV's Bloopers and Atomic Practical Jokes starring Dick Clark: What Scott doesn't know is that the joke is on him!
See, while Mrs. Carey has gone below deck to get more brew, we've gone ahead
and detonated an atomic weapon just off the starboard side Scott's boat. Any
minute now, Scott and his boat will float right through the mysterious haze and
we bet he'll be dumb enough to stand around gawking. Let's see what happens.
Sure enough, Scott hangs around topside and soaks up all the rich, shiny,
sparkly radioactivity. When Lou comes back, she notices that he's got all this
glitter on his chest. I'm not sure what was going on with that, but thankfully
the film cuts away before, we learn more about Scott and why he may have been
called The Incredible Alternative Man prior to all this. Six months go by and
we're back home with the Careys. They lead a typical 1950s existence with the
milk man dropping off a bottle for Lou, with Lou making breakfast and getting
dressed up in heels and a dress so that she can prepare for a big day doing
stuff like cleaning up after breakfast and planning dinner. Upstairs, Scott is
concerned because his pants don't fit like they used to and his shirts are too
big. He asks Lou if they picked up the wrong clothes at the cleaners, but she
assures him that they are the right ones. He thinks he's losing weight, but
Lou tries to downplay it and makes a comment that it's okay with her if he
drops some pounds. Thanks for your support Lou, I'll make sure to crawl in
your eye at night and take a big dump there once I really get all shrunk down.  Scott goes to his doctor (you'll remember him as the evil Dr. Mears in The Man From Planet X though here he has shaved off the ridiculous facial hair since he's now a good
guy) to find out what the problem is. The doctor attributes all his weight
loss to stress, though Carey says he hasn't been stressing about anything other
than his weight loss. The doctor also informs him that he is about five feet
nine inches tall (that's about 18 liters to you Europeans out there). Like
most really short and insecure guys, Scott insists that he has always been a
strapping and manly six foot one, not a paltry and sissy five foot nine. The
doctor tries to mollify the guy by telling him that all the physicals he's had
in the past were probably wrong (can't you just let the man hang on to his
illusions, Doc?) and that a person actually shrinks a little as the day goes on
(well, that solves this case) or that he would not be as tall as if he would
when he stands fully erect. Whoa, Doc - is that some type of invitation? What
is this guy trying to measure anyway? Scott goes home and little by little
(hohoho) he gets smaller and smaller. These are pretty funny scenes (to the
audience obviously, not to Scott) and soon he's sitting in really big chairs
next to oversized props like a giant apple and a really big telephone. This
gag works much better than when Lily Tomlin did it when she played that little
twerp named Edith Ann or Ethan Allen or whatever her name was. Did she base
her whole career off of this movie or something? I guess it could have been
worse - she could've used Fire Maidens Of Outer Space or something instead. As Scott grows smaller, his attitude goes straight into
the crapper. He also loses his job since no one wants to do business with a
guy they might accidentally step on or something. Of course, today, his
employer would have to make accommodations like having an itty bitty desk and
wee little laptop computer for him or he would be in violation of the Americans
With Disabilities Act. So you can see that while in today's world an Incredible
Shrinking Man would be protected, back in the good old days when women still put
on the pearls to vacuum the living room, he was screwed.  Scott is feeling about three feet high (because he is!) and since he lost his
job, he had to sell his story to the media and he then gets hounded by them
since the entire world knows about his plight. The movie seems surprisingly
current in its portrayal of the feeding frenzy that results when he goes public
with his story. He's got reporters camped out on his lawn, his wife is trying
to change their telephone number, and George Clooney is firing off angry
letters to Entertainment Tonight and The O'Reilly Factor on his behalf
complaining that people who seek the spotlight and try and make money off their
fame and/or infamy deserve their privacy like anyone else. Scott gets fed up
with it all and decides to go out and get some air. He gets his coat (probably
a Granimals one) and heads out the door. The following sequence is probably
the worst and hokiest part of the movie. He goes down the street and runs
smack dab into a carnival, complete with bearded lady, fat chick, and midgets.
He can't take it so he goes to the local cafe and sits down at a really big
table in front of a really big coffee cup. If I was working there I would have
offered him a booster seat or something. So he's nursing his cup of joe and
who should walk in but this midget chick named Clarice. This is really lame
because it is so obvious that she isn't a midget, but just a regular woman
sitting at a big table with Scott. They should have gotten a real dwarf or orc
or whatever was available to play this part, because it detracts from the
realism of things and smacks of the cheesy sci-fi/horror flick this movie is
too smart to really be. It's okay for Scott to look regular - he is shrinking
proportionally. He will look the same only smaller all the way around. People
that suffer from dwarfism have certain physical characteristics that are
obvious and they don't just look like people that got loaded into a shrink ray
or whatever. It really kind of reeks when they're both sitting on an over-sized
park bench and she's trying to give him a pep talk about how great it is to be
short (when you trip, you don't have as far to fall so you don't get hurt as
much!). You're just thankful when the scene ends and we can go back to dealing
with Scott's shrinking problem realistically. He continues to shrink and
eventually is about two inches high. This is great and you can see that his
relationship with Lou has suffered since he has moved out of their house and
into a doll house in the living room! Lou leaves the house (her house, not the doll house!) and manages to let Butch
inside. Butch of course was the family cat who was transferred to "outside
status" once it became apparent that Scott was going to the size of a Frisky.
The cat spots Scott living it up in Barbie's Dreamhouse and goes on the
offensive. Some Tom and Jerry style shenanigans follow with Butch scratching
Scott on the back leaving blood all over. Eventually, Scott escapes from Butch
and manages to fall down a vent or something into a box in the basement. Lou
returns and sees Butch licking its paws, spots some bloody doll clothes and
assumes that she has just become the chief beneficiary of Scott's estate. The
remainder of the film focuses on Scott's efforts to stay alive and somehow get
back to Lou. This involves outsmarting a mousetrap and using nails as swords
and hooks. The special effects are really good and it's pretty neat to
watch Scott try and face dangers that us tall folks wouldn't ever think of (the
leaky hot water heater is a flood of biblical proportions to Scott). Now, I
don't profess to spending a lot of time in my own basement, but I'm pretty sure
that there are various creepy crawlies done there. However, I seriously doubt
(at least I hope) that in that catalog of bugs, tarantulas are absent. In
Scott's basement though, he notices this really big, hairy tarantula running
around (funny how you don't notice tarantulas in your basement when you're of
average size). This thing becomes his nemesis as he realizes he'll have to
kill it to get some moldy bread it's guarding or something. There's some
really good action going on during this part of the movie and it's fun to watch
Scott go from being hopeless about everything to finding the will to survive
again. The only quibble I have is that I don't think that tarantulas hang out
in big spider webs waiting for flies to go by. The ending is surprising for
these kind of movies and I'm not sure if I understood what happened since my
grasp of the metaphysical comes solely from watching Billy Jack. It's certainly different than what you would expect out of one of these
1950s sci-fi flicks, but I suppose we shouldn't be surprised since this came
from the same guy who wrote What Dreams May Come. Still, it was a good change of pace and in keeping with the whole "real"
vibe of the movie that everything wasn't magically worked out like and things
returned to normal. A very satisfying experience that doesn't really lay on
the whole "atomic radiation is bad" angle like a lot of these movies. There
weren't any stilted scenes where characters bemoan how man has tampered with
some law of nature and that there are things man isn't meant to know. Scott
gets smaller and smaller and
he does what he can to survive. Grant Williams is good at portraying this guy's
shift from Joe Everyman to desperation and finally acceptance of his fate.
It's all very believable and moving. Throw in the good effects, the fun
scenes with him battling everyday creatures with oversized props, and you have a
film that entertains from start to finish.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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