THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)

THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)

Tagline: Victim of weird mist! Day by day he shrinks! Science is baffled! Cat becomes monster! Terror at every turn! Deadly spider attacks! Lost in a flood's fury!

(Sci-Fi, Drama, Pondering Existence) [PG]

Note: The home video version of this released in 2006 was rated PG, so that is what I am going with here. The original movie was not given a rating by the MPAA. 

You are getting smaller. I... I don't profess to understand it, Mr. Carey. There is no medical precedent for what's happening to you. I simply know that you're getting smaller. The X-rays prove it beyond any doubt.

Directed by Jack Arnold, one of the greatest talents of the 1950s to hit the director’s chair, this thing was definitely in good hands. It starts off with Scott and Louise taking a boat out on the sea when Louise goes below deck as a mist sweeps over Scott. It doesn’t take long before his clothes stop fitting and Scott realizes he is shrinking. Over time he becomes a national sensation, but that doesn’t fix his emotional outlook as his marriage starts to suffer in spite of having a very supportive wife. At one point Scott shrinks to the level that everyday things become life-threatening. 

First off, I am not as into this movie as I hoped to be. Jack Arnold decides to throw in a few lines at the end of the movie that point out that even the smallest things mean something to God. That’s a fact and I love that little touch, but for the most part, when your main character isn’t someone you can root for, you end up with a bit of a downer of a movie. I was far more bothered by how Scott treats his amazing wife, Louise than I was by anything else going on in this thing. 

A lot of the narration was depressing and even in some brief scenes we get where Scott’s prospects start to look up, it’s got a weird almost infidelity hint to it that I just couldn’t get behind. Where this movie does succeed though is in the groundbreaking effects. For the ’50s this movie is simply outstanding in what we get on screen. The tarantula looks giant, that cat looks giant, and the forced perspectives are genius. There isn’t anything to not like when it comes to cinematic achievement. 

Acting wise I thought everyone was “just okay”. Randy Stuart probably played the character I empathized with the most Louise Carey. She is fine in the role, but there is nothing mind-blowing here. I did not like Grant Williams in this one as Scott Carey. He was far better in THE MONOLITH MONSTERS but he wasn’t stellar in that either. April Kent who plays Clarice Bruce in this is a bright spot at the very least and plays the only character aside from Louise that tried to have a positive outlook from the beginning. Scott does, fortunately, show signs of that, but it’s way late in the movie. It was nice to see Paul Langton as Charlie Carey but even his role is just so-so. He was most famous for films like THE SNOW CREATURE and IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE. 

Overall there are some cool elements to this movie and I realize that at the time this thing was considered groundbreaking. However, when I watch a movie, I have to have something to root for that isn’t the cat or the spider.  Unless the cat was the main character, then I can root for the cat, cats are cool. In this movie, the characters are so annoying when you look at anyone outside of Louise or Clarice that it’s just hard to identify or empathize with them. We do get some pro-God dialog at the end of the movie but it just feels like it’s too little too late to bring the glimmer of hope or resolution this thing really needed. For that reason, I have to give this one a 3 out of 7. 

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY. 

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