The Incredible Shrinking Man
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The Incredible Shrinking Man is a 1957 science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold and adapted for the screen by Richard Matheson from his novel The Shrinking Man.
Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is contaminated by a radioactive cloud and pesticide, and slowly begins shrinking. When he's three feet tall, he briefly becomes friends with a circus dwarf, but then continues to shrink, eventually being reduced to living in a dollhouse. After nearly being killed by a cat, he winds up trapped in the basement and has to battle a voracious spider, his own hunger, and the fear that he may eventually shrink down to nothing. After defeating the spider, the hero accepts his fate and looks forward to seeing what awaits him in ever smaller realms.
The original book version is slightly different; Scott Carey, and his wife Louise have a five-year-old daughter named Beth. He encounters a drunken pederast when he's 42 inches tall and some teenage toughs when he's three feet tall.
The camera work and effects were considered remarkable and imaginative for their time. The drops of water dripping from the boiler near the end of the film were actually created using water filled condoms; the consumption of large numbers of these raised eyebrows amongst the film company's accountants.
The theme of size-changing was explored in several other movies of this period, including Jack Arnold's earlier Tarantula, in which a synthetic food causes several animals to grow to massive size. The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958) explored the opposite idea of uncontrolled growth. The final permutation (female shrinkage) eventually appeared in 1981 with The Incredible Shrinking Woman, in which Lily Tomlin played the wife of an advertising man; she shrinks as a result of exposure to household products. Currently there are plans for a remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man as a comedy which will revolve around a magician (slated to be Eddie Murphy) who suddenly starts to dwindle and frantically searches for a way to revert back to his previous size.
Other notable films of this genre include Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and Fantastic Voyage.
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