“SMALL HERO, BIG PICTURE”

By Raymond Benson

The decade of the 1950s is the Golden Age of science fiction movies. Prior to that, the genre was mostly ignored on film in favor of horror. Of course, the two genres often overlapped, especially in the 50s, when audiences were worried about nuclear war, UFOs, alien invasions, and the dangers of radioactivity. We got pictures with giant bugs, flying saucers, amphibious creatures, Martian invaders, and mole people. With few exceptions, most of the science fiction fare from the period is godawful but usually fun for a drive-in movie experience or late-night “creature feature” material on television.

The exceptions have proven to stand the test of time and are considered classics today—The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), The Thing from Another World (1951), The War of the Worlds (1953), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Forbidden Planet (1956), among others.

The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) is one of these gems. Conceived and written by the great Richard Matheson, the movie was brought to the screen by Jack Arnold, one of the more under-appreciated filmmakers of his day. While Arnold specialized in “creature features” in the fifties (he brought us The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 1954 and Tarantula in ’55, for example), he went on to be a successful hard-working craftsman for dozens of popular television shows in the 60s and 70s.

Matheson wrote the initial story and simultaneously penned a novel (The Shrinking Man) published in 1956. He sold the rights to Universal on the condition that he be hired to write the screenplay. Matheson’s script followed the structure of his novel, which used flashbacks to tell Scott Carey’s story. Arnold and the studio preferred that the story be told linearly, so Richard Alan Simmons got the job to re-write the screenplay as such. Both Matheson and Simmons share screenplay credit, while Matheson receives story credit.

The tale is well-known. Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is in a loving marriage with Louise (Randy Stuart). One day they are out on a boat. While Louise is below deck, a strange mist envelops Scott. As time passes, Scott notices that his clothes no longer fit him—he’s becoming smaller. Doctors are befuddled. Scott shrinks some more. Eventually this affects the marriage and Scott questions his manhood. He becomes a media curiosity, and he continues to diminish in size. Ultimately, he is alone in his house and must first battle the family cat, and later, in a climactic sequence, a tarantula. And still, he continues to grow smaller…

The Incredible Shrinking Man is one of the most thoughtful, mind-bending, and existential science fiction films ever made—and it was certainly a milestone of the period. Its cosmic ending, which studio executives wanted to change to a happier one, was kept intact by director Arnold—and this is what elevates Shrinking Man to a BIG picture.

The visual effects, while crude by today’s standards, were cleverly done in 1956-57. Arnold utilized split screens, rear screen projections, oversized sets and furniture, and trick photography to achieve the illusion of Scott’s condition against an enlarging hostile world around him. As Arnold states in a wonderful vintage 1983 interview that is a supplement accompanying the film, the secret to this and all the director’s work was “preparation.” He was a believer in storyboards, and he created these to fully imagine the picture prior to shooting a frame of film. Much like the outline some authors pen prior to drafting a novel, Arnold’s storyboards allowed him to try out different ideas and erase them if they didn’t work.

The Criterion Collection presents an outstanding package for Shrinking Man. The film is a 4K digital restoration that looks amazingly fresh. It comes with an uncompressed monaural soundtrack. There is an optional and informative audio commentary by genre-film historian Tom Weaver and horror-music expert David Schecter.

Supplements abound. A new featurette on the film’s visual effects hosted by FX experts Craig Barron and Ben Burtt is a lot of fun. A very entertaining conversation about the film between filmmaker Joe Dante and comedian/writer Dana Gould is fabulous. A remembrance on the film with Richard Christian Matheson (Richard Matheson’s son) is also superb. Of particular interest to film buffs might be the previously mentioned footage from 1983 of Jack Arnold interviewed about the film. Also of great significance is a “director’s cut” of a 2021 documentary about Arnold, Auteur on the Campus: Jack Arnold at Universal. And if all that weren’t enough, we get two 8mm home video short presentations of the film that circulated in the 1960s, a feature on missing musical cues, a vintage teaser narrated by none other than Orson Welles, and the theatrical trailer. The booklet contains an essay by critic Geoffrey O’Brien.

The Incredible Shrinking Man is a must-have, buy-today, excellent release from Criterion. For fans of 1950s science fiction, Richard Matheson, Jack Arnold, and giant spiders. Sublime!

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