The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) on Netflix
Passed19571h 21mDramaHorrorSci-Fi
A strange mist on a boating vacation leaves Scott Carey shrinking. Months later doctors tie his shrinking to the mist and to a pesticide, and his condition becomes a public spectacle.
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- Netflix3.0/5
- IMDb7.6/1022,364 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes81%
Trailer
Plot summary
On a boating vacation with his wife Louise, Scott Carey is enveloped by a strange mist. Six months afterward his clothes hang loose and he suspects he is shrinking, though his doctor at first dismisses the idea. X-rays confirm it, and a medical research institute traces the change to the mist combined with a pesticide he was later exposed to, which rearranged his molecular structure. Scott tells Louise she is free to leave him; she promises to stay, and his wedding ring slides off his finger. Word of his condition spreads, making him a national curiosity and driving him to keep to his house. Encouraged to sell his account of what is happening to him, he begins a journal of his experiences.
Cast
- Helene Marshallas Nurse
- Charles Perryas Spieler (uncredited)
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Richard Matheson got the idea from a gag in the film Let's Do It Again, in which Ray Milland's character leaves with the wrong hat and it sinks down over his head and ears. He sold Universal the rights on condition that he write the screenplay, his first.
- Dan O'Herlihy was the studio's first choice for Scott Carey, but fresh from an Academy Award nomination for Robinson Crusoe he refused to play another isolated man for fear of typecasting, so Universal handed the part to Grant Williams.
- For the giant water drops in the flooded basement, director Jack Arnold remembered filling condoms with water as a boy, ordered about 100 of them and ran them off a treadmill so they fell in sequence.
- Arnold found black widow spiders too small to film, so tarantulas stood in. The overhead lamps had to be run so hot that 24 of the tarantulas died, and the survivors were steered around the set with little puffs of air.
- The cat attack was staged with an animal trainer who kept about 40 identical cats. Arnold hid food inside the oversized dollhouse so a cat would find its way in, then timed its reactions and directed Grant Williams to match them.
- Grant Williams was hurt again and again: a scratched leg on 22 June, treatment for an eye condition on 29 June, and on 2 July both further eye treatment and blisters and scratches from climbing the sets. Between that and overbright effects shots the film fell four days behind and $25,000 over budget.
SPOILER
Universal wanted a happy ending in which Scott Carey returns to his normal size, and Arnold fought the studio over it. A test screening produced cards complaining that he should have grown again, but Arnold's original ending stayed in the film.- The Incredible Shrinking Man won the very first Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, handed out in 1958.
