1957 81 mins. Universal B/W

Scott Carey is enveloped in a radioactive fog one day, and the rest, as they say, is history. This film is one of many of the Atomic Age that conjectured bizarre mutations from atomic fallout, but it was one of the best. What was it about the era of the 1950s that made these films so popular, particularly among kids? We were living in an age of perpetual fear that the weaponry we created would be used against us. It was strange and schizophrenic: on the one hand, we were building fallout shelters and wearing metal dog-tags (so that our remains could be identified in case of a nuclear holocaust) – on the other hand, we were being told that all we needed to do if the bomb dropped was "duck and cover," and we were having a wonderful time drinking Atomic Cocktails, bowling at the Atomic Lanes, necking at the Atomic Drive-In (while we watched such films as Them! and Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) and sipping coffee at The Atomic Café. The watchword of the day was "Atoms for Peace."

It was an era when television was taking over the popularity of the movies, people were staying at home more, and Hollywood needed gimmicks to get people out of their houses to the big screen. One way to do this was to make the big screen bigger – hence the advent of Cinerama (so-named partly because it was an anagram for "American"), Cinemascope, Panavision, Todd-AO, and VistaVision. Another gimmick was to try to lure audiences with special effects that couldn't (yet) be done in the video medium.

Clifford Stine was special effects director for Incredible Shrinking Man. Stine was a respected cinematographer, having shot films as diverse as Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus and Operation Petticoat. Although there is some wonderful process projection work in Incredible Shrinking Man,(the cat looking into the dollhouse, for example), most of the effects were achieved simply by creating over-sized props, and part of the film's charm is its low-budget quality. Still the movie is surprisingly good because of Matheson's literate, thoughtful, and actually pretty existential script, and the image of something being hard to obtain or just out of our reach (which comes up again and again in the film) is a theme we all can identify and sympathize with.

Incredible Shrinking Man marked the third confluence of various strands of talent: director Jack Arnold was one of the pioneers of the resurgence of 3-D movies in the 1950s, particularly with his landmark film, Creature From the Black Lagoon. His work were favorites among the drive-in set. (Ironically, after helping to lure America's youth away from the television and to the drive-in, Arnold ended his career as producer and director of the TV shows Gilligan's Island and To Catch a Thief.) Screenwriter Richard Matheson (who adapted his own story for this film), specialized in novels, screenplays, and teleplays having to do with science fiction and the supernatural. Matheson was a major contributor to The Twilight Zone, and, along with Rod Serling and Charles Beaumont, was responsible for that series' vision and ongoing appeal. He also wrote such classics as The Legend of Hell House and the wonderful time travel romance Bid Time Return. And Music Director Joseph Gershenson had an extraordinary career in the movies, as Music Director for over 140 films in 20 years. Together, the three of them had previously worked on This Island Earth, and (with Clifford Stine helming the special effects) the Ray Bradbury adaptation, It Came From Outer Space.

By Kenn Rabin

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