[HorrorScience] The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)

The Incredible Shrinking ManThe Incredible Shrinking Man) is an American film from the 1950s. This means that we are faced with a film that in one way or another will touch on the topic of nuclear energy and its consequences.  There are many films of the time that use it to explain improbable events and justify horrendous mutations that threaten society. Fortunately, this movie focuses that topic in a completely opposite direction, making it much more interesting than it may seem at first.

The story begins when Scott Carey (Grant Williams) and his wife Louise (Randy Stuart) are on a small boat vacation. Everything seems perfect until at one point The ship is hit by a strange fog while our protagonist is on deck., totally exposed to it.

After a few months, Scott begins to notice that he is losing weight and that his clothes are getting bigger and bigger, but neither his wife nor the doctors take him too seriously. Unfortunately for Scott, the process is accelerated, leaving him the height of a child.

At this point, and despite appearing for a dozen medical tests without no result that returns him to his normal height, Scott falls into a strong depression that is amplified by the events, because not only does he lose his job and see himself as useless in his own home, but dozens of journalists stalk him to have a photo of him, which is why he and his wife decide to go live somewhere else.

However, while his wife is not at home, little Scott (who now lives in a dollhouse) will see how his life takes an even more unexpected turn, after being attacked by his own cat, which wounds him superficially and causes him to end up in the basement of the house by accident, so that he finds himself trapped in a new habitat, without food, drink, shelter and with a new enemy to beat.

At that moment, Scott realizes that his way of thinking as a civilized man does not offer him any advantage for survival in his current situation and he will have to demonstrate to what extent he wants to live, at whatever cost, by offering us an intense final part and a conclusion worthy of applause.

Taking into account that our protagonist shrinks and will face dangers larger than him, more than one will think that the most important thing about the film is its special effects, which have aged surprisingly well, which is saying a lot considering that more than 50 years have passed and these types of films did not have a large budget.

However, from my point of view, the most important thing about the film is that manages to credibly show the different mental stages that Scott goes through As he shrinks in size, we can see his initial confusion, his frustration, his resignation and finally his determination in the face of the situation he finds himself in.

Although I do not want to take credit away from the director, I think it is very clear that Much of the credit for this work belongs to the screenwriter, Richard Matheson, who in turn is the author of the novel on which this film is inspired (The Shrinking Man), this is not the only time that he has collaborated in adapting one of his stories, as he was also the screenwriter of Spielberg's first film: Duel (known in Spain as The devil on wheels) and in the 1964 film adaptation of his best-known work: I am Legend.

Some curious facts about the film:

• Matheson considered making a continuation of the story where the protagonist would be Scott's wife, the provisional title was The Fantastic Little Girl.
• In 2009, the American Library of Congress selected this film to preserve it as part of the national cinematographic heritage.
• Joel Schumacher (director of such disastrous films as batman and robin) made his own version of this film in 1981, where the protagonist was a woman. The title? The incredible shrinking woman.