For many, this is Jack Arnold's best movie and it probably is. It is the film where everything he'd been working on came to a head and crystalized to a clear point. The book Monster Madness was where I first came upon this film. At first, I was a bit disappointed since there really isn't a monster in the movie but as I read the plot, I realized that this could be a very frightening scenario. I later saw some clips of the movie on an AMC documentary about 1950's sci-fi and was really intrigued by what I was seeing. I finally saw the movie when I bought a DVD collection of Universal's 50's sci-fi flicks when I was twenty. While this movie isn't my personal favorite of Arnold's (again, that's Creature from the Black Lagoon), I do think this has to be his crowning achievement in his filmmaking career.
The story of this film is interesting because it has different phases and sections. It begins with the main character, Robert Scott Carey, enjoying a vacation with his wife Louise. While sunbathing on a small boat in the middle of the ocean, Carey comes into contact with a strange cloud (Louise was below deck at the time, so she wasn't affected). Six months pass without incident but one morning, Carey notices that his clothes don't seem to fit. He visits a doctor, who dismisses his initial fears that he's getting smaller but one night when he kisses his wife and sees that he's not taller than her anymore, he realizes that he's shrinking. Eventually, he becomes too small to drive, has to quit his job, and, desperate for money, has to let the press know about his condition. When he's just three feet tall, the doctors find an antidote to what's causing him to shrink but he's stuck at three feet. He meets up with a small woman who works as a sideshow attraction and she inspires him to accept his fate at being stuck at that height. That's when the antidote stops working and he begins shrinking again, eventually becoming small enough to be seen as food by his pet cat and becomes trapped in the cellar by the cat. Now, with his family believing that he was killed by the cat, he must try to survive in the cellar, as he continues to shrink.
My synopses of movies usually aren't that long and detailed but I felt I had to write that in order to get across the various "chapters" of the film's story. It's an interesting idea when you think about it. At that time, sci-fi movies were all about animals turning into giant monsters after being exposed to radiation so Richard Matheson came up with the idea of it having the opposite effect on humans! (The radiation itself doesn't cause him to shrink, actually. It's the combination of it along with some pesticides he accidentally got sprayed with.) I also find it frightening because of how gradual the man's shrinking is. First his clothes simply seem not to fit, then he notices people he used to be taller than are now of equal height with him, his wedding ring slips off his finger, etc. He eventually becomes like a dwarf and later is small enough to be menaced both by his cat and a spider. When something like this is a slow-burn that builds and builds instead of it being instant, I feel that it's much scarier because you become apprehensive about what's going to happen next.
Grant Williams plays the title character, Robert Scott Carey. This had to be a real challenge for him as an actor because he has so many different ranges of emotions he had to go through in this film. He starts out enjoying his vacation with his loving wife but his world is turned upside down when he begins shrinking. I've felt that the only flaw in his performance is when he discovers that he's shrinking. While he is scared, he's just not as freaked out as I think I would be if that was happening to me. I'm not saying he should be on the floor, kicking his heels but I do think he should play it a bit more scared instead of being a little monotone about it. Other than that, his performance is great throughout. When he's down to just three feet tall, he becomes angry with all the attention given to him by the media and he feels like a freak. He takes it out on his poor wife and while he does apologize, he does realize he's losing her. When he meets the young dwarf woman who works at a circus, she gives him the confidence to accept his being stuck at three feet and for a brief period, he's content. But that doesn't last long when he starts shrinking again.
By the time he's small enough to live inside a dollhouse, he's become very tyrannical towards Louise, yelling at her when she rattles the inside of the dollhouse by simply walking. He also becomes paranoid of her leaving him, asking her where she's going and if she'll be right back. That's when their cat gets into the house and begins chasing him, wanting to make a meal out of him. He ends up trapped in the basement and becomes determined to survive, to conquer this strange new world. At one point, he laughs in hysterics, which then turns to frustrated sobbing when he can't get out through the grating of the basement window. He's a prisoner, as he himself narrates, as he's done throughout the entire film. That's another layer of his performance. He tells us what he was going through emotionally during the entirety of the film, adding to what we were already seeing. His feelings are so complex that I guess we needed this narration to fully understand what was going on, especially the ending, which I'll comment on shortly.
The only other important character in the film is Scott's wife, Louise, played by Randy Stuart. She's a very loving and devoted wife, despite what begins happening to her husband and how he lashes out at her. She's determined to stick with him, no matter what happens. The key moment is when she tells Scott that as long as he has his wedding ring, he still has her. As soon as she gets through saying that, the ring slips off his finger: not so subtle foreshadowing of what will eventually happen. When she believes that Scott has been killed by the cat, she mourns him and becomes very depressed, feeling like he needed her and she wasn't there. She's convinced by Scott's brother to leave the house forever and forget what's happened. It's ironic because when she and Charlie, the brother, go downstairs so she can get one last thing, Scott is literally right under their noses but they can't hear him because he's so small. After that, Louise leaves the house and we never see her again. She never found out that Scott was still alive. (Richard Matheson did write a screenplay for a sequel where Louise begins shrinking but the movie was never made.)
Even though she's only in the movie for a very brief period, I did like Clarie, the dwarfed woman played by April Kent. She's the one who's sympathetic to Scott's problem and does give him some hope for the future. She encourages him to continue writing his book chronicling his shrinking and she says that it's well done. In the original novel, their relationship became romantic but in the movie, it's treated as simply a friendship. It's too bad Scott started shrinking again. If he had stayed at three feet, maybe he could have had a happy life with her.
The very visual design of this movie is quite an accomplishment. It's obvious that they just built ordinary objects and furniture larger than normal to make Williams look small but after a while, you spend so much time with him that you forget about it and totally buy it. The most impressive production design is when Scott becomes trapped in the basement and has to use everything at his disposal to survive: nails and threading needles become weapons, a matchbox becomes a shelter, drops of water from a radiator become a fountain for him, pieces of cheese and cake become a buffet, a match becomes a torch, etc. It's all very well done and totally believable. There are some scenes where the effects are a bit obvious, like an actor being in front of a screen to make something look smaller or gigantic but, on the other hand, there are some scenes, like when the three foot Scott is walking among normal sized people, where I have no clue how they did it. They had to have used a real dwarf for the shots where you can't see Williams' face. That's all I can think of.
While there are no monsters in this movie per se, the family cat and a spider do become monstrous to Scott when he becomes the size of an insect. The aforementioned cat, which had been portrayed as a loving pet with a sweet meow, becomes a very threatening creature when he attacks Scott in the dollhouse, snarling really loud as he does so. The facial expressions that the cat gives as he menaces Scott are quite alarming, even more so when you realize this used to be a cat that loved him. And when Scott becomes trapped in the basement, he has a hungry spider as an enemy. The spider is menacing whenever it appears, always accompanied by a threatening music theme. At one point, it chases Scott into his matchbox shelter and frantically tries to get inside to eat him. Scott realizes that he has to kill the spider because its web is around a piece of cake that he needs for nourishment. The final battle between the two of them is exciting. Scott's initial plan to hook the spider to a thread tied to a pair of scissors and send them both falling off the box when he pushes them goes awry when the thread gets snagged on the way down. The spider is particularly threatening here because it starts growling and roaring as it attacks. You can't help but think of Arnold's Tarantula when you watch this section. Scott eventually kills the spider when it's on top of him by stabbing it with a nail.
The ending of this film is not your typical ending. It's not sad or tragic or even happy but just ambiguous. After killing the spider, Scott is so weak that he collapses and when he wakes up, he's now small enough to slip through the window grating he couldn't get through earlier. According to a soliloquy in his narration which closes the film, he realizes that no longer how tiny he gets, he'll still matter in the scope of the universe and accepts his fate. He's now curious about what lies ahead of him in this vast new world. And with that, the film ends. I had to sum up what I believe the ending means because I'm sure some people would watch the movie and wonder about the ending. From what I can gather, that's what the ending is supposed to mean.
The music for this movie, by the usual team of Irving Getz, Hans Salter, and Herman Stein, is also well done. It starts with an interesting, trumpet solo for the opening credits and ranges from shocking, to sympathetic, and full of wonder. The theme for the spider is very threatening, as it should be. (That theme was reused for Monster on the Campus when the aforementioned monster is finally seen in all of his glory.) My favorite piece of the score is at the end, when he journeys into the vast new universe before him and the music is not somber but full of wonder at the adventure that lies before him.
Undoubtedly, The Incredible Shrinking Man has to be Jack Arnold's greatest work. The acting, writing, and effects are all so well done that it's quite remarkable. It's also a shame because after this film, it seemed like Arnold felt he had done the best he could do with the genre and his last sci-fi flick, while enjoyable, was very typical and didn't come close to being this profound.
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