The Incredible Shrinking Man

The Incredible Shrinking Man is a 1957 science fiction film about a man who shrinks due to contact with a radioactive cloud and pesticide.
 * Directed by Jack Arnold (director). Written by Richard Matheson, based on his novel.

Victim of weird mist ! Day by day he shrinks! Science is baffled! Cat becomes monster! Terror at every turn! Deadly attacks! Lost in a flood's fury! Taglines

Scott Carey

 * My prison, almost as far as I could see, a gray friendless area of space and time, and I resolved that as man had dominated the world of the sun, so I would dominate my world.
 * A strange calm possessed me. I thought more clearly than I had ever thought before — as if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light. I recognized that part of my illness was rooted in hunger, and I remembered the food on the shelf, the cake thredded with spider web. I no longer felt hatred for the spider. Like myself it struggled blindly for the means to live.
 * I was continuing to shrink, to become... what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close — the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet — like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God's silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man's own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends in man's conception, not nature's. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!

Dialogue

 * Clarice: Maybe the best way to begin is to start thinking about the future.
 * Scott Carey: A future? In a world of giants?
 * Clarice: Hmm. I've lived them all my life. Oh, Scott, for people like you and me the world can be a wonderful place. The sky is as blue as it is for the giants. The friends are as warm.
 * Scott Carey: I wish I could believe that.
 * Clarice: You've got to believe that, don't you?

Taglines

 * Victim of weird mist ! Day by day he shrinks! Science is baffled! Cat becomes monster! Terror at every turn! Deadly attacks! Lost in a flood's fury!
 * A fascinating adventure into the unknown!
 * The Most Incredible Story Ever!
 * Hour by hour he gets smaller and smaller!
 * Moment by moment the terror mounts!
 * Almost beyond the imagination... A strange adventure into the unknown! [UK theatrical]

Cast

 * Grant Williams — Scott Carey
 * Randy Stuart — Louise Carey
 * April Kent — Clarice
 * Paul Langton — Charlie Carey
 * Billy Curtis — Midget

About The Incredible Shrinking Man

 * I wanted, at the time, to have the story structure follow the book, in which you would go to flashbacks, but they didn't want to do that, and accordingly, I think the first part of the film is the dullest. I tried to write my novel that way originally, interestingly enough, and it didn't work at all. I didn't think it had any interest, so I had to jump right into the main body of the story, and then tell the back story through flashbacks, which is the way I think the film should have been done, but nobody did films that way in those days.
 * Richard Matheson