[sral]

The Incredible Shrinking Man

This one isn't from my most sickening/disturbing collection but I loved the initial front cover of it as it looked a bit cheesy, so I decided to watch!

It follows the story of a man called Scott Carey, and is narrated as if told by him in a true story fashion. The basic premise is that while he's on a holiday boat with his wife, the boat goes through a strange mist, and over the coming days he slowly notices himself shrinking.

The special effects are really good for its time I think and the story is actually a really bizarre one I've never seen done before. As the man shrinks all the way down to around 4 inches tall, his wife starts to keep him living in A DOLL HOUSE inside his own living room!

All is well until the wife accidentally lets their pet cat into the living room one day and the cat rightfully attacks him with its paw, knocking him to the ground. Scott Carey realises it's no longer safe to remain there, especially with him getting gradually smaller and smaller, as that blow would have killed a lesser man... Good thinking!

There's also an epic fight with a spider early on that drives Scott away from the relative security of the dolls house he lived. Anyway, eventually, Scott needs some food. The food is some piece of bread or cake (I forget!) left on top of a cupboard but perched perilously close to the spiders web. He realises that he needs to get to it quickly - while he has the strength - and that he needs to do it before he shrinks any more and it becomes an even harder task to overcome! So armed with what looks like a safety pin, a piece of wool, and a nail he's found - he sets on his journey, using the safety pin and wool as a makeshift grappling hook to climb up the side of things! That's genius. I love whoever thought of this!

He tempts the spider down by pulling at the string of its web, then there's a short fight to death which ends with Scott puncturing the spiders underbelly with the nail he used. Scott's first idea of despising the spider by attaching the wool to a heavy pair of scissors and hoping it would pull the spider over was brilliant though!

The film ends with Scott finally dissipating into nothing as he shrinks and shrinks over time. His thoughts and fears finally become ones of acceptance and enjoying being one with the world, accepting the fact he's just an infinitesimally small thing that makes up a huge, huge, universe. It's a polarising ending in some ways and I do thoroughly enjoy those, there's no happy ending for the guy, but that may have felt like a copout had they done so. I much prefer it ending the way it does. Very enjoyable film this!