'The Incredible Shrinking Man'

Okay, I know The Incredible Shrinking Man is supposed to be a thoughtful movie about one man's place in the universe, or the triumph of commercialism in American society or some such film-school claptrap, but actually it's just kind of dumb.

That said, the movie has some fun special effects and some great scenes. You'll never look at your kid's dollhouse or your old cat Puff in quite the same way again.

Everyman Scott Carey (Grant Williams) is subjected to an overdose of pesticides, followed by a strange mist that dumps radioactive glitter on his chest. A few months later, he notices his pants don't fit and his sleeves are too long...and that's just the beginning.

Our hero goes through batteries of medical tests as he steadily shrinks, and his predicament is demonstrated by the ever-increasing size of his household props. I actually laughed out loud when he answers an oversize telephone receiver -- probably not the reaction the filmmakers were looking for.

Spoiler alert: If you don't want to see just how small little Scotty gets, stop reading now.

When his long-suffering and now relatively gigantic wife accidentally lets the family cat into the house, Scott has to flee his new home in the dollhouse. He winds up in the basement for a primeval battle with a big spider, plundering his wife's sewing kit for weapons. He eventually escapes through the screen window mesh to an unknown future, perhaps at a subatomic level.

Pretty much a B-list bunch. Randy Stuart, as Louise Carey, looks like an actual '50s Barbie doll with her tiny waist, pointy bosom, perfect house-wife hairdo and starched apron. (Her biggest break was the role of "Girl" in All About Eve. Not quite big enough.)

Williams sometimes looks less than tragic, and merely annoyed by his fate. He completely fails to make us feel any sympathy for him, even though he's almost as pretty as his wife. The movie is rounded out with a cast of characters you've seen in all kinds of movies and TV shows but couldn't name to save your soul.

While plenty of critics disagree, I think the only reason to watch this one is for the high cheese factor and the big props, which undoubtedly inspired the old TV series Land of the Giants. Huge pencils! Gigantic spools of thread! Great crunchy globs of cake! The big sets and the enormous furniture are fun, too, but the illusion is difficult to sustain with '50s technology. You find yourself longing for the great effects in Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

As an example of movies inspired by the evils of radioactive fallout, The Incredible Shrinking Man is only middling. Head the other way on the size chart and turn to the giant ants of Them! or the paranoid hero of The Amazing Colossal Man for far more entertaining accidents of the nuclear age.

If you like The Incredible Shrinking Man, you might also like other sci-fi films, such as The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, or War of the Worlds.

Incredible Shrinking Man at a Glance:

Year: 1957, Black and white
Director: Jack Arnold
Running Time: 81 minutes
Studio: Universal