For the last few years, I have used October to give myself a viewing assignment: a different horror film each day. Now that I have escaped the real life horror of New Zealand’s public service, I intend to write a piece inspired by each film.
My ninth film is Jack Arnold’s The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).
The final major theme I’ve decided to explore this month is 1950s sci-fi and I’m kicking things off with an absolute doozy!
The 1950s have always been one of my favourite decades of cinema for the discrepancy between how dark and messed up the movies could be and America’s squeaky-clean post-war façade. Films noir went out in a blaze of glory (climaxing with one of my favourites, Kiss Me Deadly in 1955), westerns like 3:10 to Yuma (1957) got more morally complex and all the best genre filmmakers moved from Draculas and Frankensteins to science fiction. The Cold War was in full swing and all the white teeth, whiteware and white picket fences in the world couldn’t hide how anxious everyone was that they were about to get nuked.
The Incredible Shrinking Man is a perfect place to start with this theme because of how literally it dramatises the sense of helplessness and emasculation that seeped through so much of the era’s film.
Grant Williams plays Scott Carey: tall, gainfully employed and married to Louise (Randy Stuart). After a freak exposure to a mix of insecticide and radiation, something changes in him. First, he notices his clothes are too big for him. Then he realises he’s lost a couple of inches. Eventually one thing leads to another and he’s in a fight for his life against a housecat.
Over the course of his transformation and numerous voiceovers, Scott frets about what this condition means about him as a man. Will his peers still respect him? Will his wedding ring still fit on his finger? Will he have to start having affairs with increasingly small women? The second half of the film is set entirely in his own basement where his newfound petiteness makes it seem like the surface of an alien planet on which he must fight to survive.
The idea that newfangled chemicals are causing men to become less manly continues to be a common fear among cranks. Whether it’s soy or seed oils or chemtrails, the forces that threatened masculinity 70 years ago have stuck around. Nowadays, you might embrace the paleo diet or go off the grid or find yourself a tradwife. For Scott, he is able to accept his condition once it forces him to return to a more primitive existence.
Every time I’ve heard someone talk about The Incredible Shrinking Man, it’s been in the context of how good the special effects are. For me, the major success of this film is how effective it is as a psychosexual nightmare.