The screen's great existential science fiction film, The Incredible Shrinking Man stars
Grant Williams in the title role. While catching some rays on his brother's yacht, Williams is enveloped by a mysterious dark cloud. Soon after, he discovers that he's getting thinner-and smaller. Despite the assuring attitude of his family doctor (the inevitable
William Schallert), Williams is losing an inch's worth of height with each passing day. It is finally determined that he has developed an "anti-cancer," a byproduct of a new strain of insecticide. By the time he's reached the size of a small boy, Williams has become world-famous. But the phenomenon has adversely affected his personality, turning him into a tyrant, lashing out at the world in general and his faithful wife in particular. An anti-toxin briefly halts the shrinking process, whereupon Williams joins a midget troupe, where he is briefly "accepted" for what he has become. But before long he's shrinking again, becoming so tiny that he is forced to live in a dollhouse. When Williams is attacked and by his pet cat, his wife assumes that he's been killed: in fact, Williams, by now so minuscule that even a garden-variety spider poses a deadly threat to him, is hiding in his cellar. By film's end, Williams is no larger than an atom. Uncertain of what is in store for him, he steps out into the mists, summing up his new-found philosophy: "Smaller than smallest, I meant something too. To God there is no zero. I still exist!" Adapted by
Richard Matheson from his own novel, The Incredible Shrinking Man is enhanced by its superb special effects. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide