The Film Library

Book Vs. Film: The Shrinking Man, Incredible or Just Short?

A continuation/distillation of a recent blog post.

I recently read Richard Matheson's novel The Shrinking Man, and although Matheson is recognizable to anyone who's seen a Twilight Zone episode or watched many classic horror movies, this is the first book of his I'd read. I chose it for two very simple reasons. The Incredible Shrinking Man is one of my all time favorite films(release it on DVD, PLEASE!!), and the cover had a guy being menaced by a giant spider. The adolescent in me is always intrigued by giant spiders.

The movie actually stays pretty close to the book, and the alterations are mainly cosmetic. The book utilizes alternating timeline, juxtaposing Scott Carey's tribulations as he's isolated and trapped in his basement, under an inch in height with earlier days where he was just beginning to shrink and still coexisting with his wife. Eventually these two timelines merge as, near the end of the book, we find out how Scott became trapped in the basement in the first place.The movie makes things much more linear, but still manages to keep most of the events intact.

Jack Arnold(who directed another favorite, The Creature From The Black Lagoon) helmed the film version, and added the hyperbolic Incredible to the title(in all fairness it's unlikely that that was actually Arnold's decision). Aside from some stellar forced perspective and rear projection effects, the movie keeps up a pretty good pace, and keeps the tension on for most of it's running time. The only other notable change in memory comes at the end of the film.

*Pretty Big Spoilers Ahead*

Throughout the novel and movie, Scott Carey operates under the assumption that in 7 days he will cease to exist(his shrinking is very steady, and he has it pinpointed when he will shrink out of existence). A lot of drama is wrenched from his uncertainty as to why he keeps fighting to live, instead of give in and die when he knows the end is so near anyway. On the seventh day he awakes to find himself in a completely alien world with colors and shapes completely unfamiliar to him. He slowly realizes that he's shrunk to the point that he has slipped in between the cracks in most objects, and the book(and film) ends on an oddly optimistic note, with Scott deciding to keep living, and explore the smaller worlds and uncharted forms of life in the universe as he shrinks further and further through reality. 

The book's final coda is 'In Nature there is no zero!' while the movie changes that to become 'to god there is no zero!' A small alteration, to be sure, but it brings with it a pretty notable tonal shift.

*End Spoilers* 

Apparently IMDB has listed a remake in pre-production, which I won't dismiss outright, although I'm not exactly excited to see it. It's being written by the people behind the Madagascar and a few other CG movies, which means we might get an animated version of this film. Certainly the look will be more eye-popping, but it remains to be seen if the new version will be as emotionally satisfying.