Tag Archives: richard matheson

Tonight on Eric’s Insomniac Theater: “The Incredible Shrinking Man” (1957)!

Hey kids — don’t go running through any radioactive mists!  That’s the message of 1957’s “The Incredible Shrinking Man.”  Okay … it’s actually a little more complicated than that.   Grant Williams’ titular doomed protagonist was exposed first to insecticides, and then to the mist a couple of weeks later — so it was sort of a one-two toxic punch.  (I am linking here, by the way, to the Video Detective channel on Youtube for the trailer below.)

This movie rocked my world when I was a first- or second-grader.  It was the sort of thing that aired periodically on weekend television in the early 1980’s.  I’ll never forget the awe I felt … along with confusion at the abstract closing narration.  What did all that mean?  What happens to him next?

I was surprised to learn tonight that this was adapted from a Richard Matheson novel.  (He also wrote this screenplay adaptation.)

It’s … actually pretty good!  It holds up surprisingly well over time.  And the simple special effects are nonetheless effective.  (I’ll bet the props and sets people had a lot of fun designing giant objects to make Williams appear progressively smaller by comparison.)

Fun stuff.



IncredibleShrinkingMan-poster

“A new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.”

And suddenly he thought, I’m the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.

Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces–awe, fear, shrinking horror–and he knew that they were afraid of him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible specter who had left for evidence of his existence the bloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they felt and did not hate them. His right hand tightened on the tiny envelope of pills. So long as the end did not come with violence, so long as it did not have to be a butchery before their eyes.

Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain.

A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.

I am legend.

― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories

 

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