Movie Reviews by Edwin Jahiel

INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957)

Directed by Jack Arnold. Written by Richard Matheson from his own novel. While on a pleasure boat with his wife, a man is briefly exposed to an ominous nuclear cloud . Soon after he starts shrinking gradually, reaching a point where he has to fight (with a pin) a spider. Excellent special efects, most of them basically simple -- except for animating the spider. Very good , sober first-person narration, ending in touching metaphysical conclusion. Film is concentrated, without needless bravura or flashes. It has a certain amount of emotion that is seldom present in fantasies. It is also a cautionary tale, well-shown in opening credits where a man's figure gets smaller as an atomic cloud gets larger. You may wonder how neither the wife nor anyone else was affected by the cloud, or how his clothes also shrink, but... .....

Jack Arnold was an actor, then documentarist, then a B-movies director. Some of his films, in 3-D, were semi-classic horror sci-fi , such as "It Came From Outer Space,"" Creature From The Black Lagoon," the so-so "Revenge Of The Creature" in which Clint Eastwood made his debut, (Eastwood has a small part) and "The Incredible Shrinking Man." He worked in many genres, with his best efforts being "The Glass Web" with E.G. Robinson and the classic political satire with Peter Sellers, "The Mouse That Roared." He then went over to TV As director and/or producer of several notable series. (Edwin Jahiel)