Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob
Speaker 1: Lamp and this is Joe McCormick. And today's movie on
Speaker 1: Weird House Cinema is the nineteen fifty seven introspective science
Speaker 1: fiction adventure The Incredible Shrinking Man, directed by Jack Arnold
Speaker 1: and based on a screenplay by Richard Matheson. And man,
Speaker 1: I've got to say this one totally surprised me. This
Speaker 1: is not what I was expecting at all for a
Speaker 1: late fifties shrink movie from the director of Tarantula. I
Speaker 1: was expecting something much sillier and much campier, and instead
Speaker 1: what we got here is in many ways a rather
Speaker 1: thoughtful and fascinating science fiction tale about the search for
Speaker 1: meaning and dignity in the face of absurdity and doom.
Speaker 1: And I suspect that a lot of the intelligence and
Speaker 1: the soul of this movie is sort of there on
Speaker 1: the page, like it comes from the story by Matheson.
Speaker 1: But also the special effects are excellent for the time,
Speaker 1: and most of the performances in this movie are very
Speaker 1: kind of a nuanced and warmly human This was a
Speaker 1: shockingly great film and not at all what I thought
Speaker 1: we were going to get based on the title and
Speaker 1: the premise. Yeah, yeah, I had the same experience with it.
Speaker 1: The only thing I'd ever seen from this film is
Speaker 1: I'd seen a kind of famous sequence from it in
Speaker 1: which a tiny man has been reduced to the size
Speaker 1: of a doll is hunted by his own housecat in
Speaker 1: his living room, and I believe I saw it in
Speaker 1: and it came from Hollywood, that older picture that had
Speaker 1: a lot of trailers and clips and a lot of
Speaker 1: joking and riffing of the material there. M the riffing
Speaker 1: wasn't particularly funny, but in isolation that that sequence was
Speaker 1: amusing and kind of hilarious, and I just figured, yeah,
Speaker 1: the rest of the film would kind of fallow suit.
Speaker 1: And we ended up picking this one up because we
Speaker 1: were actually, I think we're going to watch the amazing
Speaker 1: Colossal Man, right. I went to Video Drum to rent
Speaker 1: it and it's not available on disc anywhere, and which
Speaker 1: is yeah, yeah, yeah, but they said, well, we do
Speaker 1: have the Incredible Shrinking Man, and not only do we
Speaker 1: have it, we have it in this excellent Criterion collection edition.
Speaker 1: So I was like, well, I didn't think this was
Speaker 1: the type of film that really merited that sort of treatment.
Speaker 1: But it looks looks interesting. I love that one sequence.
Speaker 1: Let's check it out, and here we are. Well. This
Speaker 1: is another way I was surprised because I having so,
Speaker 1: I had also seen the cat attack part of the
Speaker 1: movie in isolation, in which it seemed quite funny to me,
Speaker 1: but in context I saw it in a whole new light,
Speaker 1: even though I'd seen the exact same footage before, in
Speaker 1: the context of the plot, I found it a rather
Speaker 1: frightening and effective action set piece. Absolutely, yeah. I mean,
Speaker 1: the effects and this are are great for the day.
Speaker 1: They were ambitious for the day. And you know, you
Speaker 1: can't you can't look back in a film like this
Speaker 1: without seeing a few scenes in the special effects generally speaking,
Speaker 1: and that's the case here. But by and large everything
Speaker 1: looks looks wonderful. And if you take the film in
Speaker 1: its entirety and you let it to do its work
Speaker 1: on you, yeah, everything holds up really well. Another way
Speaker 1: in which I think we have to take it as
Speaker 1: from its time is I did say the film is
Speaker 1: very like thoughtful and introspective, which it is, but a
Speaker 1: lot of that thoughtfulness and introspection comes in the form
Speaker 1: of kind of ponderously delivered uh stentorian narration. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the voiceover narration that like tells you all
Speaker 1: of the main character's inner thoughts about his own search
Speaker 1: for meaning is maybe a bit blustery, and its delivery,
Speaker 1: but nevertheless, like the sentiments expressed in the writing in
Speaker 1: those sections I think are really good. Yeah. A lot
Speaker 1: of it does have to deal with like fifties American masculinity,
Speaker 1: and there are plenty of nineteen fifties pictures that we've
Speaker 1: watched that have that that masculinity of the time period
Speaker 1: prominently featured. But usually it's not self reflective. Usually it's
Speaker 1: not at all analyzing what this is that? What is this? Uh?
Speaker 1: What are these ideas? These fears and expectations that everyone's
Speaker 1: trapped with them? Right? Instead, it's usually just like, here
Speaker 1: is your your jaw line, who's ready to punch the
Speaker 1: alien that stands in for a communist? Yeah? It. As
Speaker 1: I was watching it, I kept thinking a little bit
Speaker 1: about the television series mad Men, and in fact, my
Speaker 1: elevator pitch would be what if the male characters and
Speaker 1: Madmen physically shrunk and were attacked by their own cats
Speaker 1: and household pests. I mean that nails it. The main
Speaker 1: character in this movie is literally an advertising I don't
Speaker 1: know if he's an executive, but he's he works in advertising.
Speaker 1: He's an adolist. Right, three interesting stats just for weird
Speaker 1: house cinema here. This is our second Jack Arnold picture.
Speaker 1: This is our second Richard Mathison screenplay, and it's actually
Speaker 1: our second miniaturization film. We'd previously discussed nineteen forties Doctor Cyclops,
Speaker 1: which Doctor Cyclops also had really excellent special effects for
Speaker 1: the time. That was a great looking movie, though, I
Speaker 1: think this one is a lot more interesting in terms
Speaker 1: of the characters. Yeah, definitely. The other Jack Arnold movie
Speaker 1: was Tarantula, which was not nearly as good as this,
Speaker 1: but was a lot of fun in that camp here direction.
Speaker 1: I was expecting this time. What was the other Mathison movie?
Speaker 1: The other Mathison picture was The Devil Rides Out. It
Speaker 1: was he was adapting someone else's novel, a Wheatly novel. Okay,
Speaker 1: in this picture he adapts his own awful simon I'd
Speaker 1: rather see you dead than dabbling with shrink missed. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and listen to the trailer. Some trailer
Speaker 1: audio here. This one's a lot of fun, and I
Speaker 1: love how this one begins with the incredible shrinking man shrinking.
Speaker 1: You are getting smaller. There's no medical precedent for what's
Speaker 1: happening to you. I simply know that you're getting smaller.
Speaker 1: I want you to stop thinking about us, our marriage.
Speaker 1: Some awful things might happen. So long as you got
Speaker 1: this wedding ring on, you got me. This is awesome.
Speaker 1: Well speaking, I have forty five seconds to tell you
Speaker 1: about something I think you will remember the longest day
Speaker 1: you live. It's about a man named Scott Kerrey. A
Speaker 1: few months ago, he was six feet two inches tall
Speaker 1: and weigh one hundred and ninety pounds. Today he's two
Speaker 1: inches tall and you can hold him in the palm
Speaker 1: of your hand. Now he lives in a world where
Speaker 1: he must stride for his life, a world or a
Speaker 1: friendly housecat is a predatory monster. Incredible because it's almost
Speaker 1: beyond a Magini. Incredible because every hour he gets smaller
Speaker 1: and smallow. Incredible because every month the paramounts. A note
Speaker 1: before we keep going, if you want to watch this
Speaker 1: as well. We watched it on the Excellent Criterion Collection disc,
Speaker 1: which features a great four K digital restoration of the
Speaker 1: film itself and a load of great extras. I didn't
Speaker 1: get to go through all the extras, but I went
Speaker 1: through some of them and there they're pretty great. Highly
Speaker 1: recommend this edition. It's available on DVD and Blu Ray
Speaker 1: rented the Blue from Videodrome. It's also available for digital
Speaker 1: rental on most platforms. All right, well, let's start talking
Speaker 1: a little bit about the people involved here. Some of
Speaker 1: these are people we've covered before, in which case I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try and cover them in just a little a
Speaker 1: little differently than before. But yeah, at the top of
Speaker 1: the picture we have Jack Arnold, the director. He lived
Speaker 1: nineteen twelve through nineteen ninety two. Again, this is our
Speaker 1: second Jack Arnold film, following nineteen fifty fives Tarantula. He
Speaker 1: learned cinematography and filmmaking under Robert J. Flaherty while serving
Speaker 1: in the US military in World War Two, and following
Speaker 1: the war, started the Promotional Films Company with Lee Goldman.
Speaker 1: He directed the nineteen forty eight short Chicken Off Tomorrow.
Speaker 1: This one is riffed on Mystery Sense three thousands. So
Speaker 1: I'd seen this one many times, but I did not
Speaker 1: know until this week. But it was a Jack Arnold production.
Speaker 1: I have never seen this in full, and I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it rift, but I was skipping around in the
Speaker 1: link you sent me, and there are parts where like
Speaker 1: it shows maps and the map se the animated map
Speaker 1: segments reminded me of the World War Two propaganda films
Speaker 1: that Walt Disney made, like Victory through Air Power. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it did. It makes sense given where he
Speaker 1: came out off where he learned his craft, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty he directed the International Ladies Garment Workers Union
Speaker 1: documentary With These Hands, which was nominated for an Oscar.
Speaker 1: This immediately caught my eye because, okay, so this is
Speaker 1: an independent promotional film for the i LGWU, But the
Speaker 1: International Ladies Garment Workers Union is also the subject of
Speaker 1: my long time favorite commercial that appears on many tapes
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars Holiday Special where they sing the
Speaker 1: union song you know, you know the one I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: the one? Yeah, yeah, uh, it's it's great. It's tied
Speaker 1: from my favorite with Tobar. Of course, you know, our
Speaker 1: co worker Annie Reese really wants to come on the
Speaker 1: show and discuss about the Star Wars holiday special this year.
Speaker 1: He has made it known. Oh Annie and I have
Speaker 1: discussed the the International Ladies Garment Workers Union commercial and
Speaker 1: Tobar the telesonic robot a number of times, so we
Speaker 1: can maybe when she does come, we can do a
Speaker 1: full ranking of all the holiday special commercials. Sounds good.
Speaker 1: So anyway, with these hands was was a hit, didn't
Speaker 1: win the Oscar, but was nominated, and this enough, it
Speaker 1: was enough to catch the attention of Universal Studios, so
Speaker 1: they signed Jack Arnold on as one of their directors.
Speaker 1: So I mentioned there's a great there's some great extras
Speaker 1: on that Criterion collection disc and there's a great about
Speaker 1: an hour long bio about Arnold's career. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that they stress in it is that when
Speaker 1: you got hired by a major film studio as a
Speaker 1: director during this period, you were expected to deliver on
Speaker 1: whatever they needed. So a studio like Universal, they had
Speaker 1: to bust out the full menu of films. You know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just the pricey specials. They also had had appetizers.
Speaker 1: You know, they had to have the crowd pleasers, so
Speaker 1: you know, they had their prestige titles all the way
Speaker 1: down to the genre dregs, and certainly in this time
Speaker 1: that's where you would find your science fiction. So if
Speaker 1: you are a studio employeed director like Jack Arnold at
Speaker 1: this time, you're probably not doing a lot of what
Speaker 1: many people probably imagine director is doing today, which is
Speaker 1: like striking out on their own with like a script
Speaker 1: that they're really excited about and then finding funding for
Speaker 1: that and putting together a production. It's a lot more
Speaker 1: kind of like work for hire, like studio says, here's
Speaker 1: the movie you're making. Yeah. Yeah, they might assigned you
Speaker 1: a western, and a horror, a sci fi film, you
Speaker 1: name it, and it was up to you to make
Speaker 1: it work and deliver. I guess this was reference to
Speaker 1: a good bit in the Collen Brothers film the titles
Speaker 1: alluding me at the moment wrestling pictures. Oh, Barton Fink.
Speaker 1: Barton Fink. Yes, he was a writer, but he was
Speaker 1: very much in the in the studio system and was
Speaker 1: expected to deliver what they needed. He was going to
Speaker 1: write for Wallace Beery or something. Yeah. So Arnold comes
Speaker 1: aboard their universal and the first thing they give him
Speaker 1: his nineteen fifty threes Girls in the Night. This is
Speaker 1: a troubled youth picture with with fittingly aged youths, you
Speaker 1: know that are clearly like in their their thirties or something.
Speaker 1: But he apparently did well with it and he was
Speaker 1: handed it came from Outer Space, which ultimately came out
Speaker 1: the same year. Now I haven't seen it came from
Speaker 1: outer Space, but the way they were discussing it in
Speaker 1: this extra made it sound like something we might want
Speaker 1: to check out sometime, because it was based on a
Speaker 1: story treatment from Ray Bradberry, and it was pretty ambitious
Speaker 1: and ahead of its time in many ways. So it's
Speaker 1: one of these films where the aliens are not villainous
Speaker 1: but merely just difficult to understand. And also this is
Speaker 1: pretty crazy too. You were actually never meant to see
Speaker 1: the aliens. And this is the way they initially shot
Speaker 1: the picture and approached the picture. It wasn't until the
Speaker 1: studio basically had some time to think about this and
Speaker 1: they're like, look, we can't put nothing on a poster.
Speaker 1: We need to put a monster on the poster. This
Speaker 1: is a monster movie, Gosh darnett. So they ended up
Speaker 1: having to compromise and actually came up with like a
Speaker 1: pretty interesting looking creature to fit in there. And still
Speaker 1: that even though they had to compromise, the results were
Speaker 1: supposed to be pretty good. Oh, I would be absolutely
Speaker 1: game to talk about this one. So that film was
Speaker 1: a hit, and for a long stretch it kind of
Speaker 1: cemented Arnold's place as their sci fi guy, you know,
Speaker 1: and this was a solid position even though you're further
Speaker 1: down the ranks in fifties Hollywood. His follow up, certainly,
Speaker 1: when we look back on Jack Arnold's pictures like this
Speaker 1: is maybe the one that made the biggest impact on
Speaker 1: popular culture nineteen fifty four's Creature from the Black Lagoon,
Speaker 1: the Creature from which, of course becomes one of the
Speaker 1: pantheon of universal monsters, the big ones you know about,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, and it really just strikes through to the
Speaker 1: public horror consciousness, becomes this enduring pop culture figure and
Speaker 1: was a huge hit at the time, so huge that
Speaker 1: it actually inspired a sequel, which wasn't like the normal
Speaker 1: like nowadays we just think, you know, that's what you
Speaker 1: assume is going to happen. If there's not a sequel,
Speaker 1: then I guess the first one wasn't successful, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't a given back in the day, so he ended
Speaker 1: up doing the sequel, which is not as good or
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's hard to really judge the Creature
Speaker 1: films because the first one is it's both mostly about
Speaker 1: just how good that creature suit looks. Yeah, the first
Speaker 1: one I think of as wonderfully atmospheric and having that
Speaker 1: great monster in it. But I've seen it several times
Speaker 1: and I really couldn't tell you anything about the human characters.
Speaker 1: I don't recall at all. Yeah, yeah, I just remember
Speaker 1: the humans come off as jerks, like they come to
Speaker 1: where the creature lives and they start shooting at him
Speaker 1: and stuff. They're like, he's not attacking cities or anything.
Speaker 1: He's just hanging out in a bog or in a
Speaker 1: lake somewhere in the jungle and they come to him. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So it's kind of hard to digest that. And then
Speaker 1: the second one they kind of rehash it, except they
Speaker 1: make the suit look goofy, like the eyes look goofy
Speaker 1: in the second one. Yeah, And then the third one
Speaker 1: is more disturbing, and perhaps there's a lot to talk
Speaker 1: about with the third one, but also it's just it's
Speaker 1: not as fun. It's the first one by any stretch.
Speaker 1: So anyway, it was a huge hit. Arnold comes back
Speaker 1: with Tarantula, which we've talked about on the show, and
Speaker 1: then in nineteen fifty seven he pulls off easily as
Speaker 1: greatest achievement in sci fi cinema, the Incredible Shrinking Man.
Speaker 1: It's like we've been saying, it's really the total package,
Speaker 1: a big budget effects movie for the time and for
Speaker 1: the genre, with a great, intelligent script built on solid performances.
Speaker 1: This wouldn't be his last sci fi film, but outside
Speaker 1: of the sheer popularity of the creature itself from Creature
Speaker 1: from the Black Lagoon, this one is kind of his
Speaker 1: career defining film. Okay, Now, we also talked about how
Speaker 1: this film benefits from some excellent writing by Richard Matheson.
Speaker 1: That's right. Richard Mathison lived nineteen twenty six through twenty thirteen,
Speaker 1: American writer who's in large part I think best remembered
Speaker 1: for his nineteen fifty four novel I Am Legend, But
Speaker 1: for a few different reasons, like some people who just
Speaker 1: are really fond of the book, and I've loved the book,
Speaker 1: haven't read it in many years, but I read it
Speaker 1: a couple of times and loved it. But of course
Speaker 1: it became the basis for I think three different film
Speaker 1: adaptation sixty four is The Last Man on Earth starring
Speaker 1: Vincent Price, nineteen seventy ones, The Omega Man starring Chuck Heston,
Speaker 1: and then two thousand and sevens I Am Legend starring
Speaker 1: Will Smith, each one a very distinct, very said in
Speaker 1: its time adaptation of the source material. I got an idea,
Speaker 1: someday we should do three weeks in a row where
Speaker 1: we do all three of these movies. It could be fun,
Speaker 1: it could be we could learn a lot about ourselves.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah. But it was wasn't a one trick pony.
Speaker 1: He also wrote the excellent Haunted House novel hell House,
Speaker 1: the thriller Duel, The Shrinking Man. All of these were
Speaker 1: adapted into films A Duel by young Steven Spielberg. Some
Speaker 1: other books he had to adapted included What Dreams May
Speaker 1: Come and A Stir of Echoes. So in this case,
Speaker 1: he wrote a screenplay for this movie based on the
Speaker 1: novel he had published just the previous year. I think, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: it was still hot. It's still hot. Yeah. He also
Speaker 1: wrote a lot of TV, including sixteen episodes the original
Speaker 1: Twilight Zone, including such episodes as Nightmare at twenty thousand Feet.
Speaker 1: He also wrote for such shows as Night Gallery, The
Speaker 1: Original Star Trek, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, and Thriller. So
Speaker 1: as as we've been discussing an Incredible Shrinking Man based
Speaker 1: on The Shrinking Man the novel, and yeah, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's not just about the fantas pastic scenario of gradual miniaturization,
Speaker 1: but it is this kind of analysis and rumination on
Speaker 1: masculine ideals in middle class America of the time. The
Speaker 1: book and this movie would also serve as inspiration for
Speaker 1: The Incredible Shrinking Woman in nineteen eighty one that was
Speaker 1: scripted by Jane Wagner, and I believe that was directed
Speaker 1: by Joel Schumacher. Oh okay, I personally haven't seen it,
Speaker 1: but I hear it's good and it's a great idea,
Speaker 1: you know, to take this older movie that is all
Speaker 1: about like masculine miniaturization and what does that mean if
Speaker 1: you approach it from a feminine perspective. Oh, I just
Speaker 1: looked up. Is Lily Tomlin this character? She's our shrinker, Yeah,
Speaker 1: our shrunken man in this film, however, playing the character
Speaker 1: Scott Carey is the actor Grant Williams, who of nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty one through nineteen eighty five. Williams was a versatile
Speaker 1: American actor of stage, TV, and screen. It noted in
Speaker 1: the Criterion Collection edition that his casting in this film
Speaker 1: was very much that of an ascendant talent who could
Speaker 1: play a relatable character as opposed to what you sometimes
Speaker 1: got in genre films of the day, some sort of
Speaker 1: pure Hollywood actor type who's kind of, you know, square
Speaker 1: jawed guy who's sort of fallen down the ladder of
Speaker 1: success and winds up in your B picture or your
Speaker 1: genre picture. But yeah, Grant, Grant Williams does a really,
Speaker 1: I think a great job and it's very tremendous, a
Speaker 1: very sort of isolated, self reflective kind of performance. This
Speaker 1: guy had a little bit less of the stink of
Speaker 1: Westerns than a lot of fifties sci fi movie protagonists do. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you mean. Like you, you look
Speaker 1: at him and you don't instantly think wins. This guy
Speaker 1: gonna punch somebody. Yeah. So Williams had had smaller roles
Speaker 1: in TV and film before this, but what really made
Speaker 1: him stand out was a bit performance in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six film a Rock Hudson picture titled written on
Speaker 1: the wind. It's I think he's like a gas station
Speaker 1: attendant in it or something. Not a very big part,
Speaker 1: but it made an impact. And Yeah, the incredible Shrinking
Speaker 1: Man is a great showcase for his acting talents and
Speaker 1: allows him to really stand out. He followed this up
Speaker 1: with the lead role in the Monolith Monsters, an interesting
Speaker 1: looking picture from one of the writers of Tarantula, and
Speaker 1: we talked about that a bit in our Tarantula episode,
Speaker 1: though I have not seen it. Yeah, I've eyed Monolith
Speaker 1: Monsters for Weird House before. Yeah, because that one, Like
Speaker 1: the basic idea is, let's do you know a fifties
Speaker 1: monster movie, but the monsters are geology. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a terrible idea. So it's like I have to I
Speaker 1: have to look and see, you know, or it sounds
Speaker 1: like an idea the studio might have stumbled over. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Williams found some success here. Then he moved from Universal
Speaker 1: to Warner Brothers in fifty nine. He did various TV
Speaker 1: and film roles after that. Some of the standouts include
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties The Leech One. This is one that was
Speaker 1: also featured on A Mystery Science Theater. This is the
Speaker 1: one that has a great line from The Leech Woman
Speaker 1: where she says, you will never escape me. You are
Speaker 1: the one in my dreams of blood. Great line. It
Speaker 1: was not supposed to be romantic exactly, but anyway. He
Speaker 1: was also in sixty three s p. Two one oh nine,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one's Brain of Blood in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: is Doomsday Machine. He did fifty episodes of TV's Hawaiian I,
Speaker 1: and he pops up in one episode of the original
Speaker 1: The Outer Limits. He also did one episode of The Munsters.
Speaker 1: Oh is he a boyfriend that Marilyn Munster brings home?
Speaker 1: And then he gets scared and runs away, and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you did it again one of sims. Yes, all right,
Speaker 1: so he's the I mean, he's the centerpiece in this picture.
Speaker 1: Most of your screen time is spent with him. But
Speaker 1: we also have a major character in Louise Carry his
Speaker 1: wife played by Randy Stewart who of nineteen twenty four
Speaker 1: through nineteen ninety six, she was an actor in numerous
Speaker 1: popular movies of the forties and fifties like Late Forties
Speaker 1: and the Fifties, and later a frequent TV player. She
Speaker 1: was a supporting player in Howard Hawks. I was a
Speaker 1: male war bride from nineteen forty nine, All about Eve
Speaker 1: from nineteen fifty and she did a lot of TV
Speaker 1: and westerns leading into The Incredible Shrinking Man, and afterwards
Speaker 1: it was mostly TV westerns and police shows until the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies. Now, there's another female character in this
Speaker 1: that we'll discuss when we get more into the plot.
Speaker 1: This is a character named Clarisse, played by April Kent,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty five through nineteen ninety eight. She
Speaker 1: has only six film credits to her name. She was
Speaker 1: the daughter of noted actor June Havoc who lived nineteen
Speaker 1: twelve through twenty ten, and was niece of the legendary
Speaker 1: burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose League, who lived nineteen eleven through
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy. She's only in a couple of scenes, but
Speaker 1: she's very good. She's kind of the soul of the
Speaker 1: movie in a way. Yeah, Yeah, you're right, Okay. The
Speaker 1: Shrinking Man also has a brother named Charlie. Charlie is
Speaker 1: played by Paul Lankton, who lived nineteen thirteen through nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty TV and film actor who appeared on a couple
Speaker 1: episodes of the Twilight Zones, a nineteen fifty four Yetti
Speaker 1: movie called The Snow Creature, and nineteen fifty eight it
Speaker 1: The Terror from Beyond Space, which I've I've heard great
Speaker 1: things about that one might be wanted to look at
Speaker 1: in the future. This guy is your square job. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he plays just kind of like he's like a business executive.
Speaker 1: I don't remember him being super notable. No, but you
Speaker 1: know who is notable. Oh my god, a feline actor.
Speaker 1: We don't get to talk about feline actors. I'm weird
Speaker 1: health cinema. But the cat plays Butch the cat rng
Speaker 1: not super creative name, Butch also kind of a strange
Speaker 1: name for a cat, it seems to me, I don't
Speaker 1: know why. I don't know. I think Butch could work
Speaker 1: for a rough and tumble tom cat, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: an indoor outdoor cat that shows up bleeding from a
Speaker 1: lot of fights, that sort of thing. But RNG Orang
Speaker 1: is very much the sort of name that, hey, that
Speaker 1: a toddler gives a stuffed cat. Yeah. But Orange, Wow,
Speaker 1: what a presence in this film, and not just in
Speaker 1: the attack scene. There are there's some interesting moments from
Speaker 1: before that that that sort of ride the line between
Speaker 1: cute and ominous, especially because you sort of sense what
Speaker 1: may be coming. They're basically two ways of looking at
Speaker 1: Orange as a as a career actor in Hollywood. Either
Speaker 1: this is one cat, and I tend to maybe I
Speaker 1: want to side with that because that sounds it's it's
Speaker 1: a better story that way. But it's also possible that
Speaker 1: this was more than one cat that was marketed as
Speaker 1: Orange to Hollywood. So I'm probably gonna lean more into
Speaker 1: the idea of this being an individual cat that lived
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty through nineteen sixty seven because Orange had star power.
Speaker 1: Orange was a rare male Marmalade tabby cat owned and
Speaker 1: trained by the famous Hollywood animal handler Franked in Ends.
Speaker 1: Other animals included the dogs of the Binge franchise WHOA Yeah.
Speaker 1: And Orange is a true Hollywood legend and the only
Speaker 1: two time winner of the Patsy Award that's Picture Animal
Speaker 1: Top Star of the Year, which the American Humane Association
Speaker 1: put off. What do you think Orange's a reward was
Speaker 1: when he won this prize? You get like three whole
Speaker 1: cans of tuna to himself, just faced down in the can,
Speaker 1: I would hope. So, so, what pictures was Orange in Well,
Speaker 1: between nineteen fifty one and nineteen sixty five, Orange was
Speaker 1: in Rhubard, which I think is about a capinos, a
Speaker 1: baseball team or something. This Island Earth, Oh, The Incredible
Speaker 1: Shrinking Man, Obviously, The Matchmaker, The Diary of Anne Frank,
Speaker 1: plays a cat that almost gives up Anne Frank's family
Speaker 1: to the Nazis. Oh, No, Visit to a Small Planet,
Speaker 1: Breakfast at Tiffany's Okay, Gidget, The Comedy of Terrors, and
Speaker 1: the Village of the Giants. Oh that's a mister big movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the small screen, he acted in such shows as
Speaker 1: Alfred Presents, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beverly Hillbillies,
Speaker 1: My Favorite Martian, Mission Impossible, and the old Batman TV series.
Speaker 1: Was he a villain on Batman called Orange? I don't know, because,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you just need a cat for a
Speaker 1: small part of the set. Sometimes you need a cat
Speaker 1: to try and eat your hero. So it varies what
Speaker 1: you're going to bring Orange in for. But Orange, you
Speaker 1: got to work with a number of actors, and these
Speaker 1: are actors that he actually shared scenes with. Audrey Hepburn,
Speaker 1: Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lourie amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, all of these actors petted this cat. There's
Speaker 1: there's scenes of like Vincent Price holding Orange, There's a
Speaker 1: there's a you can see screenshots of like Boris Karloff
Speaker 1: pretending to be dead while Orange is on his chest.
Speaker 1: So sometimes he's right up in there. Of all those actors,
Speaker 1: who do you think gives the best pets? M Vincent
Speaker 1: Price right, oh yeah, the Vincent Price belly rubs are superb. Now,
Speaker 1: Orange was apparently not the nicest cat. As is sometimes
Speaker 1: the case with human actors. He often lashed out at
Speaker 1: his co stars. He might bite them or scratch them.
Speaker 1: He might leave the set for no apparent reason, shutting
Speaker 1: down the production, which again some human actors may do
Speaker 1: this from time to time. But he was all Orange. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I can imagine Orangey only communicating with the
Speaker 1: director via post it notes, that sort of thing. But
Speaker 1: he was also considered like the best and I guess
Speaker 1: you're also it's basically, I mean, you're hiring Frank end
Speaker 1: for his animals. And one of the things about Orangey
Speaker 1: is that Orange was not as prone to watering off
Speaker 1: the set cats as many filmmakers have testified too over
Speaker 1: the years are harder to work with than dogs. It's
Speaker 1: harder to convince them to do what you need them
Speaker 1: to do for a given shot or sequence. Orange was
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando filming The Island of Doctor Moreau just basically yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing some extras where the Coen Brothers were
Speaker 1: talking about filming with a cat on what was it,
Speaker 1: the Lowen davi the Lewen Davis movie, the Folksinger movie. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a cat that plays a prominent role in the plot,
Speaker 1: and they were like, it was so hard to shoot
Speaker 1: with this cat. Will never make a film with a
Speaker 1: cat again. Oh that makes sense, But but that kind
Speaker 1: of comes through in the movie because the point of
Speaker 1: the cat is that, like he's trying to keep it
Speaker 1: from getting away. I think, yeah, yeah, all right. Some
Speaker 1: other bit players in this um So Raymond Bailey, who
Speaker 1: live nineteen oh fourth through nineteen eighty plays one of
Speaker 1: two doctors that our hero goes to, our main character
Speaker 1: goes to. Um We've talked about him before because he
Speaker 1: was in Tarantula. He played a character with a him
Speaker 1: of Townsend, and he's probably best remembered for playing mister
Speaker 1: Drysdale on the Beverly Hill Bill. He's from nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: through nineteen seventy one. Oh is this the first doctor
Speaker 1: that the dude goes to? This is the This is
Speaker 1: not the any doctor, This is the other doctor. So
Speaker 1: this might be the later doctor. Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: mister Drysdale, Okay, yeah, later doctor. I seemed Tarantula. I
Speaker 1: don't remember who Townsend was. It's it's hard to remember
Speaker 1: anyone other than our two main characters, the Tarantula and
Speaker 1: Clint Eastwood in that movie. Yeah. Well then of course
Speaker 1: um our scientist Leo G. Carroll with a mutated face. Yes, right,
Speaker 1: they're multiple memorable characters, but Raymond Bailey's not one of them. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think. I think Raymond Bailey played the small town
Speaker 1: doctor in Tarantula who's arguing with John Agar about who
Speaker 1: died of what reason? Yes, I believe so. Yeah. Now
Speaker 1: the other doctor in this is played by William Shallert,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen twenty two through two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: American actor with a very long career stretching from nineteen
Speaker 1: forty seven through twenty fourteen. That's eight decades and three
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty eight TV and film credits on IMDb.
Speaker 1: One time president of the Screen Actors Guild, he also
Speaker 1: played a doct in Joe Dante's Innerspace from nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: which is fun because it's another miniaturization film. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think Dante used him a few different times, like
Speaker 1: he shows up in Gremlins, for example. But other film
Speaker 1: credits include Singing in the Rain and The Heat of
Speaker 1: the Night, Written on the Wind, which we talked about already, them,
Speaker 1: the Forbin Project, Mighty Joe Young, the Man from Planet X,
Speaker 1: The Monolith Monsters, Gog and tobor The Great Oh which
Speaker 1: we covered just just a few months ago. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm just looking at this relationship and thinking, Joe Dante,
Speaker 1: I think, is very fond of making movies that call
Speaker 1: back to movies he saw when he was a kid.
Speaker 1: So I would be surprised if he made a Shrink
Speaker 1: movie that has this guy in it who is in
Speaker 1: another famous Shrink movie from a couple of decades earlier.
Speaker 1: That that can't be an accident. Oh no, there are
Speaker 1: no accidents with casting like that from from Dante. All right. Finally,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the music, this is one of
Speaker 1: those films where there's in the credits, there's no like
Speaker 1: I did you know? Score composed by the credit the
Speaker 1: main trumpet player, but they are like four uncredited names
Speaker 1: on the studio soundtrack when you look it up in
Speaker 1: the databases. Suffice to say that it's a very traditional
Speaker 1: and mel dramatic score for the most part, not the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that I would ever listen to an isolation,
Speaker 1: but it works really well in this film, providing I think,
Speaker 1: a mostly serious musical framework for the visuals. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: thought there were parts here were the musical score was
Speaker 1: more distinctive than most movies of this time. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and so certainly towards the end. Yeah, because like I
Speaker 1: recall thinking with the opening credits that I was like,
Speaker 1: what does this music remind me of? And obviously it
Speaker 1: wasn't this, but I realized it reminded me of Gershwin,
Speaker 1: Like it kind of sounds like the It had this
Speaker 1: blooming trumpet motif that reminded me of Rhapsody in Blue. Oh. Interesting.
Speaker 1: The trumpet soloist who is credited in the credits was
Speaker 1: Ray Anthony born nineteen twenty two, and as of this recording,
Speaker 1: the last surviving member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. All right,
Speaker 1: well you're ready to discuss the plot. Oh, let's get
Speaker 1: into it. So in the opening credits, while this music plays,
Speaker 1: we see a blank white silhouette of a man on
Speaker 1: a black background. Again, there's this horn heavy music playing,
Speaker 1: And I really like the sort of abstract imagery of
Speaker 1: the credits because we start by just zooming toward a jagged,
Speaker 1: irregular white shape in the distance. It's like a black
Speaker 1: background in a white shape, and you're thinking, what is it?
Speaker 1: Is this some kind of like cloud maybe, or is
Speaker 1: it a large crystal? And eventually you realize that it
Speaker 1: is sunlight. You are zooming through a cave to the
Speaker 1: mouth of the cave, out of the dark cave into
Speaker 1: the daylight, and so that growing white object in the
Speaker 1: distance was the mouth of the cave and the light outside.
Speaker 1: And so when we come out we see the ocean.
Speaker 1: There are waves breaking, birds, a boat rocking in the tide,
Speaker 1: and there begins narration. And I'm gonna be a little
Speaker 1: harsh here because overall I think this is a fantastic movie.
Speaker 1: I think it has a really just flat on its
Speaker 1: face opener, not good, not good opening lines. It starts
Speaker 1: with the narration saying, the strange, almost unbelievable story of
Speaker 1: Robert Scott Carey began on a very ordinary summer day.
Speaker 1: I know this story better than anyone because I am
Speaker 1: Robert Scott Carey. Why would you phrase it that way?
Speaker 1: So it's like some kind of reveal, But you're only
Speaker 1: two sentences in. You're not gonna be blowing anybody's mind
Speaker 1: with a twist at this point, Like would people be saying, oh,
Speaker 1: whoa the narrator who just now started talking is also
Speaker 1: the guy he's talking about. Yeah, I mean I Hermann
Speaker 1: Melvil does it right off the bat, right, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: I know what you mean. Yeah, this kind of struck
Speaker 1: me as being maybe something I haven't read the original novel,
Speaker 1: but maybe this is kind of tightly bound to the
Speaker 1: original novel. Yeah, maybe it's better on the page, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So yeah, it's it's it's a great script,
Speaker 1: but this is not a good opener that you could
Speaker 1: have come up with something better anyway. So in the beginning,
Speaker 1: we see a man, presumably Robert Scott Carey from the narration,
Speaker 1: and a woman we find out this is his wife, Louise,
Speaker 1: and they're lounging side by side in the sun on
Speaker 1: the bow of boat. And the situation is they revealed
Speaker 1: they've been married for six years. They are on vacation.
Speaker 1: The boat belongs to Robert Scott Carey's brother. Robert Scott
Speaker 1: carry needs to get beer in him and he yearns
Speaker 1: for Louise to retrieve the beer on his behalf, and
Speaker 1: Louise desireth not to bring him the beer and tells
Speaker 1: him he should fetch his own beer. This was a
Speaker 1: very simple scene, but I thought it was very good,
Speaker 1: very well acted. Yeah, it comes off playful, but it
Speaker 1: also in some ways lays the groundwork for the developments
Speaker 1: in their relationship to come, the problems that will emerge,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, And one other thing,
Speaker 1: And this took me a little bit to break down
Speaker 1: about this scene. But Okay, these two characters are wearing
Speaker 1: bathing suits, you know, nineteen fifties bathing suits that are distinct.
Speaker 1: They would look a little fashioned today, but they're not
Speaker 1: that different from what a couple might wear on a
Speaker 1: boat today. And I, for some reason I thought this
Speaker 1: may this made them feel a little more relatable in
Speaker 1: this scene to modern audiences. Because unlike many other scenes
Speaker 1: in the in the movie, they're not wearing those nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties domestic uniforms. You know, the sort of standard dress
Speaker 1: of a you know, a merried, middle class couple in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties America that you see in every other film. Right,
Speaker 1: leave it to Beaver wearing a coat and tie while
Speaker 1: sitting on the couch at home. Yeah, and they're again,
Speaker 1: they're also being very human and relatable in the scene.
Speaker 1: And they're not because there are plenty of films from
Speaker 1: this time period in which you have people in bathing suits.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the bathing suit, but so many
Speaker 1: of those sequences are people being kept in bathing suits.
Speaker 1: And these characters are being real. Yeah, they're being playful,
Speaker 1: and the relationship is sweet, so like that. They playfully
Speaker 1: argue about this, But eventually Louise is like, Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: get him a beer. I think he promises her something
Speaker 1: and he's gonna make dinner. He's gonna make dinner. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So she goes down into the cabin to get him
Speaker 1: a beer, and as soon as she disappears down below,
Speaker 1: Robert Scott Kerry here witnesses a bizarre site there is
Speaker 1: an ominous white cloud of vapor billowing rapidly in his
Speaker 1: direction over the surface of the water. And this is
Speaker 1: totally unexplained. It's not like one of those scenes in
Speaker 1: a movie where you know, you've heard already a radio
Speaker 1: announcement in the background that says like a cloud of
Speaker 1: vapor escaped from a chemical transport is blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: You have just have no idea what this is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I love how how unexplained it is, because it
Speaker 1: could it almost takes on the feeling of vision or
Speaker 1: se though of course, the context of the film, we
Speaker 1: are to assume this is something that actually does happen
Speaker 1: to him. Yeah, but I like how it the way
Speaker 1: that it is like on the horizon, the way the
Speaker 1: film that the scene is shot too, with we're viewing
Speaker 1: him back turned to the camera, the cloud in the
Speaker 1: distance moving ever closer. It ends up taking on a
Speaker 1: kind of temporal quality to it, you know, like the
Speaker 1: thing that is approaching is not only like an actual
Speaker 1: physical sci fi threat in the scene, but it also
Speaker 1: represents like the uncertainty of the future, the known and
Speaker 1: unknown challenges of the future. It's coming on faster than
Speaker 1: he can react. And he can't see through it to
Speaker 1: what's on the other side. Yeah, so before he really
Speaker 1: has time to understand what's happening, the cloud of vapor
Speaker 1: overtakes the boat and it envelops him and then it
Speaker 1: just blows on by, and so it's it's gone before
Speaker 1: Louise even emerges from down below, but it leaves Scott
Speaker 1: here covered in what looks like glitter. This is probably
Speaker 1: a good time to mention for anyone who's purely listening
Speaker 1: to this and hasn't seen this is a black and
Speaker 1: white film, so the glitter, the glitter. You can still
Speaker 1: laugh at it by all means, but it is at
Speaker 1: least in black and white and not like sparkling purple
Speaker 1: or anything. So we cut from here to six months later,
Speaker 1: and it's a pleasant domestic scene. Louise is at their
Speaker 1: home calling out to a cat to give him some milk.
Speaker 1: This is the first time we meet Orangey or Butch
Speaker 1: in the movie. And as soon as I saw this,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, yeah, everybody here is going to
Speaker 1: recognize a Chekhov's cat in a shrink movie when they
Speaker 1: see it. Yeah, And I think the cat prominently featured
Speaker 1: in promotional material, so I think a lot of the
Speaker 1: original audience saw this coming as well, and actually I
Speaker 1: think the movie in a smart way plays into that
Speaker 1: because instead of trying to keep it secret, like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, there's going to be a big twist that,
Speaker 1: like the cat attacks him, it plays up the fact
Speaker 1: that the cat is going to be a threat, I
Speaker 1: think by in a very subtle way a few times
Speaker 1: after Scott's starts shrinking, having these little moments where like,
Speaker 1: the cat does something cute, but it's photographed in a
Speaker 1: way that could be interpreted as a little bit unnerving. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: so we go into the house and it's, you know,
Speaker 1: the kitchen looks like the I Love Lucy kitchen, the
Speaker 1: old school refrigerator with round edges. It's that kind of
Speaker 1: mid century home. Scott's getting dressed and he's running into
Speaker 1: a problem. It seems like none of his clothes fit anymore.
Speaker 1: They're all too big, and he even thinks Louise might
Speaker 1: have picked up the wrong bag at the dry cleaners.
Speaker 1: And he's eating less than he used to. He has
Speaker 1: one egg for breakfast instead of two. So he goes
Speaker 1: to the doctor to get this checked out, and the
Speaker 1: doctor confirms that he is not only ten pounds lighter
Speaker 1: than he used to be. He measures Scott's height and
Speaker 1: Scott's like, that doesn't make sense. That's several inches shorter
Speaker 1: than I used to be. How's that supposed to happen?
Speaker 1: But this scene was good because the doctor has very
Speaker 1: reasonable things to say, so he attribute it's the weight
Speaker 1: loss distress, and then he doubts that Scott is actually
Speaker 1: getting shorter. He says, you know, like he brings real knowledge.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. He argues that, well,
Speaker 1: maybe your previous height measurements, you know, you only have
Speaker 1: a couple of sources for that. That was a couple
Speaker 1: of physicals over the last many years. Those might have
Speaker 1: been early in the morning when we're actually a bit
Speaker 1: taller than we are later in the day, which is
Speaker 1: true due to compression of the spine from being upright
Speaker 1: throughout the day, generally you lose, you know, some small
Speaker 1: but real amount of height and h and maybe there
Speaker 1: was just errors on top of that, so that seems possible.
Speaker 1: And back home, Scott seems preoccupied after this doctor visit.
Speaker 1: Louise asks him, Hey, what did Charlie, that's referring to
Speaker 1: his brother, What did Charlie, think about your idea for
Speaker 1: a newspaper ad. So Scott, we learn is an ad man.
Speaker 1: What is that? It's not a wheel, it's a carousel
Speaker 1: of shrinking down to the size of an atom. I
Speaker 1: don't know. We'll keep that in mind as we go on.
Speaker 1: But they start putting several lines of evidence together. So
Speaker 1: it's undeniable that he's getting smaller every day because Louise
Speaker 1: is used to have to like stand up on her
Speaker 1: toes to kiss him, and now she doesn't. And this
Speaker 1: kind of foreshadows the way the premise of the movie
Speaker 1: comes as an injury to his sense of manhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and also that it's he's he's thinking he's shorter, just
Speaker 1: in a large part because things are changing, his relationship
Speaker 1: to things are changing. So one of the great things
Speaker 1: about this the way the picture treats this shrinking, which
Speaker 1: again is very much as sci fi miniaturization gimmick. But
Speaker 1: they're always playing at least a little bit with the
Speaker 1: metaphorical nature of this, like what does it mean that
Speaker 1: you are changing in relation to the rest of the world,
Speaker 1: And how many things in the modern life could that
Speaker 1: be compared to? Yeah, the story is rich with metaphors
Speaker 1: in that way. So he eventually he goes back to
Speaker 1: the doctor and it turns out there's no mistaking it.
Speaker 1: They do X rays to confirm that Scott is definitely
Speaker 1: actually shrinking, and the doctor sends him off to a
Speaker 1: special medical research institute in California to discover the cause
Speaker 1: of his condition and hopefully to cure it. They do
Speaker 1: a brazilion, different kinds of tests. Sharn in what I
Speaker 1: thought was a very effective montage. It almost reminded me
Speaker 1: of the freaky, alienating montage of medical tests and the Exorcist. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're doing a number of things. He's describing some of
Speaker 1: them in the narration, but yeah, they were seeing they're
Speaker 1: looking all inside him, They're they're looking at all these
Speaker 1: test results, just trying, mostly in vain, to understand like
Speaker 1: what's happening and what can we do to treat it.
Speaker 1: Eventually they come up with a diagnosis. They figure out
Speaker 1: what's going on. They say, quote, it's a rearrangement of
Speaker 1: the molecular structure of the cells in your body. And
Speaker 1: you know that's a funny phrase when you pull it
Speaker 1: out of context here, But I'm going to give this
Speaker 1: movie a lot of credit. It does a very good
Speaker 1: job of selling its site. Heck babble, yeah, yeah. In
Speaker 1: the scene, you you believe it. In more to the point,
Speaker 1: you can tell that our main character believes and like
Speaker 1: and he's finding comfort in the fact that Okay, they
Speaker 1: figured it out. Now we can move on to the
Speaker 1: next thing. The modern world can fix this. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: they even put together, like what was probably the cause?
Speaker 1: They they think that it was sort of a two
Speaker 1: stage chain of causes. One was that he was recently
Speaker 1: exposed to an insecticide, which he remembers a case of
Speaker 1: like being around past control people spraying. But then before
Speaker 1: that they were like, have you ever been exposed to
Speaker 1: any radioactivity? Because that, in combination with the insecticide did something.
Speaker 1: And then he remembers finally the boat, the mist, the mist,
Speaker 1: and they determine he might just keep shrinking. They don't
Speaker 1: know what to do about it yet, and so there's
Speaker 1: a discussion between Scott and Louise where he becomes quickly
Speaker 1: quite fatalistic about it. You know, this may kill him
Speaker 1: or make him longer than man she married, in which
Speaker 1: case he says, well, there will be limitations on her
Speaker 1: obligations to him. And she poo poos this. She tells
Speaker 1: him she still loves him, but right in the middle
Speaker 1: of the scene, his wedding ring falls off of his
Speaker 1: finger onto the floor of the car. Yeah, that may
Speaker 1: be all over the time, but I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the really fun things about these pictures that there's
Speaker 1: still moments like that that are a little overtly dramatic
Speaker 1: and you can you can laugh at but your laughter
Speaker 1: doesn't doesn't really take you out, you know. Well, there's
Speaker 1: another one that comes up, so we more time passes,
Speaker 1: and there's a scene where we meet Scott's brother, Charlie,
Speaker 1: and you see Charlie and Louise in like a living
Speaker 1: room together and Charlie's just kind of like talking into
Speaker 1: a chair that appears to be empty, and he's saying,
Speaker 1: you know, his business has turned. Things have gone bad
Speaker 1: at the plant. His income has gone so he's running
Speaker 1: out of ways to help support uh, Louise and Scott.
Speaker 1: But he does know of another way to bring in money,
Speaker 1: which is that reporters are offering to pay for the story.
Speaker 1: They've heard the rumors about the rumors of the incredible
Speaker 1: Shrinking Man. So Charlie's like, Hey, what if we just
Speaker 1: take the money and we you know, let you become
Speaker 1: an object of media fixation. And then there's a reveal.
Speaker 1: There's a reverse shot and we see that Charlie has
Speaker 1: been speaking into this chair the whole time, and we
Speaker 1: finally see Scott in the chair. But now he is
Speaker 1: shrunken to the size where like he doesn't you know,
Speaker 1: his head doesn't reach above the cushion and his feet
Speaker 1: don't dangle below the cushions. It seems like he's about
Speaker 1: three feet tall here. Yeah, it's this is a This
Speaker 1: is I guess, our first look at some of these
Speaker 1: fantastic sets they put together to utilize with others, other
Speaker 1: effects methods in order to make it look like he's smaller,
Speaker 1: you know, in this case, it's like a giant chair.
Speaker 1: But but this reveal is also quite funny. It's something
Speaker 1: about the really dramatic music that hits when we see
Speaker 1: him there. Yeah, I mean, I don't know to what
Speaker 1: extent it was to be funny, but like I'm saying,
Speaker 1: you can you can laugh at moments like that in
Speaker 1: the film and it doesn't really detach you from the
Speaker 1: serious nature of the film as well. I agree, I
Speaker 1: don't think it was meant to be funny at all,
Speaker 1: but and it is kind of funny. But I think
Speaker 1: that's just a I don't know, time and film convention thing,
Speaker 1: and the movie still works. Yeah. Now there was another
Speaker 1: thing I was wondering about though, and this is sort
Speaker 1: of getting into the unspoken themes of this movie. A
Speaker 1: lot of what's interesting about it is unspoken but implied.
Speaker 1: The thing is that, you know, Scott doesn't have a
Speaker 1: job anymore, so he's he's having to get support from
Speaker 1: his brother and ultimately support from these you know, these
Speaker 1: media vultures who who want to make a buck off
Speaker 1: his story. But I was thinking, why doesn't Scott have
Speaker 1: a job anymore? They say he works in advertising, and obviously,
Speaker 1: like his shrinking would not interfere with his ability to
Speaker 1: come up with ideas for advertisements, Like he could still
Speaker 1: pitch ideas for you know, magazine spreads about how cigarettes
Speaker 1: are good for you. But I guess maybe it's implying
Speaker 1: that he lost his job because it's something about like
Speaker 1: like embarrassment or fear of how he'd be perceived or
Speaker 1: the way people would treat him. Just the idea that
Speaker 1: like he can't go out to the workplace and be
Speaker 1: seen like this. Yeah, I think, I think to a
Speaker 1: large extent, that's that's part of it, right, Like this
Speaker 1: fear of being ostracized for now being different, for not
Speaker 1: fitting in, for you know, for not fitting the sort
Speaker 1: of template for uh, for what it meant to be
Speaker 1: a man anymore. In that time, because he's he's physically reduced,
Speaker 1: he's literally reduced. On the other hand, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like you, I don't know exactly what his job
Speaker 1: consisted of, but I instantly come back to Madmen, you know,
Speaker 1: and all the various schmoozing and socializing that our various characters,
Speaker 1: professional characters in that show have to do, and he
Speaker 1: just like he can't do it anymore. How's he going
Speaker 1: to go and drink and eat oysters with with with
Speaker 1: other businessmen at lunch if he's now three k tall? Yeah, So,
Speaker 1: faced with no other options, Scott decides, Okay, I will
Speaker 1: become a media sensation, and that's what they do. They
Speaker 1: apparently get some money out of this, but it leads
Speaker 1: to people like reporters and just gawkers gathering outside the
Speaker 1: house hoping to get a glimpse of him and the
Speaker 1: special effects really start to be revealed here, Like Scott
Speaker 1: is shown in an extremely convincing set of the home
Speaker 1: living room where the couch cushions are taller than him
Speaker 1: and the cat comes up to his waist and so forth,
Speaker 1: and it looks great. Yeah, he's not so small that
Speaker 1: the cat will attack him yet, which I don't know
Speaker 1: depending on your experience with your cat at home, listeners,
Speaker 1: he may have a different take on all this. I
Speaker 1: know that I'm a full sized human being and my
Speaker 1: cat attacks my feet on an almost daily daily level.
Speaker 1: It's like daily assaults, daily, unhunted for sport by this
Speaker 1: creature that I feed and care for. So I don't
Speaker 1: think I would have to get much smaller to experience
Speaker 1: worse treatment by my own cat. Well, we'll have to
Speaker 1: compare the movie's depiction of cat feline viciousness to the
Speaker 1: reality that you may have experienced in a little bit here, okay,
Speaker 1: But also in the scene we get the first glimpse
Speaker 1: of Scott's real anguish about what's going on. He's, you know,
Speaker 1: obviously somebody who was going through a medical situation like
Speaker 1: this would be afraid. But Scott is also an important
Speaker 1: aspect of how this works. Is that he's humiliated. He
Speaker 1: feels humiliated by how people see him. Of course, he's
Speaker 1: afraid of what he'll become, and he turns this into anger,
Speaker 1: like he lashes out in anger at Louise for no
Speaker 1: good reason that he does feel remorse about this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and again this is some of the stuff that kind
Speaker 1: of works nicely with what we see of their healthier
Speaker 1: relationship earlier on. You know, there's this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: subtle playful teasing there. But but but at this point, like
Speaker 1: they're they're you know, their relationship is a little more
Speaker 1: out of more than a little bit out of whack
Speaker 1: due to his condition, the way he's handling his condition,
Speaker 1: and the way he's taking it out on her. We
Speaker 1: also learn here that he's writing a book about his experience,
Speaker 1: and this seems to be sort of where the narration,
Speaker 1: the voiceover narration is coming in, Like the uh, it's
Speaker 1: sort of based on the thoughts he's writing in his memoir,
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, and this is where we got it.
Speaker 1: We get you know, all of this um reflective, analytical
Speaker 1: content where he's you know, thinking about his anger, he's
Speaker 1: thinking about the way he's processing everything and beginning to
Speaker 1: tease it apart to the best of visibility. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: through this narration we learned that Scott just wants he
Speaker 1: wants to hide, He wants to get away to somewhere
Speaker 1: where nobody can find him, nobody can know about him. Now,
Speaker 1: the doctors eventually do come up with something. They come
Speaker 1: up with a treatment that they think will have about
Speaker 1: a fifty percent chance of curing him, and they do
Speaker 1: the injection and they run some tests and it seems
Speaker 1: like it works. It does stop the shrinking at least
Speaker 1: for now, though they don't have any guarantee that he
Speaker 1: will recover to his original size, but it seems for
Speaker 1: a while like he's not going to get any smaller
Speaker 1: than he was, which they say is stalled at thirty
Speaker 1: six inches fifty two pounds. And again here there are
Speaker 1: scenes that are what I was talking about earlier with
Speaker 1: the cat scenes where the camera it seems to me,
Speaker 1: kind of meaningfully captures the cat. There's no direct indication
Speaker 1: yet that the cat will be any kind of threat,
Speaker 1: but there are these little cuddles and meows that I
Speaker 1: are perfectly balanced between cute and kind of ominous. Now, ultimately,
Speaker 1: in his search for relief from his hopelessness and his emasculation.
Speaker 1: Scott leaves the house one night. He just like leaves.
Speaker 1: He goes out walking, and of course people stare at
Speaker 1: him as he walks by in the sidewalk, but he
Speaker 1: makes his way to a carnival in town where there
Speaker 1: is a there's a barker advertising the Freak Show, which
Speaker 1: has all the usual performers, and there is like so
Speaker 1: the barker is announcing a dwarf actress named Tiny Tina.
Speaker 1: And watching all of this, it's it's very interesting, like
Speaker 1: Scott has. It's much of it is unspoken, but you
Speaker 1: can tell Scott is having this mix of I think
Speaker 1: self pity and remorse. So he has the self pity
Speaker 1: of realizing that people now would look at him with
Speaker 1: the same dehumanizing lens through which they see the people
Speaker 1: in the Freak Show. But I think it's also implied
Speaker 1: that he realizes, you know, before the radioactive cloud, he
Speaker 1: would have been just like those people in the audience
Speaker 1: looking on the performers, people like Tiny Tina as in
Speaker 1: human curiosities. Yeah, yeah, this whole sequence here and what
Speaker 1: is about to come. I remember thinking this is exactly
Speaker 1: the sort of sequence that might feel like just filler
Speaker 1: in another film about somebody going through some sort of
Speaker 1: a change. In fact, I think I think it has
Speaker 1: essentially been such filler in films, but perhaps inspired by
Speaker 1: this sequence, but it really works here. It feels like
Speaker 1: it is you know, basically, we're getting to kind of
Speaker 1: like the soul of the picture. And speaking of this
Speaker 1: is where we're about to meet the character Clarice. So
Speaker 1: he goes into a nearby cafe across the street from
Speaker 1: the carnival, and he orders a coffee and sits by himself,
Speaker 1: and he is joined at his table by a woman
Speaker 1: named Clarice, who is also a dwarf performer, and they
Speaker 1: have an interesting conversation. She's very very kind and very wise,
Speaker 1: and they talk about what's going on. She realizes who
Speaker 1: he is because his name has been in the news,
Speaker 1: so she understands his situation, and he starts sharing his
Speaker 1: fears and his angst about living the way he is,
Speaker 1: and Clarice advises him to, you know, maybe just start
Speaker 1: by to try to find a way forward just by
Speaker 1: thinking about the future. And there's a part where Scott says,
Speaker 1: what future in a world of giants, and Clarice says
Speaker 1: I've lived with them all my life, and I thought
Speaker 1: this was also a very interesting scene, like seeing people
Speaker 1: of a typical size as as giants, and like the
Speaker 1: turning of the tables this way was interesting because like
Speaker 1: the perspective is the perspective that the only thing potentially
Speaker 1: bothersome about her size would come from the behavior of
Speaker 1: the giants, and she just doesn't really concern herself with
Speaker 1: them and how they behave or what they think. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like they're they're outsized as opposed to just me being downsized.
Speaker 1: And she tells him, you know, the world can still
Speaker 1: be a wonderful place. The sky is as blue as
Speaker 1: it is for the giants, the friends are as warm. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so this meeting with Clarice and her wisdom and
Speaker 1: her kindness that kind of revives Scott, and he he
Speaker 1: comes out of his out of his depression. He throws
Speaker 1: himself back into writing. He becomes deeply absorbed in his memoir. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that lasts for a while until we get to
Speaker 1: a terrible realization, which is he realizes, upon a meeting
Speaker 1: with Clarice that he is actually shrinking once again, that
Speaker 1: the treatment he's been given by the doctors is no longer,
Speaker 1: stalling the progression of his condition. Yeah, this is interesting because, yeah,
Speaker 1: because in that first sequence, it is noticeable that he's
Speaker 1: a little bit taller than herd and and so on
Speaker 1: one level, you're you kind of look at that and
Speaker 1: you think, well, how much of this is kind of
Speaker 1: like his his um the remnants of that that masco
Speaker 1: and ego that like he's able to like build some
Speaker 1: of it up because it's kind of like on some level, Oh,
Speaker 1: finally a woman that I'm I'm taller than so I
Speaker 1: can I can fall into some of that that older
Speaker 1: thinking about mascow and roles in society, and now that's gone.
Speaker 1: Now he's clearly shorter. But then also you can you
Speaker 1: can take it at face value, you can you can
Speaker 1: take it in any additional direction of character, depth or
Speaker 1: metaphor as well. Yeah. Now, once again, a bunch of
Speaker 1: time passes, and so the next time we meet Scott,
Speaker 1: he's living in a dollhouse on the floor in the
Speaker 1: in the home. Oh yeah, this is a great sequence
Speaker 1: because they're in separate parts of the house. And at
Speaker 1: first you don't know that he's gotten that small, yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you don't quite realize, but then they come to
Speaker 1: speak to one another, and Louise just speaking in a
Speaker 1: normal voice, like her voice hurts his ears. It's too loud,
Speaker 1: and he's yelling, And at first I didn't realize. I says,
Speaker 1: he's yelling because he's so small he has to yell
Speaker 1: everything in order for her to hear him. But it
Speaker 1: also reads the other way too, Yes, and he's so
Speaker 1: he reflects upon himself, Like he said, he essentially explains
Speaker 1: that the smaller he got, the more domineering and controlling
Speaker 1: and angry he became at Louise. You know, he felt
Speaker 1: he was no longer really himself. And I thought this
Speaker 1: was really interesting about is showing this kind of you know,
Speaker 1: to to generalize this weird sci fi scenario into reality
Speaker 1: that like fear and a sense of vulnerability creates anger
Speaker 1: and resentment and a desire to control other people. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So it's because like he's so dependent on Louise now,
Speaker 1: he's like he's really controlling of her movements and stuff,
Speaker 1: Like she's you know, wanting to go out to the
Speaker 1: store real quickly and he's like, tell me where you're going,
Speaker 1: you know, when will you be back and that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Yeah, Yeah, and so she goes to the store,
Speaker 1: but something happens. Yeah, the cat comes in. I guess
Speaker 1: the cat has been he's they realize he's too small,
Speaker 1: and the cat lives outside now or is stuck away
Speaker 1: in a room. I don't know how they haven't worked out,
Speaker 1: but he's kept at a safe distance from the cat.
Speaker 1: But the cat has snuck back into the house and
Speaker 1: has been left alone in the house while she is
Speaker 1: at the store. Yeah, and so here's the famous scene
Speaker 1: that we alluded to earlier, the cat attacks scene. I
Speaker 1: think within the context to the rest of the story,
Speaker 1: the scene is really frightening. The effects are very good,
Speaker 1: and the horror plays directly on the themes because the
Speaker 1: attack is not coming from something that was ever originally
Speaker 1: threatening to Scott. The attack is from something that was
Speaker 1: previously harmless but has become threatening because the relationship between
Speaker 1: them has changed. And it kind of reminds me of
Speaker 1: the other scene where they talk about now seeing other
Speaker 1: people as giants. But of course, at least like the
Speaker 1: giants can be spoken to and reasoned with, like the
Speaker 1: cat cannot be spoken to a reasoned with. It just
Speaker 1: no longer even recognizes Scott as human. He's just a small,
Speaker 1: prey animal like any other. Yeah, like the relationship has
Speaker 1: shifted that far that. Yeah, it's just you're not who
Speaker 1: or what you were before. Now you are merely prey.
Speaker 1: And this, of course, this is exactly how it would
Speaker 1: go down with a cat. I think we all realize this,
Speaker 1: even those of us who own cats and love cats.
Speaker 1: If you were this small, your cat would destroy you.
Speaker 1: There's just no way around it. It's like, that's what
Speaker 1: your cat is programmed to do. That's what your cat
Speaker 1: has evolved to do. And you have if you are
Speaker 1: unfortunate enough to magically shrink this small well, you have
Speaker 1: fallen in line with its central hunting programming. In this
Speaker 1: scene we get really the first hint of something that
Speaker 1: will take up most of the rest of the movie,
Speaker 1: which is interesting problem solving relationships between Scott and his environment.
Speaker 1: So when the cat is attacking him, he really has
Speaker 1: no method of self defense, but he comes up with
Speaker 1: something clever. He pulls down on the cord of a
Speaker 1: lamp that's on a table above and manages to get
Speaker 1: it to tip over off the side table and fall down,
Speaker 1: which frightens the cat away. Yeah, and he basically just
Speaker 1: runs for it. Now, the sequence is frightening. I love
Speaker 1: the image where the cat is creeping up on the
Speaker 1: dollhouse originally and then reaches its path through and does
Speaker 1: the bat bat thing with the claw. Um. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't want to criticize Orange's performance and the way that
Speaker 1: Orangey chose to perform this role, and you know, the
Speaker 1: way that Jack Arnold directed it and the way Matheson
Speaker 1: wrote it. But I did find that the cat is
Speaker 1: is hissing and snarling too much. I think any of
Speaker 1: us that have been around cats hunting or pretending to hunt,
Speaker 1: it's a very It's mostly a silent fair. I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes you encounter that that weird chirping they do it
Speaker 1: birds outside the window, that sort of thing. But when
Speaker 1: the hunt is on, there's a silence to the cat.
Speaker 1: You're going to have more of that. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: that kind of butt wiggling thing they do where they're
Speaker 1: getting ready to spring, and we don't see any of
Speaker 1: that from this performance by Orangey. Uh. It's still doesn't
Speaker 1: take away from the sequences at all. But I was
Speaker 1: thinking about Azow's watching it, like, okay, it really would
Speaker 1: go like this, And also he takes a couple of
Speaker 1: swipes from from Butch the cat in the sequence like
Speaker 1: Butch like bloodies him up a good bit. In reality,
Speaker 1: I think if you're that's well, I don't think you
Speaker 1: would have survived this encounter at all. Yeah, No matter
Speaker 1: how clever you were, there's just no denying just how
Speaker 1: brutal a cat that size relative of your own body
Speaker 1: would be. You would just be torn apart. You might
Speaker 1: be played with a little bit, but you would be doomed.
Speaker 1: I totally agree. Yeah, the predator prey relationship I think
Speaker 1: doesn't play out. Something's weird here, though. You could say
Speaker 1: maybe the cat's normal hunting instincts are a little bit
Speaker 1: disrupted because he is somewhat different than I don't know.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know something's going on. Well, I can
Speaker 1: think of one memory I have of a cat just
Speaker 1: hissing at something much smaller than it, and it was
Speaker 1: a cat. It was a cat hissing at a huge
Speaker 1: black spider. M okay, all right, well, maybe maybe it
Speaker 1: does work. I mean cats cats are weird. So I
Speaker 1: mean the cat did not did not hunt the spider.
Speaker 1: It was clearly threatened by it. I guess that's also
Speaker 1: going to connect to something in the movie in a
Speaker 1: minute here. So anyway, Scott escapes to the basement. He
Speaker 1: goes down through the basement door and ends up falling
Speaker 1: a long way into a laundry hamper. And then Louise
Speaker 1: gets home. She finds Butch the cat with like a
Speaker 1: torn piece of Scott's clothing that has blood on it
Speaker 1: and licking blood from his paws, and so she assumes
Speaker 1: that Butch the cat has eaten her husband. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: only one way to interpret the evidence. So now Scott
Speaker 1: is trapped in the basement and Louise doesn't know he's there.
Speaker 1: She thinks he's dead, and he has to try to
Speaker 1: find his way out of the laundry hamper. He has
Speaker 1: to navigate the landscape of giant objects. He has to
Speaker 1: try to find a way to contact Louise and make
Speaker 1: her realize he's still alive, but he can't make it
Speaker 1: up the stairs and she can't hear him call out um.
Speaker 1: So he's just sort of like stuck here trying to
Speaker 1: deal with this the landscape of the basement of the
Speaker 1: house and once again to hear The effects and the
Speaker 1: sets are marvelous. They're excellent at making you feel the
Speaker 1: change in scale as genuine horror and a horror that
Speaker 1: has great, various similitude. I have this sense like this
Speaker 1: is what it would be like to be several inches
Speaker 1: to all trapped in the basement of mid century American house. Yeah. Yeah, again,
Speaker 1: the prop work, the sets are just amazing in this,
Speaker 1: in this whole sequence, and also to black and white.
Speaker 1: The black and white. The film's you know, nicely shot throughout,
Speaker 1: but these basement sequences especially, they end up taking on
Speaker 1: this just like rich uh. You know, the blacks are
Speaker 1: just so much darker and deeper in these sequences. I thought,
Speaker 1: it's just excellent. It's almost it's almost like German expressionism
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah. In the narration, he says, the sellers
Speaker 1: stretched before me like some vast primeval plane, empty of life,
Speaker 1: littered with the relics of a vanished race, no desert island,
Speaker 1: castaway ever faced so bleak a prospect. But he's in
Speaker 1: his house. Yeah yeah, but it's like he's and this
Speaker 1: works in so many levels. You know, he's fallen into
Speaker 1: the underworld. He's fallen into the place you put things
Speaker 1: that have forgotten about, where where things that you forget
Speaker 1: about when they're working are found like the hot water
Speaker 1: heater and so forth. I also found it inner as
Speaker 1: I read that Matheson wrote the novel in large part
Speaker 1: in a seller in a basement and would comment that,
Speaker 1: you know, like he as he was writing it, he
Speaker 1: would just look up and look around him to sort
Speaker 1: of take in the scene as he was writing it,
Speaker 1: and that he thought that the movie matched it perfectly.
Speaker 1: And there's brilliant simplicity to a lot of what follows.
Speaker 1: I mean, for most of the rest of the movie
Speaker 1: is watching our hero problem solving with ordinary objects at
Speaker 1: an alien scale. So he's hungry and he has to
Speaker 1: search for food, and there he looks across and he
Speaker 1: sees something. He realizes it is a mousetrap, and it
Speaker 1: does have cheese on it, but it's a mouse trap.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, And you know exactly what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: He's gonna try and rob that mouse trap, and he's
Speaker 1: problem solving at the mousetrap, but he's also really hungry
Speaker 1: and desperate, and it's the same sort of gimmick like
Speaker 1: this is probably played out more or less than so
Speaker 1: many cartoons over the days. Like I felt like this
Speaker 1: is a basic Tom and Jerry kind of a bit,
Speaker 1: but it really is scary to watch, Like I actually
Speaker 1: cried out a few times as he's like fumbling with
Speaker 1: the cheese and nearly making the trap go off. It's
Speaker 1: it's great. So eventually Scott realizes that there is some
Speaker 1: cake that Louise left on a plate on a shelf
Speaker 1: and if he could just get to that, he could
Speaker 1: eat that. But it's way way high up, so it's
Speaker 1: like a mountain climb basically to get to it, and
Speaker 1: we see all kinds of things happen. I don't want
Speaker 1: to spoil every little detail, but there are you know,
Speaker 1: there's discovery of a sewing kit and a pincushion and
Speaker 1: some pins that can be manipulated to form weapons, and
Speaker 1: a kind of grappling hook. There is there is a
Speaker 1: sequence where you has to cross a gap in a
Speaker 1: wooden crate, jumping from from one thing to another. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and I did want to do one okay, brief monster
Speaker 1: science digression that will be familiar to people who have
Speaker 1: been listening to Weirdhouse Cinema for a while because I
Speaker 1: talked about the same source in our episode on robot jocks.
Speaker 1: But pedantic science note, which, by the way, should not
Speaker 1: take away from your enjoyment of this part of the movie,
Speaker 1: because if you know, like you shouldn't get hung up
Speaker 1: on physical implausibility if it works in the story. But
Speaker 1: I think the reality is if you were only a
Speaker 1: couple of inches tall, falling a great distance would be
Speaker 1: far less of a concern to you, way less of
Speaker 1: a threatening prospect than it is to people with bodies
Speaker 1: of our absolute size. And this is something that is
Speaker 1: discussed in the magnificent JBS Haldane essay from nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: six called on Being the Right Size, And this is
Speaker 1: the essay that explains how essentially there are different regimes
Speaker 1: of physical forces that present threats and problems to an
Speaker 1: organism depending on what its absolute size is. So for
Speaker 1: tiny animals, there actually is not that much of a
Speaker 1: threat due to gravity. Like you know, falling a great
Speaker 1: distance is not going to harm a very small animal
Speaker 1: very much. But there is a much greater threat to
Speaker 1: small animals from the surface tension of water, which is
Speaker 1: a theme that I would like to see explored to
Speaker 1: more horrific ends and shrink movies. I seem to call
Speaker 1: it's been a long time since I watched Tony I
Speaker 1: shrunk the kids. But I think there's a scene in
Speaker 1: that where there are water droplet's following falling from the
Speaker 1: from the sky, maybe like a sprinkler system, and they're
Speaker 1: following like like bombs. Yeah, So to a certain extent
Speaker 1: that it gets into this topic well to explain, okay,
Speaker 1: So Haldane gives this you know, whole thing. The famous
Speaker 1: line is he's talking about animals falling down a thousand
Speaker 1: yard mine shaft. He says, you know, a tiny mouse
Speaker 1: drops down a thousand yard mine shaft, and it might
Speaker 1: get a shock when it's the bottom, but if the
Speaker 1: if the bottom is relatively soft, it will probably be okay.
Speaker 1: But then he says, a rat is killed, a man
Speaker 1: is broken, a horse splashes. For the resistance presented to
Speaker 1: movement by the air is proportional to the surface of
Speaker 1: the moving object. Divide in animal's length, breadth, and height
Speaker 1: each by ten. Its weight is reduced to a thousandth
Speaker 1: but its surface only a hundredth. So the resistance to
Speaker 1: falling in the case of a small animal is relatively
Speaker 1: ten times greater than the driving force. So that's why
Speaker 1: small falling is less of a big deal. But he
Speaker 1: goes on. An insect therefore is not afraid of gravity.
Speaker 1: It can fall without danger, and can cling to the
Speaker 1: ceiling with remarkably little trouble. It can go in for
Speaker 1: elegant and fantastic forms of support, like that of the
Speaker 1: daddy long legs. But there is a force which is
Speaker 1: as formidable to an insect as gravitation to a mammal.
Speaker 1: This is surface tension. A man coming out of a
Speaker 1: bath carries with him a film of water about one
Speaker 1: fiftieth of an inch in thickness. This weighs roughly a pound.
Speaker 1: A wet mouse has to carry about its own weight
Speaker 1: of water. A wet fly has to lift many times
Speaker 1: its own weight, And as everyone knows, a fly, once
Speaker 1: wetted by water or any other liquid, is in a
Speaker 1: very serious position. Indeed, an insect going for a drink
Speaker 1: is in a great danger as a man leaning out
Speaker 1: over a precipice in search of food. If it once
Speaker 1: falls into the grip of the surface tension of the water,
Speaker 1: that is to say, gets wet, it is likely to
Speaker 1: remain so until it drowns. A few insects, such as
Speaker 1: water beetles, contrived to be unwettable, the majority keep well
Speaker 1: away from their drink by means of a long probosis,
Speaker 1: and so this made me think more about it possibly
Speaker 1: more horrifying take on the water heater scene that will
Speaker 1: follow in the movie. Now. I believe this came up
Speaker 1: in our episode on robot Jocks because we were talking
Speaker 1: about how you know, if you had real hundred foot
Speaker 1: tall robots actually slugging it out, they would really really
Speaker 1: need to worry about gravity. I think basically any fall
Speaker 1: would destroy them. Yeah, and the idea of having a
Speaker 1: bipedal one is just even crazier because it just makes
Speaker 1: it more susceptible falls. So if you're out there thinking
Speaker 1: about making your own shrink movie, I want to see
Speaker 1: the truly horrific take on the surface tension of water.
Speaker 1: That is that is implied by Haldane's essay here that
Speaker 1: any drop of water is almost kind of like the blob.
Speaker 1: It's yeah. I I only saw the first of these
Speaker 1: ant Man movies that came out, so I don't know
Speaker 1: if they ever get into any of that, And it
Speaker 1: seems like they're at least more recentably gotten more down
Speaker 1: to like quantum stuff where you're not even and they
Speaker 1: just turn it into like alien worlds and so forth. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I've never seen any of those. The first one was fine.
Speaker 1: I remember the first one was fun anyway. Sorry, But
Speaker 1: to come back to the plot of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
Speaker 1: So Scott finally makes his way up to the cake.
Speaker 1: He achieves some cake, but it is stale once he
Speaker 1: gets to it, and it's sitting right in the shadow
Speaker 1: of a giant spider web. And there's a part where
Speaker 1: he goes up to sort of event great and looks
Speaker 1: out through it to see a bird out in the yard, which,
Speaker 1: of course, to him at this point would be like
Speaker 1: a dinosaur, like a giant t rex. And he looks
Speaker 1: out at the world outside and he becomes sort of
Speaker 1: like he starts laughing, but he's also angry, and he says,
Speaker 1: in narration my prison almost as far as I could see,
Speaker 1: a gray, friendless area of space and time, and I
Speaker 1: resolved that as men had dominated the world of the Sun,
Speaker 1: so I would dominate my world. So he sets about.
Speaker 1: He sets up a shelter for himself in a matchbox. Oh,
Speaker 1: and he has to retreat to it in a in
Speaker 1: a terrifying spider attack Yeah, the spider that lives in
Speaker 1: the web at the top MIxS of the cake is
Speaker 1: clearly played by a tarantula, which of course would not
Speaker 1: be living in that that web, or I'm not even
Speaker 1: sure it would be in this basement. Who knows how
Speaker 1: it's supposedly got there. At any rate, it still looks great,
Speaker 1: great use of a tarantula, a live tarantula and this
Speaker 1: uh and of course it fits because it's the director
Speaker 1: of Tarantula. Do you think he used the same tarantula
Speaker 1: guy from whoever provided tarantulas for Tarantula? I don't know, maybe,
Speaker 1: but I think he did play on some of his
Speaker 1: experience shooting tarantulas because they had certain there are certain
Speaker 1: things they learned about, like you know, what's what variety
Speaker 1: of tarantula you need? You like, you need an animal
Speaker 1: that's big enough and moves appropriately that you can and
Speaker 1: create the special effects around it. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of uh, kind of hokey scenes out there and send
Speaker 1: them out where someone uh fights a quote unquote giant
Speaker 1: animal and force perspective and so forth and split screen.
Speaker 1: But this one's really good. Like this one, they put
Speaker 1: a lot of effort into making it look look look great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so there are some major struggles. In the final
Speaker 1: stretch of the film, he has to do battle with
Speaker 1: the Spider in order to survive. Before that, there's a
Speaker 1: scene of a great flood that comes when the water
Speaker 1: heater bursts um and and in the scene, Louise and
Speaker 1: Charlie they finally do come down to the cellar, which
Speaker 1: is what he'd been waiting on. He was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: when they're here, I can call out to them and
Speaker 1: they'll and they'll get me. But he's too He's too
Speaker 1: small for them to hear or to see. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like he's really passed out of their lives and he
Speaker 1: has to realize it at this point, and there's a
Speaker 1: there is a scary scene with the flood. It doesn't
Speaker 1: quite do the weird scale surface tension thing, but he
Speaker 1: does almost get washed on a drain, which is a
Speaker 1: horrifying prospect. But after surviving the flood, there's a change
Speaker 1: where Scott seems to gain a new kind of clarity
Speaker 1: and strength. He says, quote, a strange calm possessed me.
Speaker 1: I thought more clearly than I ever had before, as
Speaker 1: if my mind were bathed in a brilliant light, I
Speaker 1: recognized that part of my illness was rooted in hunger,
Speaker 1: and I remembered the food on the shelf, the cake
Speaker 1: threaded with spider web. I no longer felt hatred for
Speaker 1: the spider. Like myself, it struggled blindly for the means
Speaker 1: to survive. And so there is ultimately a confrontation with
Speaker 1: the spider that involves some clever use of tools, again
Speaker 1: at the alien scale, and then there is in the
Speaker 1: end a kind of soliloquy. He comes to realize that
Speaker 1: he somehow in like in passing beyond the realm where
Speaker 1: humans can even recognize him and help him anymore, like
Speaker 1: the fact that Louise couldn't even hear him calling out.
Speaker 1: It seems that somehow gives him a new sense of
Speaker 1: meaning in that like by being definitely wholly denied any
Speaker 1: prospect of salvation from the world he knew. It's like
Speaker 1: he can now fully commit to existence on whatever new
Speaker 1: terms come to him, if that makes any sense. Now, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: like he has completely passed out of their world now,
Speaker 1: like he is. They thought him dead, they believed him
Speaker 1: to be dead, and now he kind of realizes that
Speaker 1: that that part of his life is over yeah, and
Speaker 1: whatever he is now it is it's not a different scale,
Speaker 1: it's a different world, but with different possibilities. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to read the entire thing in full, but yeah.
Speaker 1: He ends with giving this kind of speech where he says,
Speaker 1: I was continuing to shrink to become what the infinitesimal?
Speaker 1: What was I still a human being? Or was I
Speaker 1: the man of the future? He says, the unbelievably small
Speaker 1: and unbelievably vast eventually meet like the closing of a
Speaker 1: gigantic circle. And so he comes to feel that by
Speaker 1: shrinking down forever and ever and becoming ever smaller, he's
Speaker 1: also somehow becoming infinite. Yeah. I was not expecting such
Speaker 1: a transcendent and kind of psychedelic ending to this picture,
Speaker 1: but it really almost brought to mind Phase four, which
Speaker 1: has the more overtly psychedelic ending and futuristic far seeing ending.
Speaker 1: And this is a little different, but but also feels
Speaker 1: that Grand feels that expansive, which again ties me this
Speaker 1: idea that he has become so small that he has
Speaker 1: become infinite or is becoming infinite. It has this in
Speaker 1: common with Phase four, that both are like an ending
Speaker 1: where the protagonists will survive in a sense, but they
Speaker 1: are becoming so changed that they can no longer describe
Speaker 1: their experience in language. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh. One of
Speaker 1: the extras on the Criterion collection disc they pointed out
Speaker 1: that in the novel, he basically it's a little more
Speaker 1: of a downer and maybe it's something that works better
Speaker 1: on the page where he's basically like he becomes nothing,
Speaker 1: I have become nothing at the end, and they wanted
Speaker 1: to do something more upbeat for the movie. The studio
Speaker 1: of course submitted an idea. They said, what if it
Speaker 1: gets bigger again and is reunited with his wife and
Speaker 1: of course Jacks conquers all. Yeah. Of course Jack Arnold
Speaker 1: was like, no, we're not doing that. So apparently this
Speaker 1: ending is like the whole you know, the small meats
Speaker 1: big and the closing of the circle and the infinite,
Speaker 1: Like this was what Jack Arnold brought to it for
Speaker 1: the most part, Like this was mostly his idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it has interesting references to God and stuff like
Speaker 1: that that I mean that that kind of came out
Speaker 1: of nowhere because there were previously no religious themes at
Speaker 1: all in the movie. But it also I feel like
Speaker 1: kind of works the only real downside, I would say
Speaker 1: to the ending, which overall is great, is again the
Speaker 1: delivery is a little I don't know, a little speeching
Speaker 1: like I feel like it could have been the narration
Speaker 1: could have been a little more subtle. But the writing
Speaker 1: is excellent. Yeah, and we do see some visualszeg and
Speaker 1: like the arms of the spiral galaxy and so forth,
Speaker 1: as we're talking about the infinite. Yeah, so there are
Speaker 1: some stunning visuals in black and white to back it up.
Speaker 1: But but yeah, I see what you see what you mean. Oh,
Speaker 1: also when in his final when because he has to
Speaker 1: keep changing clothes because he's continually growing smaller in his
Speaker 1: final form, when he's giving this final speech, the clothing
Speaker 1: he's dressed in makes him look like a prophet, you know,
Speaker 1: he looks like a like John the Baptist from one
Speaker 1: of the Bible movies or something. Yeah, and he's just
Speaker 1: just going out there into the unknown, into the into
Speaker 1: a wild and ultimately a world beyond humans because he
Speaker 1: is he has shrunk beyond their scale. And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty tremendous that it ends up on a
Speaker 1: on a great note and you end up just looking
Speaker 1: back on it and being like, wow that that film
Speaker 1: was really a great ride. Yeah, yeah, exactly agree. So
Speaker 1: the Incredible Shrinking Man U two thumbs up both from me,
Speaker 1: both hands thumbs up, the Incredible Shrinking Man. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: a it's a great one. And you know, I think
Speaker 1: the current plan is that we are going to do
Speaker 1: another incredible shrinking movie for next week. Yeah, one that
Speaker 1: will hopefully be still as is intellectually stimulating. Is this picture.
Speaker 1: Next week, we're planning on doing another shrink movie that is,
Speaker 1: from what I understand, a direct rip off of this one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna go ahead and close this one out.
Speaker 1: But first of all, reminds you that, yeah, we're primarily
Speaker 1: a science podcast, with our core episodes of Stuff to
Speaker 1: Your Mind Publishing and the Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: podcast feed. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we do an artifact
Speaker 1: or monster fact short form episode. On Wednesdays, we do
Speaker 1: listenermail on Mondays, and on Fridays, we set aside most
Speaker 1: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film here
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. If you want to see what
Speaker 1: other films we've covered on Weird House Cinema. There are
Speaker 1: a few different ways to do it. You can just
Speaker 1: look back through the podcast feed and do it that way,
Speaker 1: but also if you go to a letterbox dot com
Speaker 1: that's l E T T R B O x D.
Speaker 1: We have a user profile on there, it's called weird
Speaker 1: House and we have a list there of all the
Speaker 1: movies we've covered in order, and I also have some
Speaker 1: links to where you can listen to them on each
Speaker 1: individual listing. It's also a great way to sort of
Speaker 1: visualize what we've done to break it up by decades
Speaker 1: or genre however you want to want to do it.
Speaker 1: And the website, of course, is also a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: I also blog about these episodes at sammutomusic dot com.
Speaker 1: That's just my personal block for this sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Huge thanks to our audio producer J J. Pauseway. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio.
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