Incredible

No, not one of the many songs with that name.

This thread was inspired by my re-watching The Incredible Shrinking Man on Svengoolie over the weekend. The movie is based on Richard Matheson’s novel The Shrinking Man, but when they made the movie (which they began doing even before the novel was published) they changed the title to “The Incredible Shrinking Man”, as if the title didn’t have enough oomph without that word. Maybe they thought people would think the film was about a guy who was just very, very shy.
The novel continued to sell under its original title until 1983, when it appeared as "The Incredible Shrinking Man in Britain, and again in 1988. It didn’t get the adjective in the US until the 1995 Tor edition. Obviously, the publishers were taking advantage of the more familiar movie title, even at that late date.

As far as I ca tell, only one movie prior to this had “Incredible” in the title – the 1942 short The Incredible Stranger. But introducing that word into the title of the science fiction movie based on Matheson’s book started a trend.

First, to compete with the success of the Universal B-movie, American International made a film about a man who grew, instead of shrinking. The Amazing Colossal Man came out. They used a different adjective, but they were clearly copying the title and the premise (both size changes are somehow the result of radioactivity, the usual 1950s bugaboo). They hammered home the idea in the following year’s sequel , War of the Colossal Beast (No “Amazing” this time, though. Even though the original Colossal Man was a low-budget quickie, this was even lower budget, as evidenced by the fact that they couldn’t persuade the original leads to star in it.)

But now we got a whole stream of “Incredible” movies, as if the titles would not be compelling enough to lure moviegoers in from their warm living rooms and TVs:

The Incredible Petrified World (1959)
The Incredible Journey (1963)
The Incredible Mr. Limpet (1964)
The Incredibly Strange Creatures who Stopped Living and became Mixed-up Zombies (1964)
The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971)
The Incredible Invasion (1971)
The Incredible Sarah (1976)
The Incredible Hulk (1977)
The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1981)

… and plenty of others in later years. Actually, The Incredible Hulk took its title from the Marvel comic, which started with that title in 1962.

But the trend of superfluous adjectives in titles continued with “Amazing” and “Fantastic” and others.

I have to admit, there were lots of titles with “Amazing” or “Fantastic” in them pre-1957. But it’s hard not to see the influence of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” in “The Amazing Transparent Man” (1960) or “The Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth” (as the 1976 re-release of Arch Oboler’s 1966 3-D science fiction film The Bubble was called. )

I hate to nitpick, because it is an interesting subject, but didn’t we already do this?

(You know it’s an interesting subject because I remember the earlier one.)

Incredible!

I completely forgot about that. It’s incredibly interesting, though.

Amazing.

All of those adjectives were used as the one word titles of Science Fiction pulp mags. I suspect sci-fi films (and most certainly Stan Lee) were attempting to cash in on that association.

At least it’s not as repetitive as The Attack of the the Eye Creatures."

For completist purposes:

The Incredible Sex Revolution (1966) - Another (largely unwatchable) Zugsmith flick.

On a tangentially-related note, Incredible Edibles the toy first came out in 1967.

Okay, then try this – What adjective hasn’t been used in titles.

I thought this would be easy, but I find that a lot of these words have been used multiple times in titles. Sometimes even as a single-word title.

Pointless
Inevitable
Uninspiring
Boring
Incapable
Atrocious
Off-Putting

In fact, the only ones not used in movie titles (although used in TV episodes or pod-casts) were the pair Nauseating and Vomit-inducing.

So if you’re looking to make your film stand out, there are two adjectives you can use.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

…what?

I can’t wait for Pixars new super hero movie, The Incapables.

And it’s sequel, The Inevitables.

Or the prequel, The Indescribables. But I wouldn’t expect very many reviews.

The Inscrutables got confusing reviews. No one understood it.

After the Reign of Terror, there was a youth subculture of Incredibles, who acted out in wild exuberance at their survival (a psychological phenomenon seen again in the roaring twenties and the riots right after VJ Day). One of their affectations was to wear their hair shorn on the back, as had been done to the condemned prior to guillotining.

One of the things I love is that Pixar and/or Brad Bird clearly chose the name “The Incredibles” and the symbol of the stylized “I” so that it stood for the first letter of the group name in as many languages as possible (although not all of them):

Os Incriveis – Brazilian Portuguese
Les Icroyable – French
Los Increibles – Castilian
Els Increibles - Catalan
Izbaviteiji – Croatian
Imelised – Estonian
Les Indestructibles – Eurpean French
The Incredibles - European Portuguese
Ihmeperhe – Finnish
Gli Incredibili – Italian
Los Increibles – Latin American Spanish
Iniemamacni – Polish
Incredibilii – Romanian
Inanilmaz Aile – Turkish

Don’t forget The Ineffables.

And The Litotes…

Eff them.

I have to assume that naming anything The Unreleasable would be asking for trouble.

Especially if you hired Alan Smithee to direct.

Other than Varan, have there been any Unbelievables?