Incredible

[Robot_Arm]

@CalMeacham

This thread was inspired by my re-watching The Incredible Shrinking Man on Svengoolie over the weekend.

I saw that too. I’m still trying to decide if it belongs in the “movies with dismal endings” thread.

@DPRK

Don’t forget The Ineffables.

And it’s sequel, The Untouchables.

Oh, wait…

[CalMeacham]

@Robot_Arm

@CalMeacham

This thread was inspired by my re-watching The Incredible Shrinking Man on Svengoolie over the weekend.

I saw that too. I’m still trying to decide if it belongs in the “movies with dismal endings” thread.

TISM didn’t get a lot of airplay on TV when I was a kid – it wasn’t part of the “Shock!” package of Universal monster films, or one of the schlock American International films, so it didn’t show up on the local channels. But I knew about it through all the pictures from it published in Forrest J. Ackerman’s Famous Monsters of Filmland (which is how I knew about The Island of Lost Souls, too, another non-Shock film)

Sop when it finally showed up on The Late Show one summer evening, it was an event. I stayed up until 1 AM watching it. And was troubled by the ending, I admit. The screenwriter (I don’t know if it was Matheson or the other guy) obviously tried mightily to give Scott an inspiring upbeat speech at the end:

I was continuing to shrink, to become… what? The infinitesimal? What was I? Still a human being? Or was I the man of the future? If there were other bursts of radiation, other clouds drifting across seas and continents, would other beings follow me into this vast new world? So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle. I looked up, as if somehow I would grasp the heavens. The universe, worlds beyond number, God’s silver tapestry spread across the night. And in that moment, I knew the answer to the riddle of the infinite. I had thought in terms of man’s own limited dimension. I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man’s conception, not nature’s. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears melted away. And in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God, there is no zero. I still exist!

… but he was still really small, and getting smaller. I couldn’t shake the feeling that, a minute or two after thinking these thoughts as he escaped into the back yard, he was snatched up by that bird he saw earlier and gulped down. Or fed to its chicks, like Hopper in A Bug’s Life (cited above).

I discussed it with my friends, and they weren’t satisfied either. “So, he’s just walking around, tiny?”

We felt sure that it would be the goop from when he killed the spider that would be the antidote.

[Hypno-Toad]

@Chronos

Eff them.

You can’t. They’re ineffable.

[Just_Asking_Questions]

@CalMeacham

I couldn’t shake the feeling that, a minute or two after thinking these thoughts as he escaped into the back yard, he was snatched up by that bird he saw earlier and gulped down.

When I saw it first, I didn’t know what to think.

Now that I am older, I think he shrank into, effectively, a singularity. Infinitely concentrated consciousness. He became, as he said, infinitely small and infinitely big. He now understands everything.

The movie stopped, but his story continues. He didn’t know what he would do next, but he would think of something.

[Robot_Arm]

@Just_Asking_Questions

When I saw it first, I didn’t know what to think.

Carey falls into the basement and his wife thinks he’s been killed by a cat. During his time in the there, he created a small grappling hook to climb things, and also tied some thread to a pair of scissors to try to kill a spider. At the end, I was wondering if anyone found that evidence and realized he was still alive, somewhere.

For that matter, he should have waited to spring the mousetrap until someone was in the basement to hear it. He could have used that to get their attention, or strike a match.

In an odd coincidence, I saw Vertigo earlier that same day, and Raymond Bailey is in both movies.