The Incredible Shrinking Man (DVD, 2011)
Scott Carey (Williams), is a businessman who is on vacation with his wife Louise (Stuart) on a boat off the California coast. When Louise goes below deck momentarily, a large, strange cloud on the horizon passes over the craft, leaving a reflective mist on Scott's bare skin. Louise is slightly alarmed when she comes above deck, and the two are puzzled by the phenomena that disappears as quickly as it had it shown up.
However, six months later, Scott notices that his shirt and slacks seem too big and blames it on the laundry service. As this trend continues, he believes he is shrinking and sees his physician, Dr. Bramson (William Schallert) who reassures him that he is in perfect health. Louise becomes concerned when Scott points out that she no longer needs to tiptoe to kiss him.
Over the next few weeks, after several doctor visits, the doctors learn that the mist was radioactive, and that he indeed is shrinking because his body cells are shrinking.
Scott continues to shrink proportionately and his story hits the headlines and he becomes a national curiosity. No longer able to drive or work, his brother, Charlie (Paul Langton) encourages him to make some money off of his story by selling it to the national press. He begins keeping a journal, to be published as a record of his experience. As things continue, Scott feels humiliated and expresses his shame by lashing out at Louise, who is reduced to tears of despair because of their situation.
Then, it seems, an antidote is found for Scott's affliction: it arrests his shrinking when he is 36½ inches tall and weighs just 52 pounds. Despite halting the shrinking, he is told that he will never return to his former size unless a cure is found, and that the antidote will only arrest the shrinking. Still, he tries to become content to remain a three-foot tall adult and accept this prognosis, but in a moment of extreme self-loathing he runs out of the house, his first time being outside since he sold his story.
At a neighborhood coffee shop near a carnival, he meets and becomes friends with a female midget named Clarice (April Kent), who is proportionately his equal, with him being slightly taller. She is appearing in a sideshow and persuades him that life isn't all negative being their size. Inspired, he begins to work on his book again. Two weeks later, during one of Scott's conversations with his new small friend, he suddenly notices he has become even shorter than her, meaning the antidote has stopped working. Totally frustrated, he runs away, ending his brief friendship with Clarice.
After becoming small enough to fit inside a dollhouse, Scott becomes more tyrannical with Louise, simultaneously wanting courage to end what he calls his "wretched existence" while hoping that his doctors can save him. One day when Louise is running an errand, he is attacked by his own cat and gets trapped in his basement. Returning to find a bloody scrap of Scott's clothing, Louise tearfully assumes that her husband has met his end, and his undignified death is announced to the world.
Meanwhile, Scott faces the task of navigating his own basement, which at his current size, is a cavernous, and dangerous world. He battles a hungry spider, his own hunger, and the fear that he may soon shrink down to nothing. Now so small he can escape the basement by walking through a space in a window screen, he accepts his fate and is resigned to the adventure of seeing what awaits him in even smaller realms.Read full review
