10 Things We Can Thank Richard Matheson For

7. The Quintessential 50's Sci-Fi B-movie - The Incredible Shrinking Man

What I remember most about The Incredible Shrinking Man is the scene where shrunken Grant Williams, now no more than a half-inch high, does battle with a deadly spider, using his wife€™s sewing pin as a makeshift sword. As a kid, I was enamored with protagonist Scott Carey€™s adventures in the second half of the film, as he had to contend with the perils of being smaller than your average action figure. The truth is, though, that Matheson€™s clever story€”and this adaptation of it€”hits some of its most interesting ideas early on. Most atom age films dealt with giant creatures smacked by radiation or alien invaders encroaching on planet Earth, but this one casts its gaze towards a more isolated, human perspective. For ISM, Matheson looks inward instead of outward, taking inventory of how this new and changing era would affect the modern man himself. Sure, there€™s a mysterious, likely irradiated cloud, that seemingly strikes the change in Scott that makes him shrink, but on the other hand he may be diminishing simply because the world around him has started to expand, while his necessity in it has started to recede. Scenes where the small man must contend with the fact that his wife€™s love might not be enough if his usefulness in her life has ceased is illuminating in a way most other movies of the time were not. Then, there€™s the final, powerful scene where the man must contend with his relatively microscopic status in light of the entire universe. There are surely other great and worthy sci-fi films from this era€”I personally prefer Robert Wise€™s The Day the Earth Stood Still and Ishiro Honda€™s Gojira€”but it is this one, more than the rest, that encapsulates the anxieties and stresses of the time period, especially as far as the working class male was concerned. In a creepy side note, it€™s probably also Matheson who€™s indirectly responsible for that inexplicable niche of €˜shrinking guy/giant women€™ fetishists whose bizarre computer-rendered art litters the internet.