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The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 2:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

I totally agree that the spider scene in this movie is the most terrifying cinematic moment involving an arachnid!

And thanks for calling my attention to fact that my post with the Famous Monsters issue above was an early effort and did not use the method I recently discovered, which involves an embedded link in each jpeg that leads to a much larger, easy-to-read version.

I've corrected that problem, so now everyone can enjoy the improved version of the article in the post above. Very Happy

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
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Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:43 am; edited 1 time in total
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orzel-w
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 19, 2018 5:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

johnnybear wrote:
It's the same wee beastie that was the star of the 1955 movie Tarantula, but here it looks even more nasty as it chases poor old Scott Carey into a matchbox!

As a kid, I wasn't bothered by any monsters bigger than a house. It was only the ones that could fit through a doorway that spooked me.
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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 12:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

That spider was beyond scary though! I'm sure that in real life you'd probably have a coronary if you saw that black hairy beast lunging toward you with it's fangs a drippin'!
JB
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 2:37 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

The scene that ALWAYS creeps me out the most is the one shown below. Poor Scott Cary was under that huge sider, trapped and about to be feel those dripping fangs plunge into his body!

He didn't scream, he didn't cringe in fear, and he didn't freeze with terror. He bravely stabbed his needle-weapon into the monster and kept shoving it deeper while the spider's blood flowed down onto him. The spider slowly collapsed on top of Scott . . . and he wearily crawled out from under it.

Wow. What a scene. Shocked








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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 23, 2018 3:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Agreed, Bud! What a guy! Wink
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 8:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Pow wrote:
This is a very fine movie. Kinda gets lost among the great sf films of the 50s like Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, The Thing from Another World, War Of The Worlds, etc.

I've always wondered what I would have thought of this movie if I'd seen it at a theater or drive-in in 1957. I don't remember when I finally did see it, but it was when I was in my twenties or thirties on a small TV when it aired on TBS, back when it was a UHF channel!

Even though I appreciated the fact that it was a fine movie, one just can't have the same wide-eyed, enthusiastic reaction to a 1950s movie when he sees it in the 1970s as an "old man" of 25.
Crying or Very sad
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~ The Space Children (1958)
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Gord Green
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 2:43 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I DID see this at the drive-in back in the good old 50's..And you're right, it was a great experience. I was especially impressed by the poetic feeling of the ending with the Richard Matheson dialogue.

Great example of the best of the 50's Sci-Fi films.

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johnnybear
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 26, 2019 7:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I can't let my kids see this film until they're a few years older as it would creep them out and give them nightmares I'm sure! Even the wife didn't like the look of it and she's okay with the eight legged beasties!
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sat Oct 26, 2019 9:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

johnnybear wrote:
I can't let my kids see this film until they're a few years older as it would creep them out and give them nightmares I'm sure!

JB, I don't know how old your kids are, but maybe getting creeped out and having a few nightmares is not such a bad thing. Wink

Here's why I say that.

There are posts on this board by members who were adolescents in the 1950s, and they often went to scary movies at neighborhood theaters with their friends. These members have shared fond memories of being so frightened they covered their eyes during the scariest scenes — and yet they obviously relish these experiences in retrospect. Very Happy

I confess that I envy them, because I didn't have a theater in my small home town of College Park, Georgia, and I wasn't allowed to ride the bus with my friends until I was twelve so that we could go to the nearest little theater in the next town, the East Point Theater.



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By that time (1960) the scary 1950s movies had come and gone. Sad

I saw most of the 1950s sci-fi movies at drive-in's with my parents, and they didn't take my younger sister and I to any of the really scary movies.

The All Sci-Fi member who has shared some of the best "movie memories" is Rick. He's posted several really well-written tales from his youth, and I told him once I was going to put them all together and get them published! I even created the cover. Cool



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 4:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Good lord, why didn't I think of this before! Shocked

Scott Carey experienced the same strange phenomenon through a freak accident that the people in Fantastic Voyage did because of a high-tech device which was used to reduce their size and mass!

In both cases, the people were safely reduced in size and mass, with no physical harm to their bodies. The only difference is that Scott Carey shrank slowly, and the people in Fantastic Voyage were reduced more rapidly in two stages.

We don't really know if Scott Carey's condition reversed naturally after a period of time. The movie and the novel suggested that it was an on-going process which couldn't be reversed.

However, in Fantastic Voyage the reduction was temporary, lasting only 60 minutes, after which the people regained their original size and mass without the need of the hi-tech device.

But what if the cause of the reduction in size in both cases was basically the same phenomenon? What if the invention in Fantastic Voyage caused the same effect artificially as the freak accident which shrank Scott Carey?


Thinking Outside the "Plot"!
________________________________

~ A Question for the Members: Could Fantastic Voyage be considered a sequel to The Incredible Shrinking Man because the same scientific principle caused the reduction in size during both events?

~ My Theory: Many scientific principals have been discovered by accident and then developed into astounding technology. The study of birds has led to supersonic aircraft. The invention of the telephone has led to the internet.

The mysterious conditions which combined by accident to cause poor Scott Carey to shrink slowly to microscope size is never explained in the movie — but like all new discoveries in science, it will eventually be understood.

Imagine a sequel to The Incredible Shrinking Man which begins at a hi-tech research facility where the scientists discover the cause of Scott Carey's reduction . . . and a way to reverse it!

A herculean effort is launched to find the missing microscopic man — despite his wife's belief that the family cat ate him. However, an autopsy of the murderous feline found no tiny human remains!

Teams of scientists would descend upon the Carey house and the surrounding property to conduct a careful search, using methods which insured he was NOT crushed by the investigators!

(I'm not sure how they would accomplish this in 1957, but I have complete confidence in American Ingenuity! Cool)

Imagine the scene in which they actually find the microscopic man and carefully transport him back to the super hi-tech lab which is working on the development of a procedure which can restore him to normal — AND safely reduce human beings to microscope size!

One of the applications for this procedure would be the insertion of microscopic medical teams into human beings so these people could perform surgery from inside the patient!




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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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scotpens
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PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 11:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

In his novelization of Fantastic Voyage, Isaac Asimov introduced a vaguely sciencey explanation of how miniaturization could work. It has something to do with manipulating matter from outside the normal space-time continuum, reducing or enlarging physical objects in somewhat the same way we can reduce or enlarge two-dimensional images in our three-dimensional universe.

(Yeah, I didn't buy it either.)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Thanks, Scotspen!

As far as we know, it's just made-up science, although with Asimov it's more likely to be based on legitimate quantum space-time theories. (See, it's easy to talk smart without really understanding it . . . Very Happy)

But Asimov knew that shrinking an object without explaining why it didn't keep its mass was a big no-no, and Scott Carey had the same problem.

So, Asimov just explained it in some way which suggested the shrunken object was smaller in size "relative to the universe around it", but it wasn't heavier than objects of the same size because it was blah blah blah blah . . .

(Okay, that was as far as could go the science babble.) Rolling Eyes

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 15, 2022 9:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Custer wrote:
And [Matheson] later adapted his 1971 short story "Duel" as a screenplay, which was directed by a young Steven Spielberg, getting his career off to a roaring start.

The short story, in Playboy, was shown to Spielberg by his secretary, who apparently read the magazine for the stories . . . unlike most people, who read it for the interviews, yes? Smile

Articles? Interviews? Wait . . . you mean all the text in Playboy wasn't just there to fill the empty areas between the pictures?

Jeez, who knew?
Confused

"Bud, reading expands your horizons! My goodness, you can tell how much I've expanded mine just by looking at me!"

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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:12 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Phantom wrote:
In Matheson's novel, Carey "runs into his new world" and becomes a microbe. In the movie, Carey reaches the point of zero inches, but because the camera can no longer follow him, we are left to speculate on his further adventures and ultimate fate.

Actually, the novel ends with a very specific description of what Scott Carey becomes and what his continued existences will be like. Cool

Far from being a microbe, he's still a human being . . . and he discovers a very interesting sub-microscope dimension!

Here's the entire final chapter of the book.



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 16, 2023 3:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Gord Green wrote:
I first saw this at the drive-in in '57 and was blown away by it. I was also into the books by Ray Bradbury and stories in Weird Science and Weird Fantasy from EC. That led me to Richard Matheson.

Along with Bradbury, he had a very poetic prose style...a real mastery of language and emotion. I think the last monologue was verbatim Matheson.

I have a few fond memories of 50s sci-fi movies seen at drive-in movies myself. Very Happy

If I had a time machine, I'd zip back to the 1950s and take my young self to all the best sci-fi classics that were shown at the Roosevelt Drive-in Thearer!




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