This film is great! It's my #1 discovery this Halloween season. For the 1950's, the film has great special effects. A man begins to shrink due to being exposed to radiation and has to face challenges and obstacles to survive including being terrorized by a cat and a fight to the death with a tarantula. It also has an interesting ending which I was impressed with. This film is top of the class science fiction with minor horror elements. A whole-hearted recomendation.

Pretty cool!

On the surface of it, The Incredible Shrinking Man looks and sounds like a 1950s B-movie. A basic SF idea, narration from the protagonists, you know the sort of thing. So how did it become some a poignant (and well-made!) existential fable?! Though Creature from the Black Lagoon is Jack Arnold's most famous film, Shrinking Man deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. First off, it takes its absurd premise seriously. In the first act, Scott Carey shrinks very slowly and it's a human story of dealing with a strange illness. Secondly, the effects are impeccable at the larger scale, and pretty damn good at the smaller scale, using rotoscoping and giant props to put Scott in miniaturized action. Third, it actually is exciting to see him try to survive the world of his basement in the later parts of the film, as strong as any survival film set in the macro-world, if a little old-fashioned. Mostly, what dates it is the dang narration, but even that's justified by the ending which uses it to make its point, and it's a bit of a gut punch. When the last few seconds of a movie make its score soar upward.