After nearly being killed by his own cat, he winds up trapped in a basement and has to battle a voracious spider, his own hunger, and the fear that he may eventually shrink down to nothing. He continues shrinking, and eventually is reduced to living in a dollhouse. During one of Scott's conversations with his new small friend, he suddenly notices he has become even shorter than her, meaning the antidote is not working. Although their relationship is platonic in the film, it becomes romantic in the novel. Still, he seems relatively content to remain at three feet tall, and begins to accept his fate.Īt a circus, he briefly becomes friends with a female midget, who initially is identical in height she is appearing in a side-show and persuades him that life isn't all negative being their size. Despite halting his diminution, 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. Then, it seems, an antidote is found for Scott's affliction: it briefly arrests his shrinking when he is 36½ inches (93 cm) tall and weighs 52 pounds (24 kg). She is reduced to tears of despair at his fate. To make ends meet, he sells his story to the national press.īy this point he feels humiliated and expresses his shame and impotence by lashing out at Louise. He also has to give up his job and stop driving. His story hits the headlines and he becomes a national curiosity. He continues to both shrink and lose weight. He visits a prominent research laboratory, and after numerous tests, learns that exposure to the radioactive mist and some normal pesticides caused his cells to shrink. Noticeably, this is shown when he looks her, previously six inches shorter than him, in the eye. At first Louise dismisses his fears as silly, but he continues to lose weight and height. As this trend continues, he believes he is shrinking. However, one morning, six months later, he notices that his shirt seems too big. Subsequently, Scott, who is Template:Convert tall and weighs 190 pounds, thinks little of the cloud and doesn't appear to have been affected by it. At the time, Louise was below deck getting refreshments, so she wasn't affected. Scott Carey ( Grant Williams), is a businessman who is on vacation on a boat, off the California coast, with his Template:Convert wife Louise ( Randy Stuart) when he suddenly is contaminated by a radioactive cloud. In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically” significant and will be preserved for all time. It won the very first Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. "> The Incredible Shrinking Man is a 1957 science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold and adapted for the screen by Richard Matheson from his novel The Shrinking Man ( ISBN 0575074639)