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Awix (3310 KP) rated The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) in Movies
Mar 14, 2018
The Jack Arnold SF B-movie that was always critically acceptable eschews schlocky thrills, mostly, for a more psychologically resonant drama. Plot sounds daft - businessman gets caught in radioactive cloud, starts to have trouble with his shoe size - but the treatment is absolutely serious.
Film manages to make trying to avoid being eaten by your cat or a passing spider seem like a genuinely deadly struggle, but it is just as much about the psychological effects of the main character's transformation as he struggles to maintain his sense of self-worth (size matters, if you know what I mean). The actual ending is somewhat obscure transcendental bibble-bobble, but this is a typically solid Arnold movie which is unusually open about its serious subtext.
Film manages to make trying to avoid being eaten by your cat or a passing spider seem like a genuinely deadly struggle, but it is just as much about the psychological effects of the main character's transformation as he struggles to maintain his sense of self-worth (size matters, if you know what I mean). The actual ending is somewhat obscure transcendental bibble-bobble, but this is a typically solid Arnold movie which is unusually open about its serious subtext.
Awix (3310 KP) rated Hello Down There (1969) in Movies
May 10, 2020
The only performer to appear in three of the AFI's Hundred Greatest Films of All Time is Janet Leigh, which is quite an achievement, but she also turns up in a load of absolute dross, like this borderline-unwatchable musical comedy adventure about a family spending a month in an underwater house. Tony Randall is there for the older viewers; there are some swinging kids for the younger audience (a young Richard Dreyfuss keeps singing songs about goldfish); low-octane underwater thrills are occasionally attempted.
The list of people involved in this movie might lead one to expect something at least mildly interesting: Jack Arnold made many interesting SF B-movies, one of which (Creature from the Black Lagoon) featured co-director Browning in the title role; the cast list includes Randall, Leigh, Dreyfuss, and Roddy McDowell. And yet it feels almost aggressively anodyne and bland, horribly calculated, and made to TV-standard production values. Even when it was made this probably only appealed to the most undemanding viewers; nowadays it exerts a weird fascination if only as a relic of an unrecognisable sensibility.
The list of people involved in this movie might lead one to expect something at least mildly interesting: Jack Arnold made many interesting SF B-movies, one of which (Creature from the Black Lagoon) featured co-director Browning in the title role; the cast list includes Randall, Leigh, Dreyfuss, and Roddy McDowell. And yet it feels almost aggressively anodyne and bland, horribly calculated, and made to TV-standard production values. Even when it was made this probably only appealed to the most undemanding viewers; nowadays it exerts a weird fascination if only as a relic of an unrecognisable sensibility.