Jack Arnold

From 1957, The Incredible Shrinking Man is next.

Science fiction film directed by Jack Arnold based on Richard Matheson's 1956 novel, The Shrinking Man.

The film stars Grant Williams.

While relaxing on a boat, a man is enveloped by a strange fog.

As he shrinks to the point where he can fit into a dollhouse, he has battle with his family cat, leaving him lost and alone in his basement, where he becomes smaller than the average insect.

More precisely, a deadly spider.

Directed by Jack Arnold.

This guy's got a knack for directing the hell out of a movie.

So it came from Outer Space, 1953.

Absolutely a horror movie, but we're talking about it in the context of a friendly alien movie directed by Jack Arnold.

We have seen his work before.

We discussed him when we saw, was it The Incredible Shrinking Man? Yep, The Incredible Shrinking Man.

He kind of replaced all the dialogue, but story, pure Bradbury, I think is my understanding of it.

Yeah.

And Ray Bradbury had had a real impact on Jack Arnold as well, because so Jack Arnold, the director who we mentioned, had directed The Incredible Shrinking Man.

He's got this legacy of doing lots of science fiction films, and those include like This Island Earth, like The Incredible Shrinking Man, like we said.

But then we get the 1953 film, It Came from Outer Space.

Directed by Jack Arnold, who later became famous for Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Right.

And on paper, the plot of It Came from Outer Space sounds like the most generic paint by numbers B movie you could possibly construct.

Yeah.

It was nominated for AFI's top 10 science fiction films.

Um, critics, including Phil Hardy, noted how Jack Arnold's atmospheric directing in the, like, dark, isolated desert perfectly elevated the, you know, the profound dialogue that Bradbury had woven into the DNA of the story.

Despite the credit dispute.

Which is one of the most explicitly philosophical films, and a perfect example of what science fiction can do.

But again, as with 2001, not many people had done it on film at that time, but Jack Arnold and Richard Matheson did, and I consider 2001 and, uh, and Incredible Shrinking Man to be, for me, the two most interesting, uh, science fiction films from a philosophical standpoint.

We're being very Anglo-American in our references to sci-fi because, uh, what, uh, what I wanted to say really is that, um, there are two major s- philosophical science fiction masterpieces that predate 2001, to my mind, and there may be others.

I hope I've done them.

It's a 1958 American black and white science fiction horror film from Universal-International.

Produced by George Gershenson and directed by the famous Jack Arnold.

This is probably one of his lesser works.

I guess we could say that.

Which campus? It

would be cool if this was the only thing about the movie that we had issues with.

First of all, this is directed by Jack Arnold.

And some of you may recognize Mr. Arnold's name.

I always enjoy it.

them on there, and they talk about, you know, basically people were just assigned to this stuff, like Jack Arnold wasn't a huge sci-fi guy, you know, and I'm like, oh, that's interesting, because he directed some of the best sci-fi movies of his time, Incredible Shrinking Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, so tons of great information and discussion on the commentary, and in this movie, like I said, it's gorgeous, it's one of these movies that's way ahead of its time, inspired stuff like Star Trek, of course, you know, going to these different planets, but ended up the plot here, it turns out being incredibly heady, besides the visuals and the special effects, I think the other thing that I really like about it is it's It's got that kind of classic sci-fi.

The ideas are more prevalent and they're very kind of mind-bending, to be honest.

You're looking at the ideas on the outside and you're like, geez, that's so bizarre.

Giant ants are terrible, but somebody at Universal apparently watched them and thought, needs more legs.

Enter Jack Arnold's Tarantula.

Professor Gerald Deamer is experimenting with nutrients designed to save a future food crisis.

This is actually an interesting bit of atomic age thinking.

Then the movie makes it enormous.

Suddenly something recognizable becomes extremely alien.

Jack Arnold understood that he already directed.

It came from outer space and the creature from the black lagoon.