1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man is hailed as one of the defining sci-fi pictures of its era, a visually impressive flight of fancy which found its sense of wonder — and abject terror — not in deep space or the distant future, but in the mundanity of everyday life. Director Joel Schumacher, screenwriter Jane Wagner, and force of nature comedian Lily Tomlin, on the other hand, believed it was the perfect candidate for a good old lampoon.
Released 45 years ago today, 1981’s The Incredible Shrinking Woman had been conceived as a straightforward sequel to Jack Arnold’s original (itself an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel The Shrinking Man), which would focus on wife Louise entering her lost husband’s microscopic world. But the idea got stuck in development hell until the late 1970s, when John Landis decided it needed a comedic transformation.
