The Incredible Shrinking Man : Part II /Dos/Two

A bit of trivia--Clifford Stine who supervised the visual effects for "The Incredible Shrinking Man" also worked on the much more expensive "This Island Earth" supervising special photographic effects and got his start as an assistance camera man at age 27 with "King Kong".

I'm hoping that, if "It Came From Outer Space" sells well, Universal will put out "TISM" with a lot of special features--at the very least a commentary track, archival interview with Ray Bradbury (who provided the story) and an overview of director Jack Arnold's career at Universal. Heck, I would do the commentary track for "TISM" for free Universal (I know quite a bit of trivia about the film).

By the way, some of the extra large props for the film ended up recycled at Universal's L.A. theme park for years.

 

All I know is that the spider scenes, the editing, was great. Totally pulled me in. One of my favorite movies ever! "To God, there is no Zero!" Outstanding!

 

You could try to contact Colleen Benn at Universal Home Video, because I know in the past she's coordinated "making of" documentary packages and things like that. But my suspicion is that this film is not a high priority for them. Clifford Stine was an old-timer who did hundreds of films in his time -- I would bet that Cinefantastique and Filmfax both did stories on him or possibly even interviewed him in the latter part of his career. It would be fairly easy to do a one-hour special just on his career, provided you could get the clip rights to all those films.

One issue with who does commentary: the studios frequently want people with credentials, like a published author or a celebrity/film insider, so be warned it's hard to sell yourself for this kind of job. The pay is also miserably low. And they want people who are articulate and entertaining on camera; Leonard Maltin would be a prime example of somebody who qualifies on all fronts, and I've been surprised that he hasn't been used as a behind-the-scenes host more frequently.

 

Incidentally, this (left) release/pressing/version is better than the "sci-fi collection" version (right). I thought it was a blu-ray version the first time I saw it.

 

That's the European version? I can't recall if it is region free.

 

Region 1 : USA & Canada

 

Thanks! I keep hoping Universal will also issue this on Blu-ray as well.