CRACK IN THE WORLD

Let's get this out of the way right now. When CRACK IN THE WORLD was first released in February, 1965, I guarantee you that every boy in my third grade class at Bryker Woods Elementary School referred to this disaster epic as "Crack In My Ass". What do you want? We were nine-years-old.

How to solve the world's energy problems? How to tap into a near limitless source of free energy? Hey, how about all that magma floating around in the middle of the earth? Tap into that and we'd have free energy for years. Problem is, there's an immense barrier of rock between us and the magma which can't be penetrated by anything short of a nuclear bomb.

That's just what crack-pot scientist Dr. Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews), proposes to do. He wants to fire a missile with a nuclear warhead on the tip of it down a bore hole. The resulting explosion will bring magma to the surface and voila, free energy!

Sorenson is opposed in his mad scheme by his second-in-command at Project Inner Space, Ted Rampion (the square jawed Kieron Moore). Rampion warns of dire consequences if Sorenson's plan is put into motion but Sorenson sells an international scientific commission on the idea and proceeds with his plan. To make matters more interesting, Sorenson's lovely young wife Maggie (Janette Scott), used to be involved with Rampion and still harbors some feelings for him .

And if all of that wasn't enough to make the plot messy, Sorenson is suffering from a terminal disease. What disease? We don't know but it's pretty bad because Sorenson is forced to hold his hands between two plates that emit X-rays for minutes on end. Eventually he is forced to wear white gloves on both hands, truss one arm with a sling and wear dark glasses indoors and out. Yeah, that kind of disease. Truthfully, I suspect that Dana Andrews must have injured himself on the set while on a drinking binge and the screen writers (Jon Manchip White and Julian Zimet), wrote his infirmities into the script.

Sorenson's experiment succeeds at first but quickly goes wrong when a crack is discovered in the crust of the earth. It's up to Rampion to drop a bomb down an active volcano in order to stop the spread of the crack. He succeeds and the world is saved. But wait, there's more. The crack is still growing, threatening to split the earth apart.

It's in the third act of the film that production designer Eugene Lourie gets a chance to show his stuff. Earlier scenes in the film used a lot of stock footage and a few matte paintings and miniature sets but it's in the big cataclysm at the end that we see some fairly decent effects work. Rampion and Maggie return to the Project Inner Space headquarters to rescue Sorenson. He refuses their help but before they can escape, they're trapped underground and forced to climb their way back to the surface through a ruined elevator shaft. The two emerge on the surface in time to witness a huge chunk of earth explode into space where it settles into orbit as Earth's second moon.

Wha........?

Set in Africa but filmed in Spain in seven weeks, CRACK IN THE WORLD is a modest disaster film that does the best it can with limited resources. The science is wonky but everything is played straight. The underground headquarters set is impressive, Lourie's effects work are adequate and the leads are solid. It's an entertaining B movie that pales in comparison to the slicker, bigger budgeted disaster films that came later in the decade and beyond.