hyped garbage

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Dana Andrews plays Dr. Stephen Sorenson, a terminally ill scientist who decides to follow through on his dream project: using a missile to break through to the planet Earths' magma layer. His associate, Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore), has been preaching that this will be dangerous, and Ted is naturally proved to be correct. However, he has no time to say "I told you so", because he, Stephen, and others must race to save the world from the resulting title disaster.Copious stock footage mixes with pretty impressive special effects, designed by Eugene Lourie, himself the director of the classic dinosaur flick "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms". Some viewers may be able to poke a lot of holes in the "science fact" aspect to the screenplay, but this shouldn't get in the way of enjoying what is a reasonably entertaining forerunner to the "disaster film cycle" of the 1970s. It's rather slow to get started, and does devote a fair amount of the running time to the love triangle. Ultimately, it delivers the goods if you stick with it. One thing about it that people should appreciate is the fact that it doesn't necessarily guarantee the viewer a happy ending. It keeps you hanging until its final frame. Among its other assets are the art direction (by Lourie), cinematography (by Manuel Berenguer), and music (by Johnny Douglas).Andrews gives a typically solid performance in the lead, but most everybody here is fine. That includes the gorgeous Janette Scott as the female scientist caught between Ted and Stephen. Alexander Knox rounds out the quartet of top billed performers in the role of the pragmatic Sir Charles Eggerston.This does offer a fair amount of fun if you're looking to discover sci-fi and disaster pictures from decades past.Seven out of 10.

Crack in the World (1965) *** (out of 4) Dana Andrews plays a dying scientist who pushes ahead with trying to reach the center of the Earth and getting the energy that can be found there. The final step of the mission involves using a bomb to crack through a barrier around the energy and when this happen it causes a massive explosion and soon a fiery crack through the world begins to cause destruction. CRACK IN THE WORLD often gets lumped in the sci-fi genre but I think it's much more fitting as a precursor to the Irwin Allen disaster pictures that would follow in a few years. While watching this thing you couldn't help but feel that you were watching a classic example of the disaster genre and especially during the ending when a couple people must try and find a way out of the ground before the crack reaches them. I thought the actual events taking place with the world getting a crack in it were handled much better than I was expecting. This certainly isn't just some low-budget exploitation picture but instead it tries to have a brain in its head and the material is taken very seriously. I thought this added to the drama in the picture and it certainly helps that you can believe what you're seeing. The best thing going for the picture are the terrific special effects, which hold up so well today and I think you could show them to someone from today's generation as proof that real effects are so much more believable than CGI. I really thought the sequence underwater where we see the crack was tremendously done as were other big effects including one involving a train and even the initial blast that causes the problem looks terrific. These effects are certainly some of the best from this era and they alone make the film worth viewing. Andrews turns in a good performance in the role of the dying doctor and we get nice support from Kieron Moore, the man who fears the experiment will lead to a disaster. CRACK IN THE WORLD features some real excitement from start to finish and it really deserves more credit than it usually gets.

It is hard to look at some movies as being little more then a list of clichés. A story about a group of scientists attempt to unlock what they hope will be a vast depositary of energy and minerals underneath the Earth's crust that leads to unintended consequences for the entire world, 1964's Crack In The World would certainly be one of that type. So should you watch it? The acting in the movie is good for the most part. Leading the cast is Dana Andrews as Dr. Stephen Sorenson, the head of the group of scientists, and indeed gives perhaps the best performance seen in the entire ninety odd minutes the movies runs for. Playing his much younger scientist wife is Janette Scott as Maggie, whose performance goes from most believable at the beginning before she turns into the clichéd screaming female character out of innumerable sci-fi films of the era. Completing the main cast is Kieron Moore as Dr. Ted Rampion, who not only predicts certain disaster but is also a former flame of Maggie's, which given the lack of chemistry between Moore and Scott seems hard to believe. Indeed there is a distinct lack of chemistry between all three of the leading cast members. While both Andrews and Moore give good performances, the lack of chemistry between not just themselves but Scott doesn't help the movie.The production values are as mixed as anything else in the movie. The production design of Eugene Lourie is perhaps the biggest strength of the whole movie, particularly with its impressive set of the project's operation center. The special effects though are mixed as they range from the excellent models and effects seen during the first thirty to thirty five minutes to the film to some incredibly unconvincing back projection work as the movie reaches its end. Other production values, such as the score by John Douglas and the direction of Andrew Marton, give the entire film a very dated feel. The editing of Derek Parsons is also very much of the era, meaning that despite running a little over ninety minutes the film drags horribly along during that time. The result is that the movie looks good for the most part but heavily dated and slow moving as well.Nothing though dates Crack In The World more then its script by Jon Manchip White and Julian Zimet. The script has a neat idea as its basis: that the Earth's crust, weakened by decades of nuclear tests, could be cracked open and threaten all life on Earth. A neat idea, though it went out of date the year following the movie's original release. But the premise is an intriguing one though its execution is anything but. The script throws in every cliché it can seemingly come up with: a love triangle between two rival scientists (one older, one younger) over the former's wife, the prediction of catastrophe ignored, a failed attempt to avert disaster and fleeing members of the general public being killed as they do say to name but a few. The result is a neat idea bogged down by a list of clichés.Despite the occasional good performance and a neat (if outdated) idea as its basis, Crack In The World is weighed down heavily by the many, many clichés it employs along the way. It also doesn't help that the film is horribly dated by much of its production values as well. The overall result then is that the movie is watchable, if only just.

This is another popular sci-fi outing – which follows a world crisis pattern established by the superior THE DAY THE EARTH CAUGHT FIRE (1961) – that I had only previously read about in books; I finally watched it via a DivX made from a P&S TV broadcast on AMC (unfortunately, my enjoyment was slightly hampered by recurring lip-synch problems).Anyway, the film itself – initially slow-going and talky but becoming persuasive and fairly gripping once the disasters start – is good-looking and features remarkable special effects, while the principal actors are all adept at this sort of thing (an ageing and quite moving Dana Andrews as the dying scientist, Janette Scott and Kieron Moore – both from THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS [1962] – and Alexander Knox from THESE ARE THE DAMNED [1963]); besides, unlike many films of its ilk, the characters' personal dilemmas actually contribute to the tension.While not exactly a milestone of the genre and ultimately forgettable, the film ought to get a decent DVD release (if it weren't problematic, I guess I could have lived with my current copy); however, being a Paramount production, it can't be much of a priority (seeing how they've reportedly leased one of their more desirable properties – ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS [1964] – to Criterion, thus burdening fans with a much more expensive edition!)