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How sad is this?

Excellent but underrated film

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Very early disaster movie about a crack in the earth.What needs to remembered here is that this came BEFORE the disaster movies of the 1970s (Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, The Swarm, etc) and you have to wonder just how much of this film was copied by Irwin Allen and others. The music of the film has what now seems like rather routine "disaster music", but back then, the opening score would have been like nothing nobody had heard before. Think about it.Crack In The World is a wonderfully scripted, acted, filmed, scored, epic that deserves more attention than it gets. Maybe the average science in the plot is the reason it does not get talked about a lot these days?

Dana Andrews plays an ailing scientist trying to find a way to use magma from the center of the earth to create a new natural energy. Kieron Moore is his assistant, a scientist out to prove that what Andrews is doing could unleash a disaster if the earth's crust begins to crack. Of course, there is the obligatory romantic subplot, and it involves Moore and Andrews' much younger wife, Janette Scott. Things don't really begin to gel until the end, but in the meantime, there is the scene of the bomb descending into the earth to break through the crust to get to the magma, a series of conversations about sudden earthquakes that break out, and finally, a visit into an actual volcano to counteract the force of the magma by scientifically blowing it out like a candle. (Didn't I see this plot on "Gilligan's Island"?) But in disaster movies where scientists are trying to play God, things always go wrong, and a crack begins to develop in the ocean's floor that begins to head totally around the world. The film is actually pretty good, and the exposition scenes are not really boring. But it doesn't really become "hot" until the last 20 minutes, which makes the overall impact of the film less than it could have been. Still, it is a lot better than two other films that actually involved volcanoes-"Krakatowa, East of Java" (filmed obviously in a mirror-Krakatowa is WEST of Java!), and the disaster master Irwin Allen's hideous "When Time Ran Out". We would have to wait until years later for "Volcano" and "Dante's Peak" to entertain us more than those disasters did.It should be noted that Andrews looks incredibly handsome here, distinguished and gray, yet not lacking the appeal he had 20 years ago in "Laura". Alexander Knox has a bit part as an English Lord whose financing oversees the whole project.

While this is not the sort of movie I usually like to watch, I sought it out for one reason--Dana Andrews. While he's not especially famous today, Andrews was a wonderfully realistic and solid actor who never seemed to get his due--even though he made a ton of films--many of which were terrific (such as "Laura", "The Ox-Bow Incident" and "The Best Years of Our Lives"). Part of this might be because of his rather ordinary looks and perhaps part of this might be his own fault, as later in his career he wasn't exactly choosy about the roles he took--with appearances in schlock films like "The Frozen Dead". Whatever the reasons, even his disappointments feature him doing his best and putting in one great acting performance after another. I just marvel at his professionalism and seemingly effortless acting and would watch him in anything.Andrews plays a very flawed scientist. Because he is dying and wants to make a name for himself, he has decided to try a risky experiment--one that his co-worker thinks might cause a chain-reaction that could rip the planet apart. At first, the experiment seems to have worked, but by shooting a nuclear bomb into the Earth and releasing magma, the integrity of the planet has been compromised. Earthquakes and tsunamis begin and it appears as if eventually the Earth will crumble apart. In a last-ditch effort to avert this disaster, a wacky plan involving blowing up a volcano to relieve pressure is planned. Will this work or is mankind royally screwed?! This movie is reasonably well done technically, though a few scenes are a tad clumsy when it came to special effects. As for the plot and acting, they are all fair--worth seeing, perhaps, but it's far from a must-see and really only a pretty good time-passer.

CRACK IN THE WORLD made a big impression when I saw it as a kid. It was one of those films that I always watched whenever it played on TV. Even then I knew it wasn't in the same league as WAR OF THE WORLDS or most sci-fi films of the 1950s or 60s. But I enjoyed it nonetheless. I recently saw it for the first time as an adult and I have to say that the movie is pure corn. Honestly, even my initial suspicions back then were sorta correct: aside from the truly wacky science-fiction story and the model work, there's very else to recommend. The film is basically a soap about a relationship between an Old Scientist (Dana Andrews) and a Young Hotshot Scientist (awfully played by Kieron Moore) fighting for a Hot Blond (Janette Scott). The melodrama is unpalatable, even if one looks at it as retro camp. It kills the fun aspect of the movie dead in its tracks. In the end, the only thing I got from this film as an adult is how this annoying threesome gave birth to a second moon, not the so-called crack in the world.Also, as a kid, the scenes with the animals in peril left an indelible impression. Looking at those scenes today, I can't help but wonder if any of the squirrels or raccoons were injured or killed for the sake of the film.Oddly enough, the more recently released THE CORE reminded me a lot of CRACK IN THE WORLD. Both films were made and released by Paramount. Both films feel like TV movies. Both films are awful. They would make a not-so-great double feature.