'Crack in The World' used to play a lot on '70's British television, but has been strangely invisible for years now. My copy was taped off Sky about 1994! It is a gripping sci-fi thriller based loosely on the 'Mo-Hole Project'; American scientists once attempted to drill to the Earth's core, but abandoned the idea ( for reasons that are still shrouded in mystery ). Another source of inspiration could be the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle short story 'When The World Screamed'.

Dr.Stephen Sorenson ( Dana Andrews ) is head of 'Project Inner Space', a plan to ( you guessed it ) drill to the Earth's magma core and tap the limitless energy there. To break through the outer shell, he proposes firing a nuclear missile. Dead against the scheme is Dr.Ted Rampion ( Keiron Moore ) who believes said missile will in fact shatter the shell, causing red-hot magma to pour into the sea. Rampion attempts to get the British Government to withdraw support, but it is too late - the missile is launched.

Initially it appears that the project is a success, but then tremors and other disturbances are reported. Rampion's worst fears are confirmed - the explosion has opened a fissure in the Earth's crust, meaning it is only a matter of time before it widens sufficiently to literally break the entire world in half...

This is a disaster movie before the term was coined; the special effects are good ( for the time ), particularly the volcano sequence and the train crash. Andrews turns in his usual block of wood performance, but then disaster movies are not about great acting in any case. Keiron Moore and Janette Scott ( Thora Hird's daughter, incidentally ) previously worked together in the 1963 film of 'Day Of The Triffids' ( they were that young couple trapped in the lighthouse ). Again neither turn in Oscar-worthy performances ( Scott seeming to have strayed out of another movie ). What bogs the film down is the soppy sub plot involving Scott and Moore; their characters had once been an item apparently and events give them an excuse to get together again. Luckily for them Dr.Sorenson is terminally ill and so won't pose much of a threat to their happiness.

For most of the time, 'Crack In The World' is tense, frightening stuff. Director Andrew Marton was partly responsible for 'The Longest Day'. When the missile goes down the bore hole you will finding yourself shouting at the screen: "You stupid idiots! You've just destroyed the world!". The film was made before the 'tectonics plates' theory was formed, meaning that a crack like the one here could never in fact destroy the world, they are continually appearing in the Earth's surface. The ending - in which a chunk of the Earth defies the laws of gravity and becomes a new Moon - does not bear close scrutiny. Five years after it was made, the plot was ripped off by 'Dr.Who' for the seven-part story 'Inferno', starring Jon Pertwee, which threw in werewolves and parallel universes for good measure.

The 'Project Inner Space' scheme is so mad, so monstrously insane that one day I expect someone will attempt to do if for real. I hope I won't be around then.

The mighty Leonard Cohen sung: "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in". But his beautiful anthem was one of hope, whereas the titular crack of this film represents the greatest disaster imaginable, and possible the end of the world as we know it! "A Crack in the World" is a disaster movie that predates the Irwin Allen era. In other words, it's not a massively budgeted epos that features a long list of Hollywood stars and thrives on special effects and set-pieces, but more of an intelligently scripted and rather talky drama with genuine suspense and plausible plot twists. Brilliant scientist Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews) suffers from a terminal illness, but refuses to tell anyone in order to complete his prestigious and ambitious life's work, namely providing the world with never-ending energy sources that are coming directly from magma of the earth's core. To bring the magma to the surface, his team launches a missile straight to the center of the earth, but like his much younger and more handsome colleague Ted predicted, the missile causes a crack in the world, and consequently earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, tsunamis and approximately 38.000 human casualties in one day! "Crack in the World" surely isn't the most exhilarating Sci-Fi/Action movie of the sixties, but the story is hugely absorbing and the scientist roles are very well-acted. After a very theoretical first hour, there's quite a lot of action. They even drop nuclear bombs into active volcanos and hundreds of poor souls fall to their deaths when a ramshackle train bridge collapses.

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.