Crack In The World (1965)

Director: Andrew Marton

Starring: Dana Andrews, Janette Scott, Kieron Moore

Okey-dokey, here goes with the first in a mesmerising trilogy of Earth stomping, nuke-tacular movie mayhem where dicking around with an atom bomb will in all likelihood lead to a shenaniganathon…

No, don’t be rude, not that kind of crack. And not that kind of crack either. It’s geological, right. Dr. Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews) wants to fire a nuclear missile into the Earth’s crust to release magma. Apparently, magma will provide the planet with a limitless supply of energy. Ha-haaah! Npower, begone! Get thee behind me, E.ON! Unfortunately, the nuke sets off a CRACK! In the WORLD! And this gigantic fracture is moving – if not stopped, all life on Earth is in danger of perishing. Will these pesky boffins ever learn? Now, role-play time: you are a government minister (filthy idea, I know) and a frankly barking scientist tells you he wants to fire a nuclear warhead into the Earth’s guts. What do you say to him (after ‘what’s in it for me?’ obviously)? “Sod off and grow some lugholes on the back of a mouse, you frankly barking scientist” you’d say. Admittedly, I didn’t fully listen to the technical explanation though I gather the intent is to harvest the heat from the magma. That there are far more efficient, cost-effective and downright simpler methods of harnessing the planet’s natural resources seems to have escaped our Steve. Of course, it’s common knowledge that world superpowers (and some not-so-superpowers… cough-France-cough…) practised underground nuke testing and to offset the sheer ludicrosity of the premise the script makes mention of this and in so doing we’re halfway-ish with the idea, it’s not a complete stretch regarding a sub-surface detonation. I really do love using hyphens.

There's always someone who's got to face the wrong way...

Naturally, Steve’s got opposition, in the barrel-chested shape of Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore). He believes that exploding a nuclear device is geologically unsound and will shatter the crust in all directions. Sorenson contests this with the aid of a glass pane and a very hot stick which he uses as an example to show how his missile won’t fragmentise but will burn slowly through the strata. Hmmm… using a very hot stick for comparative analysis with a 10 megaton thermonuclear bomb…? You may not be convinced but Sir Charles Eggerston (Alexander Knox) is positively smitten with the wonders of very hot sticks and gives Inner Space (the name of this joint) the green-light. Ted’s furious, resigns and vows to fight until the last second against the decision to launch. He’s also royally miffed because he fancies Stephen’s missus, Maggie (Janette Scott). They had a thing going on; then she met much older Stephen and Ted got binned. In fact Maggie choosing Stephen over Ted is more unbelievable than the dunking of a nuclear warhead into magma as one would dunk a Hobnob into one’s cuppa. There’s no question that Ted was dunking his Hobnob in Maggie. Unfortunately for her, Stephen has absolutely no intention of dunking his Hobnob in her, therefore destroying any dreams of having a baby with him. This leads to some Freudian business – I’ll get to that in a minute.

Erm... Russia's the other way

So, anyway – BLAM! – “The Magma!” they yell joyously. Oh, it’s a roaring success and Ramp-face looks like a chump. “A life of plenty for all Mankind!” indeed. Ted returns to the fold tail-tucked. But then there’s an earthquake, “Force-9”, it destroys Port Victoria… Then another, with a tsunami thrown in for good measure… there’s a pattern forming. Steve has set off a chain reaction in the Earth’s crust, a deep fissure in the ocean floor snaking around the globe at 3 mph. Ted doesn’t say ‘I told you so’ but you can see him thinking it. “Mass destruction on an apocalyptic scale!” The only way to stop it – this is brilliant – is to drop ANOTHER nuclear warhead, this time down a volcano – BY HAND. Despite Ted’s detailed explanation, I still have no idea how kick-starting a volcano and exploding it will stop the crack before it reaches its next destination, something to do with blowing a big hole so the fissure runs out of rock to rip through. “Is there anything we can do?” Sir Charles wants to know. ‘Don’t say pray,’ I said to the telly. “Pray.” Clunk. The crack, displaying a welcome sense of irony, doubles its speed, changes direction and heads for the Inner Space lab where Steve and the gang are scratching their collective numbskulls wondering what went wrong.

"Am I really that hideous, Steve?"

CITW is played straight and serious, no joking around. Yeh it’s daft, but somehow, within its matter-of-factness the movie manages to raise the plausibility bar a few notches. What CITW excels at though is both art direction and FX – step forward Mr. Eugene Lourie and Mr. Alex Weldon who both worked on Battle Of The Bulge while Lourie himself also directed The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. They’ve done a good job with the Inner Space lab which wouldn’t look out of place in a James Bond movie, got ‘bad guy’s lair’ written all over it. Then there are one or two great scenes of destruction, including neat miniature work, particularly when a toy train steaming over a bridge gets satisfyingly pulverised. At the finale there’s absolute carnage as the lab disintegrates when the crack splits into two and converges on the original bore hole, blasting debris into space, a sizeable chunk of which forms a second moon for the Earth. Uh-huh, the plausibility bar dropped sharply quite some time ago… Director Andrew Marton also throws in plenty of stock footage featuring mushrooming atom bombs and spuming volcanoes. Our volcano, the one Ted and Steele (Mike Steen) lower a bomb into, isn’t quite as spectacular as the stock footage, from afar looks like something out of the old Thunderbirds series. Come to think of it, didn’t International Rescue have to land inside a volcano in one show?

Nuke + Men x Volcano = Death

The performances are all standard for this kind of thing. Dana Andrews – remember him in the superb Night Of The Demon? – seems the most relaxed of the cast. He doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary, just plays a driven man placing his work above everything else, nothing we haven’t seen before. Kieron Moore, after a promising start to his career was already fading. He’s a little stiff here, plus he’s got that peculiar accent going on, an Irish brogue seems to be battling for control of his larynx. He’s good with the action though, comfortable throwing a jeep around when chasing the doomed train in an effort to avert tragedy. The weird thing is casting Janette Scott alongside Moore, they starred as a couple three years earlier in Day Of The Triffids. Déjà vu. All Scott’s character does is run back and forth between Stephen and Ted, it’s pretty limp. In the end the choice is made for her by the fact that Steve is terminally ill, plus he’s determined to stay with his sinking ship. He doesn’t tell Maggie about the seriousness of his condition. He will, eventually, but this conversation happens off-screen. I mean, Marton’s keen on the melodrama in CITW yet chooses not to shoot the ‘Maggie, I’m dying’ scene. Presumably, he didn’t want to put a brake on the action in the last third.

"I suppose you're losing valuable drinking time... oops, wrong movie."

The irrelevant ‘baby’ stuff laughably takes a symbolic turn; Marton doesn’t even hide it, right in yer face, this. Maggie is desperate for a kiddy and snuggles up to Steve but he shuns her. He may be worried about his age, or he resents the fact that she’s keeping Ted in the picture, albeit platonically. Still, Maggie makes it quite clear what she wants and who she wants it with. Cuts no ice with Steve, he doesn’t fancy a snuggling blonde – but what he does fancy is plunging his ‘missile’ into Mother Earth, complete with gushing lava-shot, a coupling that births a new moon, kind of the child he won’t have with Maggie. Or am I reading too much into it, Mr. Freud?

Thunderbird 2 would've saved that bridge

So, not great, but when things go crunch it gets fairly entertaining. It’s just a pity about the unnecessary love triangle, that bugger just keeps getting in the way of the mayhem. Try and find the digitally remastered version, I watched a VHS version download and as evidenced by the screen shots above, picture quality was very poor…

Trailer here: http://tinyurl.com/bpwe77x

Cheers, folk.

ThereWolf, November 2011