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.

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.