Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Now I can see where all the money went.’
This week we’re looking at disaster movie Crack in the World.
‘A crack 20,000 miles long bringing super heated magma in contact with the ocean’
'Earthquakes, tidel waves, mass destruction on an apocalyptic scale.'
Dana Andrews is scientist Dr Sorenson.
‘We don’t want the commissioners to think we’re all mad scientists’
Who has a plan to supply the world with limitless energy using the magma at its core.
But how can he reach that magma.
‘I was thinking of a thermonuclear device’
Of course, dig a hole and set off a nuclear bomb.
‘Isn’t there some risk involved’
Oh I can’t imagine that.
‘We have caused a crack in the earth’s crust’
I’m sorry; we?!
‘It just happned that way, nobody planned it’
Who’s responsible is an interesting one; the film is American, the stars are American,
yet all orders come from London.
'Yes?'
It’s also made clear that the crust has already been weakened.
‘By the numerous underground explosions set off by the nuclear powers’
Clearly a producer said, sure you can blow up the world but America cannot be responsible.
Make it the Brits, seems like the sort of thing they’d do.
‘And all the powers who provked the disaster by underground testing’
Things are serious And just in case you weren’t clear about that they’ve stationed a small brass ensemble just off camera to hammer the point home.
#dramatic music#
But how can you stop a crack in the earth?
‘With a nuclear bomb’
Yes, cos it went so well the first time.
‘The crack is moving twice as fast as before’
Well that’s odd.
‘Have you got a better idea?’
Actually, first attempts always fail in this type of film and this one is anslave to every cliché.
‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘Pray’
And not just in the disaster plotline, there’s also the love triangle between Sorenson, his wife and a young handsome scientist.
‘I picked you’
She says that but...
‘If the world is going to come to an end at least you won’t get caught with holes in your socks’
She’s already darning another man’s socks, if you know what I mean.
‘I don’t know’
But that might make the young couple look bad so the filmmakers have given Sorenson a convenient terminal illness.
‘What do the doctors say?’
‘A week, maybe less’
What a sacrifice, giving up the man she loves to be with her husband. For a week
‘Are you worried?’
Even if I cared about her relationship and I really don’t,
it wouldn’t trouble me too much that she has to wait an extra 7 days...
‘Maybe less’
to shack up with her old boyfriend.
‘Tell her my socks are ok, somebody darned them’
the makers of this film seem to have regarded sock darning as a form of safe sex.
‘You’re right about that’
Another nice cliché is that this cut-out love interest is actually a scientist,
‘You’re a scientist in your own right’
even though she barely says a scientific word,
and the one she says she mispronounces
‘He’s in charge of all Seezmographs’
But my favourite cliché is at the end.
The cracks have improbably joined, blowing a chunk of the earth into space,
forming a natural pressure release valve and creating a new moon.
‘Far-fetched huh’
I was going to say total bollocks but I guess far-fetched covers it.
Anyway this saves the planet, but how to indicate that cinematically?
The chipmunks are always the first to know.
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'Lets the get the hell out of here'