IB Technicolor Print Some sci-fi fantasies appear more plausible with time as real life works its mysterious ways. The man-made earthquake in Crack in the World adds yet another disturbing variable to the fear of nature's temblors, so perhaps it is best that the human element is the least believable part of this film that the New York Times, in 1965, dubbed "the best science fiction thriller this year." Dana Andrews portrays an aging, cancer-plagued scientist who hopes to give the world a new energy source before he departs for the great beyond: his Project Inner Space will tap the magma at the Earth's core for its unlimited resources. Against all caution he fires a missile which successfully cracks the rock layer surrounding the magma, but also causes a series of devastating earthquakes along a volcanic fault line. What happens next could be called fighting fire with fire, or the redoubling of calamity. Director Andrew Marton, drawing on some forty years of second-unit experience, concentrates his efforts on realistic special effects; the sequence in which a nuclear bomb is lowered into a volcano holds genuine suspense. "Crack in the World is an inexpensive model of its kind: trim, engrossing, beautifully written and chillier by the minute" (New York Times).