Good word, bunkum, very old fashioned, just like the patriarchal bullshit prevalent throughout the motion picture. Janette Scott is a better actor than either of the main males, Dana Andrews' grumpy scientist and Kieron Moore's slightly less grumpy scientist, who spend their time arguing over her, protecting her from concerns and dangers she might well be equipped to deal with herself, and effectively blowing a dirty great hole in the Earth.
And, just like When Worlds Collide, the science is bunkum too. Sourcing 'limitless' energy by harnessing the magma flow at the earth's core. Except in a few billion years time the magma will have finally cooled and led to planet death. Not so limitless. And the crust that forms on the top of the huuuuuuuge hole they've blown with their nuclear weaponry (it was perfectly safe, they all had sunglasses on when the explosion happened) makes it safe, allegedly.
Which means the one of the men who is a volcanologist doesn't know shit: when a volcano top becomes encrusted the force of rising magma eventually explodes it open again or channels itself elsewhere to create other volcanoes.
Oh, they get an education in that sort of stuff when the fissure created by their stupid shenanigans spreads and spreads and kills and kills and spreads and kills and spreads. Which is decent enough science but the whole bit about the magma erupting so forcefully and in such volume that a new moon will be squirted out into the atmosphere but not disrupt gravity and spin the planet out of orbit, killing the rest of the people left alive, well that's just a big pile of cock.
Instead of planetary disaster the grumpiest scientist dies of the cancer he apparently had right from the start, just to make some of the tragedy personal as well as global. And the other one lives and presumably cops off with Janette Scott. She's Thora Hird's daughter you know. Well, you wouldn't know here because not once does she use a Stannah Stairlift or regale people with anecdotes about evenings in with Alan Bennett drinking strong tea and eating pontefract cakes.
Would have made the movie more interesting. Crack in the world? Crack of your ass, more like.
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