Crack in the World could have been born from a discussion question in your fifth-grade science textbook: “What do you think would happen if scientists broke through the center of the earth with a nuclear warhead? Explain.” Heck, Crack in the World even uses the requisite 10 words from that chapter’s vocabulary list.

Underneath Africa, in a lab not unlike TV’s soon-to-debut Batcave, Dr. Stephen Sorenson (Dana Andrews, The Crowded Sky) runs Project Inner Space, which aims to harness the magma at our planet’s core as a “limitless” energy source. Rather than put a baby in his pregnancy-craving wife, Maggie (Janette Scott, 1963’s The Day of the Triffids), Stephen is obsessed with penetrating the final layer of crust to reach said magma.

His proposed solution — a 10-megaton thermonuclear device — sounds alarms in Maggie’s ex, Dr. Ted Rampion (Kieron Moore, Arabesque), who warns the explosion would cause massive fissures, tidal waves and other stuff that disaster-movie dreams are made of. Secretly terminally ill and thereby obsessed with his legacy, Stephen proceeds anyway.

The mission is a success! If the mission were to hella fuck some shit up ’round the globe. The titular crack in the world forms and begins circumnavigating; if not stopped, Earth will split in two, ending life as we know it. In what amounts to a metaphorical dick-measuring contest, Ted suggests fixing Stephen’s blunder by dropping a hydrogen bomb to effectively cut the crack off at the pass. (Trust me: It makes enough sense within the movie.)

As enjoyable as Crack in the World is, which is close to immensely, I can’t help but think what Irwin Allen would have done with it in his prime — likely something as cataclysmic as the poster depicts. In the hands of one Andrew Marton, then on the verge of becoming Ivan Tors’ go-to director, nothing remotely like that occurs, although he does take out a (model) train of evacuating villagers. Prepare not for an effects spectacle, but for a more sober, science-minded clarion call with a coda that leans hard into biblical overtones. After the near-miss of the Cuban missile crisis, it was just the type of Technicolor reminder the Western world needed. —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

When treasure hunters disturb Babylonian ruins not to be disturbed, lest ye wish to unleash a demon, a reptilian beast appears to prove the prophecy true. Bearing vampiric features and the power of flight, the demon Daimon (Chikara Hashimoto, the Daimajin himself) possesses bodies à la The Hidden by biting people’s necks, starting with the local magistrate and staff.

When a nearby kappa, witnesses one of these mystical swaps, the flat-headed water imp who looks like a mod Donald Duck, calls upon his fellow yokai for help. These supernatural creatures include a one-eyed umbrella with a tongue like rolled-out red carpet, a woman with a rubbery expand-o-neck, a squatty rock in a hula skirt, a walking turd, a giant rodent whose belly expands to project need-to-know footage — basically, the Justice League of Everything You Thought Lived Under Your Childhood Bed.

For Yokai Monsters: Spook Warfare, the middle of Japan’s mad-matinee trilogy, Yoshiyuki Kuroda (The Invisible Swordsman) takes over for Yokai Monsters: 100 Monsters director Kimiyoshi Yasuda. You wouldn’t know it, as this immediate sequel retains the look of the original. Then again, the Daiei Film fantasies of the era seemed to be painted in the same color palette and shot on the same studio sets — none of that is a knock.

Kuroda smartly narrows the lineup to give this imaginative, colorful fantasy a sharper focus. For a kids’ film, Spook Warfare racks up an admirable body count as if it were unafraid to offend — because it’s not. Whatever the story calls for — from sword-skewering a dog to showcasing a husky kid’s butt crack — so be it! —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

As I watched The Incredible Shrinking Man, I realized how many classic sci-fi movies I haven’t seen, creating a mental wish list that, ironically, doesn’t seem to be shrinking at all. At least I’m off to a good start, as the signifying combo of director Jack Arnold and writer Richard Matheson have crafted the perfect gateway to the outer limits of old-school speculative fiction.

Based on the novel by screenwriter Matheson, everyman Scott (Grant Williams) is subjected to a mysterious cloud while boating with his wife one afternoon; maybe if he hadn’t been too lazy to get his own beer, he wouldn’t have been hit with this glittery dust. But he is, and within a couple of months, his clothes begin shrinking, creating adorable li’l khakis on him.

But his everyday wear is the least of his problems because, as he shrinks more and more, soon he’s living in a dollhouse and fighting a bastardly housecat in one of the most harrowing battles I’ve ever seen. Of course, I say that and, a few minutes later, he’s trapped in the basement fighting off a fucking spider with a sewing needle — yikes!

Complete with a truly metaphysical ending I think no one in their right mind was expecting — especially in 1957 — Arnold has crafted a thinking man’s science-fiction film that truly turns everyday household objects — and household creatures — into apocalyptic struggles of survival, ones that might prove a prick of irritancy to me but a visage of destruction to Scott.

And Pat Kramer, but at least she had that gorilla. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.

All I recall about 1989’s The Terror Within is that I’ve seen it. Going into The Terror Within II, retention doesn’t matter, were you so worried. The opening titles fill in any narrative blanks with broad, questionably need-to-know strokes: Biological warfare beget an apocalypse and “grotesque genetic mutations.”

Andrew Stevens (Munchie Strikes Back) isn’t one of those, but he’s back toplining as David — not to mention making his directorial debut and writing the screenplay. Roaming the post-apoc desert where everything, per all of Roger Corman’s Concorde Pictures, is uncomfortably too orangey, David and his glue-on beard spear a lizard for chow and communicate with his peeps back at Rocky Mountain Lab. There, scientists (including Stevens’ mom, Poseidon Adventure victim Stella) rush to formulate a vaccine to combat an unpredictable virus, but conspiracy-duped parents upend school board meetings they lack key ingredients David hopes to find. Until then, Full Metal Jacket’s R. Lee Ermey — and you’re not gonna believe this — shouts orders.

This being a Terror Within movie, there’s a terror, all right — but since it’s prowling the sands, it’s not yet within. It’s also not yet seen, depicted only by an arm swatting into frame and, for the rare POV shot, a completely blue screen. (Folks, in just three years’ time, cinematographer Janusz Kaminski would go from blue to black and white … and win the cinematography Oscar for Schindler’s List.)

Soon, David witnesses a young man and woman grappling with the creature. Following a fruitless attempt at subjugation by boomerang, the man dies, but David pledges to watch after the poor sap’s sister, Ariel (Clare Hoak, Cool World). Not even a day passes before Ariel thanks David with a guided tour of her uterus.

Ariel does not afford the terror within this same pleasure; it simply takes her from behind — but tastefully, y’know, because Stevens shows us just one thrust. Later, at the lab, when she’s scanned for pregnancy, we get a hilarious animation of a lone white sperm (David’s) peacefully flagellatin’ its way into her egg … momentarily followed by one black sperm (the terror’s), spikes and all, aggressively shoving in for sloppy seconds. The resulting infant is so hideous, not even principled YouTube influencers would hesitate to rehome it.

Somewhere between the crawling in the air ducts, the “Come to Papa!” quip and especially the reveal of the monster looking like a grown man dipped in marinara and sporting a head hernia, you realize you’re watching a simultaneous rip-off of Alien and Aliens … and then asking yourself, “Why?” —Rod Lott

Get it at Amazon.

Originally to be directed by Tobe Hooper, this John “Bud” Carlos joint stars a haggard William Devane as Roy, a disheveled ex-con who, thankfully, happens to be a bestselling author. When his daughter is ripped limb from limb walking home late one night, it starts a killing spree down the scummiest streets of Los Angeles, which is most of them.

Besides routinely harassing the mostly useless cops on the case, Devane also finds time to bed reporter Cathy Lee Crosby, so at least he’s got his priorities straight, right? Meanwhile, the killer slices up a few more pedestrians, always with a low-rent light show beforehand, which tells me that this murderer ain’t a typical Angelino.

Turns out he’s actually an alien and, in the Star Wars-esque prologue, he’s here to test out his extraterrestrial camouflage, or something to that effect. Either way, Predator 2 did it better, which is really nothing to brag about.

While the space monster, when we finally get to see it, is less than impressive — most of the time he’s just got laser eyes to differentiate him — but at least that’s something entertaining. Otherwise, for the rest of the running time, it’s just a somewhat all-star cast of Devane, Crosby, Richard Jaeckel and Keenan Wynn — and look, it’s Casey Kasem as a coroner! — standing around arguing, flirting or both.

And let’s not forget the strange subplot about an aging psychic named — and named only — De Renzy.

According to Cardos, in the original Hooper treatment, The Dark was supposed to be about a mentally handicapped shut-in who roams the streets murdering whoever gets in his way after his abusive parents die in a fire; here, it’s just about a space monster, with no real rhyme or reason for the killing, with the exception of that bit about camouflage.

To be fair, that other bit sounds terrible as well. —Louis Fowler

Get it at Amazon.