Beginning of the End

Bert I Gordon.....you gotta love this man. He was the maven of cheapo science fiction films in the 50's and gave us a lot of laughs and fun from his efforts. Don't get me wrong....I think his films are worth watching. There was always a message of some kind, albeit ludicrous and his "special effects" were of the superimposed, see-through type.....but still you get a kick out of viewing people running from oversized insects, amazing colossal men, etc. This film, like most during the 50's deals with mutation of some life form (here it's grasshoppers) into giant beasts who wreak havoc on the world.....in this case Chicago or postcards of Chicago as in the building climbing sequence at the finale. Peter Graves, who seemed to be stuck in this type of film for several years, does a serviceable job as the hero but probably wished he could be someplace else. Peggy Castle plays it straight as the gal pal and some other faces that we all know pop up in supporting roles. But it's the grasshoppers who steal the show.....crawling around on pictures, flying through the air and apparently eating people alive. We salute you, Bert I. Gordon!!! You made late night TV viewing worthwhile!

The film that helped usher in Hollywood's giant bug craze, this isn't half-bad. Special effects are pathetic even for the time, but the story is gripping enough and the acting first-rate. Peter Graves plays a scientist working on food growth via radiation. Grasshoppers get at these plants and grow to the size of a bus. They find humans much tastier than their usual fare. They invade Chicago after tearing up the countryside, and it's a race to the finish to see whether anything can be done to stop them before the Army nukes Chicago. Morris "Colonel Fielding" Ankrum is a grumpy general, and Peggie Castle is a reporter investigating the story. Lots of fun. We never see the monsters actually come into contact with any of the humans they devour, but the closeup facial shots of various actors about to be eaten are priceless.

Beginning of the End was one of the scariest movies I ever saw. I saw it at the age of nine at our local first-time A-flick theater, the State. When it ran at the second-run B-flick theater, the Rialto, I dragged my little brother Jeff to see it. He watched it from between the seats. We used to sit up and watch Shock Theater and we knew scary when we saw it.

What a lot of people miss today, is that the popular science magazines at the time "Beginning..." came out were full of speculation about using radiation to enhance crops and livestock, just like the experiments in Peter Grave's agricultural station in the movie. I also remember that Bert Gordon's earlier movie, King Dinosaur, came out after a close approach to earth by an asteroid was in the news. These movies were ripped fresh from the headlines.

Yes, the low budget values are low. There's the ponderous pseudoWagnerian Albert Glasser music Da-DUM-da-da-da-DA-DUM motif for reporter-driving-down-road, cop-driving-down-road, reporter-stopping-at-road-block, etc. We see the mountains of Illinois that look suspiciously like southern California (at least they did not use Bronson Canyon in this one (they didn't did they?).)

Yes, they do use the same stock footage three times for rear projection behind characters "driving" down the road, but, hey, they DO tint the stock footage for the nighttime driving scene.

But the woman reporter, Peggy Castle, is not only a good looker, but a strong woman who is treated as a equal by most of the men, who show her respect. She is a tough cookie like Beverly Garland in It Conquered the World. Not a typical 1950s bimbo or weak sister. I always thought Peggy Castle's character taught Peter Grave's character how to be a man.

And when Morris Ankrum is in uniform, you know however dicey the situation, right and good will triumph in the end. Even in the Beginning of the End.

This movie does have a message: if you park on a lonely road and engage in illicit teenage necking, you will be eaten by giant mutant grasshoppers.

Thank you Bert I Gordon for making films which nobody else (except maybe Roger Corman) would dare to make, and for making them so definitively that no one would ever dare to remake them.

The Beginning of the End actually has a promising beginning. It follows Audrey Aimes (Castle) a young woman reporter who runs into a military roadblock and begins snooping around by introducing herself to the operation's CO, who happens to have read some of her wartime coverage and is willing to cooperate to a point. Weird and inexplicable happenings have been reported in a nearby town (site of the roadblock). In fact, we discover, the entire town has been wiped out. When Audrey finally gets to briefly tour the site, we are shown some footage of tornado devastation which is supposed to be the result. Then she meets Peter Graves (playing Peter Graves playing an entomologist working with radioactive plants). there is a decent enough amount of back-story, and the characters are all likable and interesting, but then theatrical disaster strikes - in the form of a totally ludicrous plot.

Two words - giant grasshoppers. And they are split-screened (poorly) into stock footage or scraps from some heavily edited war movie. I .... just can't go ... on.

As the absurdities continue to unfold, you will be impressed by the absolute seriousness with which the cast portrays their characters, and positively blown away by the enormously long cinematographic (un)dramatic pauses as we watch hordes of soldiers marching by in different directions with nothing going on around them, giant out-of-focus grasshoppers climbing up postcards of skyscrapers and sometimes slipping on the glossy surface, and 1-2 minute-long fixed frame shots of cars approaching from miles away.

I love giant monster movies, but this is definitely not one of the better ones. Still, it's harmless, more intelligent than the average sex comedy and more relevant than the usual political campaign.

This is one of the most enjoyable of the 1950s "big bug" movies. Filmed in 1957, in the middle of my favorite sci-fi era, this film enjoys a better than average cast than you would expect for B science fiction.

People begin to disappear in the surrounding communities outside Chicago. Photographer/journalist Audrey Aimes, portrayed by the lovely Peggy Castle, stops to visit Dr. Wainwright, the Dept. of Agriculture scientist who has used radiation on his plants to make them larger, only to discover that grasshoppers have feasted on them, thus making an army of giant sized locusts. This sounds pretty lame by today's standards but this was standard fare for 1950s science fiction, in the days when we were scared to death of having a nuclear weapon dropped on us and being taken over "from within."

After the discovery of what has happened and why, the rest of the story deals with what to do before the grasshoppers destroy Chicago. Fortunately for all, this did not happen. I won't give the ending away be will provide a hint: View 1963's Day of the Triffids.

Reviewers have not been kind to this film and perhaps rightfully so. However, within the context of the preposterous story and extremely limited budget, its not so bad. Beginning of the End starred Peter Graves, a sci-fi regular of that time in his pre-Mission: Impossible days and whose brother, James Arness, was riding high as Marshall Dillon in television's Gunsmoke. (You may recall that Arness starred in 1954's Them!, about huge ants terrorizing Los Angeles. This was the film that started the big bug craze). Peggy Castle was cool and calm as the female lead and was a forerunner of sorts to today's' strong woman in action films. And, this was yet another film of many whereas Morris Ankrum played a military general.

Special effects were not too good even for that era and are downright atrocious by the standards of today. We see grasshoppers walking upon photos of various places in Chicago and the super imposed shots are of very poor quality. The storyline stretches even the keenest imagination, as we are led to believe that Chicago can be 100% evacuated within 24 hours, and this with thousands of homeless refugees from the outlying communities camping out in the inner city!

Even so, Beginning of the End possesses the low budget charm that subsequent eras have not been able to duplicate. This is one of those films that is fun to watch and is the sole reason one should do so. Saturday night late is the best time. I like to view it alone and recall a far simpler time in my life and our world at large. At least, the times seemed simpler. Perhaps they were not and that may be what films such as these were all about.