The movie starts out with a couple of "out of control" teenagers necking in a car. Of course, for their horrid behavior (by 1950's standards), they end up being eaten by a grasshopper. Don't you hate when that happens. We find out that an entire town has been decimated and all the residents nowhere to be seen. Peter Graves has been experimenting with a radio-active plant supplement (like in "Tarantula") and is growing tomatoes and strawberries to enormous sizes. For the time being, they are inedible. For the time being, no one puts two and two together. An attractive reporter talks Peter and his deaf/mute assistant (done in by radioactivity) to the scene of a destroyed warehouse where tons of grain was stored. Well, the poor disabled guy gets eaten by a grasshopper. Now they need to convince the army guys that these bugs are around and find a way to stop them. This is a nicely set up monster movie. What pretty much diminishes it are the lousy special effects. The grasshoppers are nothing like the backgrounds, so they are obviously superimposed. At times we can actually see through them. It's also hard to figure out how big they are. Anyway, when they appear it begins to be laughable. Also, a lot of soldiers must have gone home after the war because the guys in this movie are utterly incompetent. Graves also runs the gamut of emotions from A to B. I get a kick out of this movie, but my standards aren't that high.

Hordes of mutant grasshoppers menace photographs of downtown Chicago.Now if termites had been the menace instead of garden variety grasshoppers, my rear-end might not have ached at the end. Okay, this drive-in special was never intended as Oscar bait. In fact, it hardly makes it as camp, what with all the needless travel time padding the 70-minutes. But you've got to hand it to Graves and Castle who give it their Z-movie all. Then there're those two lordly icons of 50's sci-fi together at last—Ankrum and Browne. No matter how bad the material, they always keep a straight face and stay employed. But come on producer-director Gordon, couldn't you have shown one of those awful scary grasshoppers devouring at least one guy. That way, we could at least have had an 'ick' factor. Otherwise, I kept wondering where the army kept their cans of Raid. As I recall, I was in the back of my teenage Chevy with a six-pack when I first sat through this special. On second viewing, I should have gotten a twelve-pack.

Beginning of the End (1957) ** (out of 4) Bert I. Gordon will always be remembered for his "giant" movies and this one here is without question one of his most infamous. In the film, a scientist (Peter Graves) and a reporter (Peggie Castle) must help the Army when hundreds of grasshoppers get into some nuclear material, which causes them to grow to gigantic sizes. Soon they start destroying entire cities and they have Chicago on their radar. Gordon's first "giant" movie is about as silly as its reputation would have you believe and thankfully there are some really silly moments that help keep the entertainment level rather high. Needless to say, the actual story here is quite weak and the explanation given as to why the insects are growing is rather silly and hearing Graves have to explain it should have gotten him a special Academy Award since he was able to get through the dialogue with a straight face. While I don't think the movie is as bad as its reputation there's still no way to defend what bad moments are here. I think the biggest burden is that the special effects are so lame that you can't help but laugh and it actually appears they get worse as the movie goes along. The most infamous moment happens at the end of the picture when the grasshoppers are climbing up a building and attacking our heroes who are inside. Now, in order to pull off this special "effect" the filmmakers decided to photograph some sort of postcard or perhaps poster and then have the grasshoppers walk on it. The effect doesn't work but to make matters worse is the now famous moment when one of the grasshoppers walks on the skyline making it obvious that the effect is fake. Another major problem with the effects is that the grasshoppers are always strange looking because they appear as a different color compared to everything else in the frame. I think most producers would have taken a look at these effects and pulled the plug but thankfully they stuck together as we at least got an at times funny picture out of it. At 72-minutes the film moves along well enough even though there are certain times when the film starts to grow cold. The performances are about what you'd expect from a film like this but Graves is at least giving an obvious effort. Just about the only real good thing you can say about this film is that the title is actually an effective one but it's too bad the material wasn't up to its level.

Bert I. Gordon really missed with this one. For a movie that features a band of giant, mutant grasshoppers terrorizing the Midwest, Beginning of the End is very dull. So dull in fact that I had to wake myself three or four times, reverse the movie, and start over again. With droopy eyes, I finally finished the 76 minute movie in 2.5 hours.It's disappointing really because I've really come to enjoy B.I.G.'s low-budget brand of movie-making. Even when his movies aren't very good in the traditional sense, they're still usually good for a laugh or two. Not here. Likewise, I've come to really enjoy the giant bug movies of the 50s. Whether it's an ant, a spider, or a mantis, these movies are a fun watch. I wish B.I.G. could have done the same with grasshoppers.