Beginning of the End
          
Director: Bert I. Gordon
Year: 1957
Rating: 4.0
Insects really get a bad rap with these Giant Monster films. Ants, praying mantises, scorpions, leeches, spiders and now the gentle grasshopper are on the verge of destroying the world. I am surprised children weren't out in their backyards killing all the insects they could find. Of course, there are a lot more of them than us. Which is a problem if they grow to gigantic size. In nearly all cases because of something we did to enable that in our desire for more knowledge. Usually having something to do with radiation. That is again the case here. Not from an atomic blast but from a scientific experiment gone bad. This is a super cheapie from Bert I. Gordon who produced a bunch of them in the 50s - King Dinosaur, Cyclops, The Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs Spider and Attack of the Puppet People. There was a place for those types of low budget genre films back then - not so much now - the same film would be packed with stars and CGI and cost a fortune. These were low-budget films that found a home in drive-in-theaters and small towns.




It begins nicely with a teen couple making out in a convertible with rock and roll on the radio - and the girl looks up and screams - a good scream. Then the town of Ludlow, Illinois is wrecked and the population of 150 vanishes. The state National Guard is brought in, but no one knows what happened. Reporter Audrey Aimes (Peggy Castle) is determined to find out - and having no doubt seen a few of these monster films zeroes in on a government agricultural research lab that uses radiation to grow enormous strawberries and such. It is run by Dr. Wainwright (Peter Graves) and he says no way.



She insists that he and his deaf-mute colleague come with her to visit a warehouse of wheat that was demolished - and we finally get our first sighting of a Giant Grasshopper as it snacks on the colleague. This is where the film has come in for a lot of laughter and insults. The special effects of them are mainly real grasshoppers using rear projection, super imposed or filmed on pictures of buildings. We have been spoiled by technology - but even in 1957 I would guess the audience was laughing. But it is a decent story that basically turns into a military film as the troops try and stop the grasshoppers from invading Chicago. As a last resort they are ready to nuke the city. Hopefully, the Cubs were playing away.