Beginning of the End is a 1957 sci-fi horror film about a female journalist investigating giant mutant grasshoppers.
Directed and produced by Bert I. Gordon (Empire of the Ants; The Food of the Gods; The Cyclops; plus many others) from a screenplay written by Fred Freiberger (The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms) and Lester Gorn.
The movie stars Peter Graves,Peggie Castle and Morris Ankrum.
The production was a direct outcome of the success of giant ants movie Them! (1954). The film is generally recognized for its “atrocious” special effects and is considered to be one of the most poorly written and acted science fiction motion pictures of the 1950s.
The typical ‘monster movie’ score was by Albert Glasser who composed over 200 soundtracks during his long career.
Plot:
An agricultural scientist (Peter Graves) has successfully grown gigantic vegetables using radiation. Unfortunately, the vegetables are then eaten by locusts (the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers), which grow to gigantic sizes and attack the nearby city of Chicago.
Newspaper photojournalist Audrey Aimes (Peggy Castle) accidentally stumbles upon Ludlow, a small town in Illinois, which has been inexplicably destroyed. All 150 people in the town are missing, and the evidence indicates they are dead. Incredibly, the local fields are also barren, as if a swarm of locusts had eaten all the crops.
Aimes suspects that the military is covering something up, and travels to a nearby United States Department of Agriculture experimental farm to learn what creature might have caused the agricultural destruction. She meets Doctor Ed Wainwright (Graves), who is experimenting with radiation as a means of growing gigantic fruits and vegetables to end world hunger. Doctor Wainwright reports that there have been a number of mysterious incidents nearby and that locusts have eaten all the radioactive wheat stored in a nearby grain silo…
“Risible in every department with special effects that would be truly unbelievable – except that they really do exist on film.” Alan Frank, The Science Fiction and Fantasy Film Handbook, Batsford, 1982
Cast and characters:
Peter Graves … Doctor Ed Wainwright
Peggie Castle … Audrey Aimes
Morris Ankrum … General John Hanson
Than Wyenn … Frank Johnson
Thomas Browne Henry … Colonel Sturgeon
Richard Benedict … Corporal Mathias
James Seay … Captain James Barton
Trailer:
Free to watch on YouTube [1080p Premium]:
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