In today’s on-demand world of streaming services, we feel like we can watch any movie with a click of a button. But that’s not true. There are always films that elude us despite our best efforts to find them.
For me, that’s Beginning of the End (1957). I was a kid when I first saw the awesomely titled sci-fi horror film that I call “the big grasshopper movie.” (The insects are called locusts and grasshoppers in it.) My obsession with big-bug flicks kept it among my favorites despite not seeing it for decades. I could picture the giant locusts scaling a skyscraper and soldiers trying to defeat them.
Those are the “good parts,” of course, the scenes we remember in creating our own personal highlight reel of film magic. Mine would also include a giant tarantula standing over a house (Tarantula), an octopus wrapping itself around the Golden Gate Bridge (It Came from Beneath the Sea) and human-sized crustaceans crunching victims within their claws (Attack of the Crab Monsters).
Those three well-known horror films are easy to find on television, streaming services and home video so I’ve seen them countless times. That’s not true for Beginning of the End. It’s been tops on my watch list for years, yet it’s remained elusive. Until now.
When it popped up recently on Tubi (a great place to find classic horror and sci-fi), I couldn’t believe my eyes! Finally, I could marvel at the giant locusts of my memories. But instead of hitting “play,” I hesitated.
Why? Have you ever revisited a childhood favorite, only to see how poorly it aged? We all have. Time can be cruel, especially to B-movies like those made by Bert I. Gordon, the director of Beginning of the End.
But when I saw it a few weeks later, I realized my memories didn’t let me down. I’m not saying it was great. It was exactly as expected: The effects weren’t good, stock footage was obvious and the story was predictable. Yet I can’t wait to watch it again because it’s everything fans of low budget creature features want.
Beginning of the End is a quintessential example, filled with the B-movie tropes that make us fans. We get mysterious disappearances, newspaper headlines promising impending doom, an educational film to explain things and creatures running amok among civilians. There’s a well-meaning scientist (played by Peter Graves) whose experiments have created unexpected and dire consequences. And for the requisite familiar face, we get a bonus of three: Morris Ankrum, Thomas Browne Henry and James Seay who all once again play versions of military leaders as they do in other sci-fi films.
Best of all is a fantastic female lead character with brains, beauty and determination, rare in horror movies.
Here’s a bit about the story.
* * * * *
Peggy Castle plays Audrey Aimes, a respected journalist with a reputation for being on the frontlines of news as it happens. She stumbles upon a roadblock outside the town of Ludlow, Ill., where there’s an unusual military presence. Her instincts tell her something is wrong even before her camera is confiscated.
That’s because the small town of Ludlow has been destroyed. Everything is crushed and mangled and all 150 inhabitants (plus animals) are missing without a trace. The curious Audrey won’t listen when she’s told to “go away,” instead she uses her investigative skills on a hunch that radiation could be involved.
At the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Illinois Experimental Station, she meets entomologist Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves) and botanist Frank Johnson (Than Wyenn), who lost his hearing after an accident. They are working to help farmers and to end world hunger, an altruistic endeavor we’ve seen with scientists in films like Tarantula and The Fly. The fruits of their labor – created with small doses of radiation – are evident in overgrown tomatoes and strawberries that are impressive in size but aren’t edible. (They’re working on it.) There’s also issues with pesky insects getting into everything. We know where this is going long before the scientists.
The trio visits a grain silo to investigate an earlier incident where a million barrels of wheat are missing and the silo looks like it was “hit by a battering ram from the inside.” As they ponder what could have done this, a chirping sound swells into an ear-splitting screech that poor deaf Frank can’t hear. He doesn’t stand a chance against the approaching danger.
Unable to save Frank, Ed and Audrey rush to warn others and return with 10 soldiers who make grasshopper jokes until they come face to “fron” with the overgrown insects. Retreat is the only option.
* * * * *
“We may be witnessing the beginning of an era that will mean the complete annihilation of man – the beginning of the end,” Ed says in one of those dire statements that lend gravitas to these movies.
And with that proclamation, Ed and Audrey are off to Washington, D.C. to convince military leaders of the danger. They won’t believe it without proof which comes as the locusts descend on Chicago. Though the military is finally on high alert, it has never fought an enemy like this. Guns don’t work. Nor do tanks. Fire is ineffective. Industrial-strength pesticides specially made to combat the insects are useless. The desperate solution: drop an atom bomb on Chicago. Umm, let’s rethink that last idea for a minute.
B-movie fans can forgive a lot with these films, including low-budget special effects. There are indeed moments when they’re bad in Beginning of the End. Rear projection was used at times for the giant insects, sometimes making them translucent and blurry, especially in close-ups. Then there are scenes when real grasshoppers were filmed walking on photos to create the illusion they are on buildings. (That’s what you call creative thinking – and it doesn’t always look as bad as it sounds.)
But there are other times when the insects are terrifying and you can believe – if just for a few seconds – that they really are 8 feet tall and coming at you. In those moments, the childhood magic remains through the spectacle of imagination.
A 1957 review in the Chicago Tribune called out the film’s shoestring budget. The “magnified insects” wouldn’t fool anyone, the reviewer wrote, “but youngsters will probably think it’s great stuff.”
That last sentence is true. I was a youngster when I first saw Beginning of the End years after its initial release and I thought it was “great stuff.” Thankfully that kid still lives inside of me.
Notes on Bert I. Gordon
When director, producer, writer and special effects maven Bert I. Gordon died in 2023, the headline on his New York Times obit fittingly referred to him as the “auteur of mutant monster movies.” From the 1950s through ‘70s, he was the creative force behind such low-budget sci-fi/horror films as King Dinosaur (1955), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), The Spider (1957), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), Village of the Giants (1965), Food of the Gods (1976) and Empire of the Ants (1977). There’s a reason why the filmmaker was called Mr. B.I.G.
– Toni Ruberto for Classic Movie Hub
You can read all of Toni’s Monsters and Matinees articles here.
Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in her blog, Watching Forever and is a member and former board chair of the Classic Movie Blog Association. Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and led the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can find Toni on Facebook, Twitter (@toniruberto) and Bluesky (@watchingforever.bsky.social).
