company: AB-PT Pictures Corp.
year: 1957
runtime: 76′
country: United States
director: Bert I. Gordon
cast: Peter Graves, Peggie Castle,
Morris Ankrum, Than Wyenn,
Thomas Browne Henry, Richard Benedict,
James Seay, John Close
writers: Fred Freiberger
and Lester Gorn
cinematographer: Jack A. Marta
music: Albert Glasser
special effects: Bert I. Gordon
and Flora M. Gordon
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Critics online and otherwise tend to relish pounding the films of Bert I. Gordon into the ground – I’m happy to say that I’m not among them. That’s not to say that there isn’t considerable ammunition of Gordon’s own making just waiting to be catapulted in his direction. His productions were universally cheap [only a handful utilized anything approaching a B-budget], featured generally awful special effects [dominated by Gordon's own cost effective realism-be-damned travelling matte process], and the scripting – well, you get the idea.
Whatever the quality of his productions may be, I like Gordon, who made quite a career for himself in re-imagining H. G. Wells’ socio-political science fiction novel The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth into a handful of exploitation films [most notably his 1976 eco-horror effort THE FOOD OF THE GODS]. Gordon seemed forever thinner of wallet than of scope, but that didn’t stop him from trying time and time again. I find it doubtful that anyone else in the business, then or now, could have taken a few thousand dollars, two hundred grasshoppers, and some still photographs of Chicago and made a film as reasonable or as entertaining as BEGINNING OF THE END.
The screenplay for BEGINNING OF THE END is sourced not from Gordon himself, but from Fred Freiberger [SPACE: 1999, RAWHIDE] and Lester Gorn, and is more or less a rehashing of ideas from THEM!, TARANTULA, and WAR OF THE WORLDS ’53. The story follows reporter Audrey Aimes [Castle], who falls into a big story on her way to cover a jet unveiling at Chalute AFB – something is destroying the towns of east central Illinois, and the local military officials are clueless as to what it is. Enter entomologist Ed Wainwright [Graves] who, along with Aimes and his short-lived deaf / mute sidekick Frank [Wyenn], discovers that locusts irradiated by his food experiments for the Department of Agriculture have grown to people-eating proportions and are wreaking all manner of havoc.
The Illinois National Guard is powerless to stop the hordes of truck-sized grasshoppers, and the big wigs in D.C. put the matter of disposing of the beasts into the entirely capable hands of General Hanson [Ankrum, who made appearances in the creature classics KRONOS, THE GIANT CLAW, and ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU that same year]. But all of Hanson’s offensive operations fail and the locusts are soon marching on Chicago, leaving him no recourse but to evacuate the city and nuke it into prehistory. Can Wainwright and Aimes come up with a more ecologically friendly solution to the invasion before it’s too late?
BEGINNING OF THE END holds a special place in my heart due largely to my having spent a rather traumatic year living in the area of east-central Illinois where the majority of its early action is said to take place. Watching a film in which familiar towns rarely [if ever] mentioned elsewhere are nibbled into oblivion, one by one, by a swath of over sized bugs was a welcome catharsis. [No offense to my readers in the area - it was just a very bad year]
Being the budget production that it was, none of BEGINNING OF THE END looks to have actually been shot in Illinois, and the scenic hills of southern California make a pretty poor substitute for the endless fields of feed and seed corn that actually exist there. Chicago is here in name only, and is represented by a few barren sets and a load of still photographs – many of which have been enlarged and covered with grasshoppers. It’s still confusing as to why Chicago was chosen as the location at all, with Los Angeles presumably so close by.
It is, of course, impossible to really make a THEM!-scale thriller on the budget Gordon was allotted, though he did his best and cut corners in some interesting ways. There is one amusing moment where a character stands in a darkened, barren sound stage yelling into his radio about mayhem, death, and destruction – none of which we can see since. Another features a soldier directing traffic that we only hear. Given the often superfluous library footage incorporated throughout the picture, you can’t help but wonder why a stock shot of military traffic couldn’t be included here, where it would have been useful.
BEGINNING OF THE END, like so many other exploitationers from the time period, has too little plot to fill its running time and suffers as a consequence. The lacking material is obvious from the get go, as the film begins with an extended shot of a cop car travelling up a road as the main theme [which had just finished playing over the opening credits] loops again. We later get ostensibly same shot, this time of Aimes driving up the same stretch of road, as the same music plays. But most of the time padding is accomplished through the random inclusion of mismatched library footage, much of which is looped – once again – with Albert Glasser’s theme music. It certainly doesn’t help that the harsh militaristic score Glasser provides here is one of the lesser of his career.
By far the most infamous aspects of this, the third of Gordon’s giant creature features, are its special effects. The aforementioned travelling matte process proves most troublesome, rendering the regular sized grasshoppers into huge, blurry, ghostly white and partially see-through monsters. Unfocused rear process shots are also in abundance, and are about as effective as the travelling mattes. Footage of a handful of locusts crawling over enlarged photographs of Chicago landmarks fare the best, which isn’t saying much. Props are due to Gordon for creating all of the visual effects himself [as he has stated in interviews, it was impossible to hire a professional effects house to do the work because of considerable budgetary limitations], even if the monsters that result remain as patently un-frightening as a handful of plain-old grasshoppers.
Still, BEGINNING OF THE END isn’t all bad. The screenplay by Freiberger and Gorn manages some intelligent moments and professional performances from genre regulars Peter Graves, Peggie Castle, and Morris Ankrum keep things from being any more ridiculous than necessary. Gordon even manages one genuinely chilling moment in which the cast falls silent, the steadily growing sound of the locusts announcing their approach on Chicago. The rest is fun enough, making the film a good 80 minute diversion if nothing else.
BEGINNING OF THE END has been released on DVD twice thus far – both discs are out of print and fetching high prices online. The first is the 2001 Rhino release of the MST3K episode, which features the original film as an extra on the flip side of the disc. The second is a special edition released by Image Entertainment in 2003. The latter offers superior image quality [a clean 1.66:1 widescreen, anamorphic versus Rhino's older open matte 4:3 transfer] but is strangely missing a few key moments – the opening shot of the approaching car is trimmed considerably, and a travelling matte of a locust chasing a military transport has vanished all together [though the base shot of the transport riding off is still present]. The reason for the discrepancies is beyond me, and whether or not they are enough to warrant choosing one disc over the other is up to the discretion of the buyer. Image’s special edition includes a commentary [by Gordon's wife Flora and daughter Susan] as well as a still gallery – the Rhino disc is extras free.
This film has gotten a lot of grief over the years, most of it warranted. Personally I love it, and it’s certainly better than either of Gordon’s previous monster pictures [KING DINOSAUR and THE CYCLOPS]. I say see it – highly recommended.
