It looks like more than a couple of the many locusts filmed for this B-movie were actually roasted, blown up, and drowned for the sake of art. If so, they died in vain.
"Beginning Of The End" is a Bert I. Gordon film that shows why people remember Roger Corman so fondly. At least with Corman, there was some offbeat element, a sparkle of wit, to liven up the dullest package. Here, the exercise is so rote and bland, you might as well be watching window cleaners or traffic cops doing their daily chores.
Peggie Castle and Peter Graves were getting enough work in the 1950s that they didn't need to show up here. She's a reporter hot on the trail of a big story, of an Illinois town that mysteriously became a desolate ruin overnight. He is an entomologist with the Department of Agriculture who is using radiation to enlarge crops (kids, don't try this at home) and wonders if something else has grown, too.
Yes, as it turns out. Locusts.
Imagine locusts grown to 20 times the size of a man. Can you picture that? Good. It helps if you can do that for about 90 minutes, because the special effects in "The Beginning Of The End" are little help. The film features superimposed real bugs running over postcards and stock footage, like something you could have done with an ant farm and a Super 8 camera when you were 12. Nothing on screen really seems like anything you couldn't have made at home, not even back in the 1950s.
Graves and Castle aren't well integrated into the story. They spend an absurd amount of time playing odd sounds for captive bugs and staring at oscillators while the city of Chicago blows up around them. The Army, in their infinite wisdom, determines the only way to save the Windy City is to nuke it. Graves ponders another possibility. Locusts seem to like one particular kind of noise. What if that could be used against them?
I wish I could say "Beginning Of The End" is so hokey its fun. The problem is its not bad enough that way to be worthwhile. It's not "Eegah!" or "Robot Monster" where the incompetence gives you something to think about and enjoy. It's strictly by-the-numbers drive-in fodder way past its sell-by date. Graves is especially dull, raising his eyebrow once in a while so you know he's the same guy who delivered that great line about gladiators, but offering little else. Castle does the best here, even showing off the world's first-ever car phone while giving orders to her boss, but she's supercargo way too early.
Even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang do little to make this worthwhile. Of course, by the time they got around to "Beginning Of The End," Mike Nelson had replaced Joel Hodgson and it was the beginning of the end for that show, too, but even in its glory days MST3K would have had little success skewering "Beginning Of The End." There's just nothing here to skewer.
"Beginning Of The End" is a Bert I. Gordon film that shows why people remember Roger Corman so fondly. At least with Corman, there was some offbeat element, a sparkle of wit, to liven up the dullest package. Here, the exercise is so rote and bland, you might as well be watching window cleaners or traffic cops doing their daily chores.
Peggie Castle and Peter Graves were getting enough work in the 1950s that they didn't need to show up here. She's a reporter hot on the trail of a big story, of an Illinois town that mysteriously became a desolate ruin overnight. He is an entomologist with the Department of Agriculture who is using radiation to enlarge crops (kids, don't try this at home) and wonders if something else has grown, too.
Yes, as it turns out. Locusts.
Imagine locusts grown to 20 times the size of a man. Can you picture that? Good. It helps if you can do that for about 90 minutes, because the special effects in "The Beginning Of The End" are little help. The film features superimposed real bugs running over postcards and stock footage, like something you could have done with an ant farm and a Super 8 camera when you were 12. Nothing on screen really seems like anything you couldn't have made at home, not even back in the 1950s.
Graves and Castle aren't well integrated into the story. They spend an absurd amount of time playing odd sounds for captive bugs and staring at oscillators while the city of Chicago blows up around them. The Army, in their infinite wisdom, determines the only way to save the Windy City is to nuke it. Graves ponders another possibility. Locusts seem to like one particular kind of noise. What if that could be used against them?
I wish I could say "Beginning Of The End" is so hokey its fun. The problem is its not bad enough that way to be worthwhile. It's not "Eegah!" or "Robot Monster" where the incompetence gives you something to think about and enjoy. It's strictly by-the-numbers drive-in fodder way past its sell-by date. Graves is especially dull, raising his eyebrow once in a while so you know he's the same guy who delivered that great line about gladiators, but offering little else. Castle does the best here, even showing off the world's first-ever car phone while giving orders to her boss, but she's supercargo way too early.
Even the Mystery Science Theater 3000 gang do little to make this worthwhile. Of course, by the time they got around to "Beginning Of The End," Mike Nelson had replaced Joel Hodgson and it was the beginning of the end for that show, too, but even in its glory days MST3K would have had little success skewering "Beginning Of The End." There's just nothing here to skewer.