You won't be disappointed!

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

During the 1950s, there were huge numbers of giant creatures gone wild films. There were giant Gila Monsters, ants, bees, wasps, shrews...you name it. What most of these movies also have in common is that they were terrible--with lousy special effects and silly stories. One of the few exceptions was "Them!". While not high art, at least they created some cool giant fake ants for this one. Most of the rest of the films really dropped the ball and the scary creatures looked utterly ridiculous...and this is definitely the case with "The Beginning of the End"."The Beginning of the End" is a film that finds enormous grasshoppers that cannot be easily stopped thanks to the miracle of radiation! Entymologist, Dr. Wainwright (Peter Graves), and newspaper reporter, Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle), try to warn folks...but naturally no one will listen until it's almost too late.The biggest problem with this film is the utter cheapness of the production. Many of the scenes where the military attacks the creatures are laughable--sloppy in every possible way. It's very obvious that many of the clips are just stock military footage with grasshoppers sloppily placed on top of the footage. And, to make it worse, a very high percentage of the film consists of this footage. The scenes without the footage are actually pretty good and the folks do their best. It's hard to believe now, since he had a good career in films and television, but Peter Graves made several crappy sci-fi/horror films in the 1950s. So, if you find this film unintentionally hilarious, will you be in for a treat if you see him in "It Conquered the World" or "Killers from Space"...films so bad that "The Beginning of the End" looks almost like "Masterpiece Theatre" by comparison!!

This wouldn't be that bad a movie if not for the fact that it was a film that certainly seemed to have potential. I mean come on, it's a movie with the title of "Beginning Of The End"! There are so many possibilities for what you could do with this! Instead, I was majorly disappointed to find out it was just a movie about giant grasshoppers or insects or whatever they were. There are said to be hundreds of these things, but we only see about a dozen or so of them. The special effects are just embarrassing with obvious stock footage of the insects. It really does look like a post card at the end.I mean, I guess it's the first movie I've seen with giant locusts, although I'm sure there have been ones with regular sized swarming locusts. This looks more like it was made in the 1930's. No, to say that would be an insult to the classic "King Kong" movie. This is just odd to look at on all levels. I don't understand the end of this. They just go into the water and die? I really don't even care to look into it that deeply. *1/2

Hordes of mutant grasshoppers menace photographs of downtown Chicago.Now if termites had been the menace instead of garden variety grasshoppers, my rear-end might not have ached at the end. Okay, this drive-in special was never intended as Oscar bait. In fact, it hardly makes it as camp, what with all the needless travel time padding the 70-minutes. But you've got to hand it to Graves and Castle who give it their Z-movie all. Then there're those two lordly icons of 50's sci-fi together at last—Ankrum and Browne. No matter how bad the material, they always keep a straight face and stay employed. But come on producer-director Gordon, couldn't you have shown one of those awful scary grasshoppers devouring at least one guy. That way, we could at least have had an 'ick' factor. Otherwise, I kept wondering where the army kept their cans of Raid. As I recall, I was in the back of my teenage Chevy with a six-pack when I first sat through this special. On second viewing, I should have gotten a twelve-pack.

Beginning of the End (1957) ** (out of 4) Bert I. Gordon will always be remembered for his "giant" movies and this one here is without question one of his most infamous. In the film, a scientist (Peter Graves) and a reporter (Peggie Castle) must help the Army when hundreds of grasshoppers get into some nuclear material, which causes them to grow to gigantic sizes. Soon they start destroying entire cities and they have Chicago on their radar. Gordon's first "giant" movie is about as silly as its reputation would have you believe and thankfully there are some really silly moments that help keep the entertainment level rather high. Needless to say, the actual story here is quite weak and the explanation given as to why the insects are growing is rather silly and hearing Graves have to explain it should have gotten him a special Academy Award since he was able to get through the dialogue with a straight face. While I don't think the movie is as bad as its reputation there's still no way to defend what bad moments are here. I think the biggest burden is that the special effects are so lame that you can't help but laugh and it actually appears they get worse as the movie goes along. The most infamous moment happens at the end of the picture when the grasshoppers are climbing up a building and attacking our heroes who are inside. Now, in order to pull off this special "effect" the filmmakers decided to photograph some sort of postcard or perhaps poster and then have the grasshoppers walk on it. The effect doesn't work but to make matters worse is the now famous moment when one of the grasshoppers walks on the skyline making it obvious that the effect is fake. Another major problem with the effects is that the grasshoppers are always strange looking because they appear as a different color compared to everything else in the frame. I think most producers would have taken a look at these effects and pulled the plug but thankfully they stuck together as we at least got an at times funny picture out of it. At 72-minutes the film moves along well enough even though there are certain times when the film starts to grow cold. The performances are about what you'd expect from a film like this but Graves is at least giving an obvious effort. Just about the only real good thing you can say about this film is that the title is actually an effective one but it's too bad the material wasn't up to its level.