Product Details

• Actors: Peter Graves, Peggie Castle, Morris Ankrum, Than Wyenn, Thomas Browne Henry
• Directors: Bert I. Gordon
• Writers: Fred Freiberger, Lester Gorn
• Producers: Bert I. Gordon
• Format: Black & White, Color, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Rhino / Wea
• VHS Release Date: March 16, 1999
• Run Time: 76 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6305320454
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,466 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Leapin' locusts! It's giant-insect time again, only this time the radiation from an agricultural experiment has turned Chicago into a breeding ground for gargantuan grasshoppers. It's all courtesy of '50s sci-fi schlockmeister Bert I. Gordon of The Amazing Colossal Man fame, and with Peter Graves as the nominal bug-busting hero, it's no wonder the guys at MST3K decided to roast this 1957 turkey on their popular TV show. But which is funnier, the movie itself or the skewering it gets from the snickering silhouettes of Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo? No matter, because you can have it both ways on this dubious DVD--plain or nutty! Some of the MST3K gags are cleverly twisted for trivia buffs (as when a cop approaches a wrecked car and Tom Servo says, "Uh... Miss Mansfield?" or when the sight of falling grasshoppers yields the ad-lib "Carry on our businesssssss..."). There are more hits than misses, and the movie's every bit as awful... er, great... as it sounds! --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We've got movie sign...and giant grasshoppers!!!!, August 11, 2000

By 

John DiBello (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - The Beginning of the End [VHS] (VHS Tape)

One of my favorite MST3Ks: a great example of the mid 1950s "atomic monster" genre, with laughable special effects. Giant mutant grasshoppers attack the mountains and deserts of central "Illinois," before moving on to destroy Chicago by crawling up picture postcards of the Wrigley Building and being lured into Lake Michigan by electronic grasshopper mating calls made by a young Peter Graves ("Hi, I'm Peter Graves. Tonight on 'Biography'..."), ironically the nuclear scientist responsible for the whole giant-mutation thing, not to mention his deaf-mute assistant Frank's gruesome dismemberment and death at the chomping mandibles of one seriously big mother of a locust. America's finest fighting force (the Illinois National Guard) is powerless against this giant hopping threat. Another 1957 monster classic from infamous science fiction filmmaker Bert I. Gordon, the undisputed master of movies about giant animals attacking California cities masquerading as the midwest. Don't miss the riveting post-opening credits scene: an apparently endless car-approaching sequence (Mike: "Folks, we'll start the movie as soon as our ride gets here."), and the incessant, earsplitting, marching-band music soundtrack. An early Mike Nelson episode, it's a great example of classic MST3K: bad sci-fi flick, hilarious riffing on the film by Mike and the bots, including a *seriously* weird host segment where rubber grasshoppers attack postcards Mike just happens to have lying around. I actually saw this one week before I moved to Chicago, which is all-but-destroyed in the movie, and it seriously creeped me out for a while, though I've never been able to drive by Champaign-Urbana without looking over my shoulder for giant grasshoppers.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Grasshoppers crawl across postcards, and MST3K is there, April 24, 2005

By 

Daniel Jolley "darkgenius" (Shelby, North Carolina USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the End (DVD)

Hello. I'm Peter Graves. Granted, my Peter Graves impersonation works much better when you can actually hear me do it, but you can't talk about MST3K's hilarious send-up of The Beginning of the End without following in Crow's footsteps and doing constant Peter Graves impressions. This is classic MST3K, the fifth experiment featuring Mike Nelson as the human test subject on the Satellite of Love. Those of us Joel loyalists who feared for the future of the show needn't have worried, as Mike took his new role in front of the cameras and flew with it. He was, of course, helped greatly by movies such as this one. Any Bert I. Gordon film featuring music by Albert Glasser was basically made to be riffed, and Mike and the Bots really have at it here.

The film itself features gigantic locusts laying waste to the state of Illinois, and the finest military force in the world finds itself thoroughly licked by the onslaught. Of course, things don't start out with a lot of excitement. This is a Bert I. Gordon movie, after all. The very first shot after the opening credits shows us a road with a vehicle approaching in the distance - way back in the distance, so far back you sit there and sit there wondering if anything is actually going to happen before you even spot the car. Then, Gordon throws us right into a big mystery; it seems the town of Ludlow, Illinois, has been destroyed, its population of 150 vanished into thin air. The National Guard's there, but they aren't talking, not even to famous journalist Audrey Ames (Peggy Castle). As the story begins to emerge, though, she joins up with Dr. Wainwright (Graves), a local entomologist, and quickly discovers that it's all Wainwright's fault. He's the one who was growing all the radioactive super-sized vegetables, which proved to be quite appetizing to locusts, and now there's a bazillion of the little buggers grown to immense size and destroying everything in their path. Surprisingly, the military folks don't immediately embrace this story of a plague of gigantic locusts, but they soon learn just what they are up against - and fail miserably when they try to take the critters out. Emerging out of the, ahem, world-famous Illinois mountains, the horde of mega-locusts make a, ahem, bee-line for Chicago - apparently, the locusts are Cubs fans who just can't take bear the thought of another season without a pennant. Perhaps the very fate of humanity rests in Peter Graves' hands, and his ultimate solution involves giving a locust a lie-detector test. Run for your lives!

Once the locusts get to Chicago, Bert I. Gordon goes a little crazy showing grasshoppers crawling all over postcards (I mean, buildings). There's no way the guys at Best Brains could have resisted riffing such a film. The fun doesn't stop in the theater, either. Poor naïve Mike sneaks an unscheduled peak at the Mads in the middle of the film - and it's not pretty. You also get Tom Servo's unique one-man comedy show inspired by The Beginning of the End, the unveiling of Dr. Forrester's super-comfy Re-comfy Bike, and - best of all - a little production of Crow's screenplay all about Peter Graves' years at the University of Minnesota. All of this comes together to make experiment # 517, The Beginning of the End, one of the MST3K commercial releases you really shouldn't do without.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Any MST3K is a classic,but this is slightly average, July 1, 2001

By 

William F. Parrish "Dante_Mosier" (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the End (DVD)

When introducing,Mst3k to DVD,it seems to me that Rhino could've chosen better episodes foe it's initial batch,like "Manos: The Hands Of Fate",or "MItchell" istead of this good but not classic episode.But,I'll take what I can get,because ANY episode is worth having on DVD,with the great picture and sound,plus the original version of the film.This episode features a typically laughable Peter Graves showcase,this one about GIANT GRASSHOPPERS who seem to have a insatiable attraction to POSTCARDS.Hearing his smooth,unctious recitations of the absurd dialogue,you realize he was born to host cable bio documentary shows.Mike and the 'bots have a grand time with 'ol Pete in the host segments,with Crow presenting his screenplay for The Peter Graves Story,which focuses on his years at the University of Minnesota,and includes the line "I'm Peter Graves" over 400 times.Servo is non-plussed.This isn't among the very best MST3K's,but it is of coarse a must-have for devoted fans.