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DVD Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the End
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
Review(s): DVD Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the End
"Hi. I'm Peter Graves..."
I can see MST3K co-writer/performer Trace Beaulieu was just itchin' for the show to get a bad movie with Peter Graves in it so's he could do his impression of the "Mission: Impossible" star for all the world to see (and be annoyed with). And, thanks to the future A&E Biographer starring in "The Beginning of the End"-- which sounds a heckuva lot better than "Attack of the Giant Mutant Grasshoppers", which is what its title SHOULD have been-- the man you all know as Dr. Clayton Forrester and the voice of Crow T. Robot finally gets his wish. Check out the intermission sketch where Crow and his SOL cohorts rehearse an appallingly ponderous script about Peter Graves' college years at the University of Minnesota, and you'll see what I mean. Thanks to this downright dumb moment, I'm liable to deck the next guy who utters, "Hi. I'm Peter Graves" in that trademark voice...
Annoying impressions aside, "The Beginning of the End" is one of the better flicks MST3K has taken upon itself to mercilessly goof on. There's plenty of laugh-out-loud jabs and more than a few so-dumb-they're-funny groaners (Like Tom referring to some store mannequins as being "scared stiff"). This one also has a few gags that take a second to sink in before you say, "D'oh!" and find yourself in disbelief that you didn't catch on to it sooner than ya did. Then there's the opposite type of gag, the one you can see comin' from a mile away (like Tom's shouting out the lyrics of a Monkees song in response to something a bit character utters). But even though you just knew it was comin', you simply can't believe they actually said it!
The only real drawback I saw in this presentation was the last third of the film before the climax, where our beloved SOL denizens were havin' a hard time coming up with anything particularly hilarious. Fortunately, the buildup to the climax (where the locusts invade Chicago) managed to wrangle a rather festive array of zingers from relative newcomer (at the time) Mike Nelson and the droids. Especially fun is the locusts attacking postcards of various Chicago skyscrapers, a little something the terrible trio would reenact with their vacation postcards at the end of the show.
Bottom line: While I usually find MST3K funny, its hilarity tends to be inconsistent. For every couple of really good yuk-wranglers, there's one that's mediocre, and one that's hardly funny at all. Fortunately, this one definitely falls into the "yuk-wranglers" category, albeit not as big a "yuk-wrangler" as the terrible trio's cut-down of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". None the less, this one's highly recommended.
Also of interest: this platter not only contains the MST3K rendition of "The Beginning of the End", it also has the uncut version of the flick on the flip side so's you can do your own goofing! I tried my hand at it, and I must admit I'm not quite as good at it as Mike and the `Bots are. `Course, even without any snide commentary or razor-tongued put-downs, the flick's pretty danged funny all on its own. Sadly, the "choose which version you want to watch" feature is absent on the more recent MST3K DVD releases...
`Late
Grasshoppers crawl across postcards, and MST3K is there
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.
Saving the world from giant grasshoppers
A review by the students in ENT 201, Insects on Film (Clemson University, Clemson, SC) Spring 2005
When better to meet your new man than while saving the world from GIANT radioactive grasshoppers! That's what happened to Audrey Ames in Beginning of the End. The black and white movie, produced in 1957, takes place in a small Illinois town called Ludlow, near the big city of Chicago. The main character, Audrey, is a persistent reporter who discovers a new and interesting story on her way to write about a lackluster flying demonstration. On her way to the flying demo, she is stopped at a roadblock in the town of Ludlow, Illinois. It seems that the town has been mysteriously destroyed overnight! Following a lead, Audrey goes to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and meets with the project director named Dr. Ed Wainwright in order to find out more about what happened. Dr. Wainwright tells Audrey about a wheat factory that was demolished in the same area before the destruction of Ludlow. Ed, Audrey and Ed's co-worker, Frank, go to investigate the abandoned grain bins. While they are there, a locust comes from the woods and eats Ed's co-worker. They finally realize what is destroying the towns and eating the people-although it's a little too late for poor Frank Johnson.
Determined to resolve the problem, the military enlists the help of Dr. Wainwright, who tries to find a sound frequency that mimics the sound grasshoppers make before they attack. The viewer of this film will be held in utter suspense, until, at a climatic moment, Dr. Wainwright discovers the right frequency and saves the city of Chicago from the military's impending drop of an atom bomb. The sound is broadcast from a boat in a lake outside of Chicago and the sound attracts the grasshoppers to the lake. As the grasshoppers follow the luring sound, they eventually end up in the lake where they meet a watery death. The city of Chicago is safe and everyone lives happily ever after (except, sadly, those who were eaten alive by the radioactive grasshoppers).
While this movie has extremely entertaining moments, such as when the grasshoppers scale the skyscrapers of Chicago looking for food-the movie, in general, is a B attempt at science fiction. Also, the movie was produced during the 1950s, resulting in minimal attempts at realistic special effects. The special effects are entertaining at best and add humor more than substance to the movie. The viewer also might be left with several questions after watching this movie-like why can't the National Guard protect the citizens from grasshoppers? Or, why is it more funny than tragic when Dr. Wainwright's deaf/mute assistance gets eaten alive by a grasshopper?
On a scientific or scholarly level, the movie has several errors. The most important error, in the entomological sense, is the noise that the grasshoppers make throughout the movie. To make the noise that they did in the movie, they would need wings. In the movie though, the characters say that the grasshoppers could not fly because they didn't have wings. Also, the scientist indicates that the giant vegetables were produced through radioactivity, which allows for photosynthesis to occur both day and night. For photosynthesis to occur, light must be present, thus raising the question of how the vegetables could continue to expand during the darkness of night. The inability of the grasshoppers to burn in the fires set by the military reflects an error as well. In reality, grasshoppers are highly flammable because of their wax-like coating. Finally, the plot as a whole is completely unrealistic and so bizarre that the movie should be placed in the comedy (opposed to science fiction) genre. While Clemson University research may have led to the evacuation of mole crickets from golf course greens, using technological concepts similar to those presented in the movie, the likelihood that radioactive grasshoppers would eat hundreds of people is improbable.
Beginning of the End is an amusing movie to watch! The acting is traditional of the sci-fi movies of the era. The special effects are mediocre, but the humor, in retrospect, is delightful. If you are a fan of cheesy sci-fi suspense movies, give this flick a try! You will not be disappointed. Who knows-maybe you'll learn something that could save the world the next time we are attacked by radioactive BUGS!
Related DVD's Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the End
Nothing captures the peculiar pastiche of the pop-cultural zeitgeist like Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K to fans). The formula is simple: subject a hapless temp worker, Mike Nelson, and his robot friends, Tom Servo and Crow, marooned in space to the worst B, C, even Z-grade movies imaginable and record the results. On The Wild World of Batwoman, they quip through a movie summed up best by Crow: "It looks like they just put a whole lotta movies in a blender and turned it on really fast!" The plot of the movie is hapless at best, inexplicably puncuated by bikini-clad "Batgirls" go-go dancing with guns (Mike quips: "That's 40 pounds of butt in pants with a 30-pound capacity."). The episode starts with a '50s educational short on student cheating that is so dour in... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Jerry Warren DVD Release Date: Released the 30 January 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Mystery Science Theater 3000 experienced a changing of the guard with this fifth-season episode. Departed series creator and lead Joel Hodgson was replaced by head writer Mike Nelson, playing a hapless temp named... Mike Nelson, who was sent into space to cover for Hodgson's escape. The opening credit sequence and title theme (warbled by Nelson) were also new, but the show's basic premise--poking fun at atrocious B movies--remained the same.
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This farewell episode for Joel Hodgson is a sentimental favorite but even more worth it for the hilarity spawned by our captured Satellite of Love friends. The movie centers on the hapless, big lug cop named Mitchell (Joe Don Baker), who fights the rich and powerful drug-dealing bad guys. Along the way, Mitchell finds himself investigating murder, falling "in sex" with Linda Evans, helping an elderly woman like a good son, and telling a bothersome wisecracking kid to buzz off. Match that with clothing and music from 1975 and you've got prime fodder for the biting remarks of Joel, Crow, and Tom Servo--which, of course, they take advantage of handily and in abundance. Mitchell has a few quiet areas but these are spotty, and when Joel and his mechanical friends start ... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Andrew V. McLaglen DVD Release Date: Released the 20 November 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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