Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Deliciously bad, this has a few thoughtful moments where reporter Peggie Castle declares in her cynical manner that you never get used to seeing the aftermath of disaster, and in this film, she gets to see her share of horror too with men bigger than her being eaten by the likes of Jimminy Cricket! There's no wishing upon a star for survival here because these giant grasshoppers/locusts/crickets (whatever you want to call them) have an outrageous appetite and are now flooding the south side of Chicago. But before you break into the Ray Price song or "Bad Bad, LeRoy Brown", check out this ultra campy 1950's B science fiction anti-nuclear power horror film where the ideals of giant strawberries and tomatoes created by nerdy scientist Peter Graves lead to the creation of giant blood thirsty creatures. When first seen, the giant cricket comes upon its unknowing victim and gets the audience's attention, not because it is scary, but because its poor victim is so pathetic and lovable. But as lovable as the victim is, that doesn't make this movie any better as the army of crickets stalk the army of man, not leaving any trace of them, just as they had done with the town first attacked by them that has the over crowded population of 132.While I can see some people putting this on their list of the worst movies ever made, I call this one a guilty pleasure, which up there with the atomic turkey in "The Giant Claw" is one of the silliest looking movie monsters ever. Photos of Chicago buildings (one of which looks like downtown Manhattan's Municipal Building) with the bugs walking on them are so blurry that the so-called special effect is entirely obvious. While I expected to see one of the bugs walk off of the building altogether, there was only a hint of that. There is the repeated shot of the crickets falling off of the building after being shot at, the panic in the streets and parks as public announcements are made of not to panic, interrupted by the loud chirping and sudden arrival of the big pesky bugs. Certainly, the producers and director knew that this would be panned and considered one of the worst movies of the year (or ever), but they knew that they could make a quick bug, oops, I mean buck, and even today, it is deliciously funny even if there was a panic of how nuclear power and other discoveries of the time could have major impacts on things on our planet we take for granted. When this is all said and done, it is an enjoyable guilty pleasure, leading to a clinch for the leading man and lady that prior to that fade-out had not even been hinted at.

The giant bug sub-genre started in the 1950's. We had ants in Them! (1953) and a spider in Tarantula(1955). Here we have one of the weakest of them all. I am talking about Bert I Gordon's giant grasshopper 1957 movie Beginning of the End. The film is about an agricultural scientist (Peter Graves) who has successfully grown gigantic vegetables using radiation. Unfortunately, the vegetables are then eaten by locusts, which grow to gigantic size and attack the nearby city of Chicago.The "special effects" are as cheap as it is. While the grasshoppers are roaming around Chicago, the buildings they climb up are just photos. The rest of the movie they are green screened. One of the things that help a giant bug movie work, is that the bug is somewhat fearful even when small. Such as ants, spiders, scorpions, mantises, but grasshoppers are not that fearsome.

In the Fifties before he got into Fury and then Mission Impossible Peter Graves was the king of science fiction. Some good, some incredibly bad. He did four films that could be classified in that genre, Red Planet Mars, It Conquered The Earth, Killers From Space, and the last one The Beginning Of The End. The last might arguably be regarded as the best of them.The town of Ludlow, Illinois overnight has its population vanish and its population disappears. A big security blanket is tossed over the situation, but Peggie Castle who is a Lois Lane type reporter discovers the source of the story. Castle is actually the best one in the cast besides those overdeveloped grasshoppers. She's beautiful, determined, and incredibly smart in pursuing her investigative reporting.Her trail leads to a Department of Agriculture station where Peter Graves is a scientist trying to grow big fruit and vegetables not unlike Captain Nemo in Mysterious Island. And like Mysterious Island, some of the animal life get big too. In this case it's some grasshoppers who feast on some atomic isotopes and develop like the ants in Them.The Beginning Of The End is a cheaply made science fiction film, but I rather like it. Mankind is really at a loss to stop these things unless Graves finds a way. Otherwise the locusts who have overrun Chicago may have Chicago blown up with them if Ike gives the OK for a nuclear bomb on an evacuated city.Will Chicago be saved? You have to watch The Beginning Of The End to find out

May I proceed!!?? If you review the "image Entertainment"/"Peter Rogers Organization" -"Special Edition, in the "commentary format of the movie; one of the daughters, of "Bert I Gordon", states that the movie was shot in "the valley"!! Do you really care what "Leonard" thinks??? I really enjoyed the movie then, and when I view it, from time to time, I still enjoy it!! "imdb", DO YOU AGREE?? In the commentary format of the movie, i enjoyed the "quirky" sense of humor, of the commentator! In the beginning, I rebelled against "commentaries", I saw them as an "intrusion", to be avoided!! Now my attitude is completely different. I look for them!! This is a damn good!! movie!!