Villain(s)  Giant grasshoppers

Actor(s):  Peter Graves, Peggie Castle, Morris Ankrum, Thomas Browne Henry

Brief Description  Beginning of the End is a 1957 sci-fi monster film directed by Bert I. Gordon and starring Peter Graves as agricultural scientist Dr. Ed Wainwright and Peggie Castle as journalist Audrey Ames. In the film, radiation experiments yield giant vegetables that are eaten by grasshoppers, causing them to grow monstrously large and march on Chicago.

Plot:
The movie opens with newspaper photojournalist Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle) driving through Illinois. She is stopped by a military roadblock and discovers that the entire small town of Ludlow, Illinois, has been utterly demolished overnight. All 150 residents are missing and presumed dead, yet there are no signs of a conventional explosion or natural disaster. Curiously, the local vegetation and crop fields are stripped completely bare. Suspecting a military cover-up, Audrey investigates a nearby U.S. Department of Agriculture experimental farm. There, she meets agricultural scientist Dr. Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves). Ed reveals he has been using radiation to grow massive, mutated fruits and vegetables to combat world hunger. Audrey puts the pieces together when Ed mentions that a swarm of local locusts recently broke into a silo and devoured his experimental, radioactive wheat.

Ed's assistant, Frank, goes to investigate a nearby storage area and is promptly attacked and eaten by a bus-sized grasshopper. The mutated, carnivorous locusts multiply rapidly and begin migrating across the Illinois countryside, consuming all plant life and humans in their path. The military, led by General John Hanson (Morris Ankrum), attempts to stop the creatures with standard artillery, but the artillery fire fails to halt the massive swarm. The giant insects eventually reach Chicago, scaling iconic landmarks like the Wrigley Building and spreading mass panic throughout the city. Desperate to contain the threat before it spreads across the continent, General Hanson and the U.S. Air Force prepare a drastic measure: dropping an atomic bomb on Chicago.

Horrified by the prospect of destroying the city, Dr. Wainwright scrambles for a scientific alternative. Realizing he cannot kill them physically in time, he decides to exploit their biology. He reproduces the mating call of a locust underwater using specialized audio equipment. The military sets up massive loudspeakers along the shore of Lake Michigan. The frequency successfully lures the entire swarm away from the skyscrapers and into the deep water. Unable to swim, the giant locusts drown, saving Chicago from both the monsters and nuclear annihilation. Bert I. Gordon could not afford miniature city sets due to budget cuts. Instead, he purchased live non-swarming grasshoppers from Waco, Texas, and filmed them crawling over still photographs of Chicago buildings.