The beginning of the end (film, 1957)

A journalist from the newspaper Audrey Ames arrives in the town of Ludlow in Illinois , which was inexplicably destroyed, and all the inhabitants of the town went missing, and evidence indicates that they are most likely dead. Crops in the surrounding fields were destroyed, as if a swarm of locusts had been there. Ames suspects that the military is hiding something, and sets off for a nearby USDA experimental farm to find out what could have caused such damage to agriculture. There she meets Dr. Ed Wainwright, who is experimenting with radiation in an attempt to grow giant fruits and vegetables with the naive goal of feeding the whole world. Wainwright reports that there were several mysterious incidents nearby, and that earlier ordinary locusts had eaten all the experimental radioactive wheat, stupidly stored in a nearby granary . Then he and Ames begin to search together for the source of this destruction of vegetation in the fields, and discover that the locusts that ate the wheat in that very storehouse grew to the size of trucks. These monsters first ate all the crops in the area, and then became addicted to eating human flesh, and now they are tracking people to feast on them.

It also becomes clear that these creatures are heading to Chicago . Wainwright and Ames meet with General Hanson and his subordinates to devise a way to deal with monsters. But even the shelling of critters is ineffective against them, there are too many of them to end all in one fell swoop. Later, the US Army comes to the rescue. But monsters by this moment have already invaded Chicago and are beginning to feed on its inhabitants, and to destroy city buildings.

General Hanson concludes that the only way to mass exterminate monsters is to use nuclear weapons and destroy Chicago. But Wainwright knows that locusts like warm weather. He concludes that he could lure the locusts into Lake Michigan . There cold water will immobilize them, and they will drown. The bait itself will be the signal generated by the electronic device. The plan is put into effect, and the monstrous locust dies in the lake, but Wainwright and Ames still wonder if the whole world will be threatened by such monsters in the future.

• 200 grasshoppers were used to shoot the film, but they began to eat each other and by the end of the shoot no more than a dozen remained.

• The Beginning of the End at the Internet Movie Database
• The Beginning of the End (English) on allmovie