MST3K Review

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517 - BEGINNING OF THE END (RHINO DVD & VHS)

Genre: Low Budget ’50s Monster (1957, B&W)

Synopsis: The movie opens on a couple making out at lover’s lane, when the girl sees something and screams. (…no, she doesn’t see that!) Next, local police find the couple’s mangled car and, soon after, find an entire town destroyed. The Illinois National Guard takes over and so an attractive Blonde Reporter arrives to cover the story. She soon discovers that the nearby Department of Agriculture research lab is messing around with radioactive materials (Hmmm, maybe, just maybe, they have something to do with the destroyed town.) The Blonde goes to the research lab and meets Peter Graves, who is working on a project to use radioactivity to grow giant fruits and vegetables. Of course, they have a “small” problem with bugs, such as snails and grasshoppers (hint hint), getting into the lab. The Blonde Reporter convinces Peter Graves and his deaf-mute assistant Frank to go out with her to investigate some destruction. At a destroyed warehouse, Peter Graves’ expert eye comes in handy in figuring out exactly what happened when he watches a giant grasshopper eats mute Frank, who can’t scream…. freaky. (“Giant superimposed Grasshoppers! Of course – that explains everything! Oh well, back to the lab.”) Peter Graves and the Reporter talk the skeptical National Guard in going out to investigate and, after the giant superimposed Grasshoppers munch down on a few weekend warriors, they’re finally convinced. Peter Graves is now sure that there are “countless numbers” of Grasshoppers (uhhh, Peter, can you at least give a ballpark number?) and, if not stopped, they will be the beginning of the end of mankind. (Hey, now the title finally makes sense!) Peter Graves and the Blonde Reporter go to D.C. and try to convince some Pentagon generals to get involved. They fail to convince the generals, but the giant superimposed Grasshoppers overrun the National Guard and another town, so the general change their minds. The giant superimposed Grasshoppers next overrun the U.S. army and are now threatening Chicago and no amount of RAID can stop them! The best the military can do now is nuke the Windy City. Peter Graves, however, comes up with some sort of plan that might, just might, work and not require Chicago to be nuked. First, he captures a giant superimposed Grasshopper. Next, he’ll play woo-woo-woo sounds at the Grasshopper until he finds just the right woo-woo-woo sound to drive it crazy. There’s only a short amount of time before Chicago is glowing – literally – and, at the last moment, Peter Graves finds the right woo-woo-woo sound (which, incidentally, sounds a lot like the Them! sound). The plan works like a charm, and soon all of the giant superimposed Grasshoppers are attracted by the woo-woo-woo sound to a postcard of a building. From there, the Grasshoppers are then attracted out into Lake Michigan, where they all drown. With the giant superimposed Grasshopper threat gone, Peter Graves will now show the Blonde Reporter that the grasshoppers aren’t the only thing his radioactive research made grow larger.

Host Segments:

Prologue: M&tBs sing Yellow Rose of Texas when the get a wrong number on the Hexfield from an annoying lady (played by Mary Jo Pehl)
Segment One (Invention Exchange): The Mads invent the “Re-Comfy-Bike”; M&tBs invent new playing cards to add to a standard 52-card deck
Segment Two: Mike decides to see what the Mads are busying doing mid-movie (a big mistake!)
Segment Three: Crow presents his Peter Graves screenplay
Segment Four: Tom gives his stand-up act based on the movie
Segment Five (End): The ’Bots discuss the movie, while Mike reads from postcards and re-enacts some of the movie’s special effects; the Mads are boxing

Stinger: National Guard Sergeant saying “All right, men, into the woods.”

Don’s Review: Mr. B.I.G. is at it again with this cheesy ’50s Monster movie. Of course, the effects aren’t even on the reasonable ’50s level of something like Them! Instead it’s just ordinary grasshoppers poorly blown up to look big and it looks extremely cheesy. I re-watched this episode for the first time in a couple of years, and I have to say…this one repeats very well! I like this episode a lot more now than I did the first time I saw it. The movie is still just as bad as ever, but the riffing really stood out for me this time. Although the riffing does start off a bit slowly, it really picked up by the time Peter Graves shows up and stays great for the rest of the movie. The host segments are fairly good, overall, but only the one in which M&tBs check up on the Mads mid-movie really stood out as a hilarious segment. As an episode readily available from Rhino, I wholeheartedly recommend this one, even to MST newbies.
DVD Details: The Rhino DVD version of this episode includes the unMSTed version of the film as an extra (…though I wasn’t brave enough to attempt that endurance test). But, except for playing some of the MST3K Theme (the Joel version?!??) in the background of the non-animated main menu, there really isn’t much else in the way of extras. (Well, it does have short snippets of the theater segments of three other episodes available on DVD, so I guess that’s something.)

Don’s Rating: