“Good morning, Mr. Phelps. The man you are looking at is Bert I. Gordon, otherwise known as Mr. B.I.G. because of his initials and his compulsion for utilizing “rear projection” to create giant creatures for his films. 
His project at this time involves an agricultural scientist growing giant vegetables to end world hunger with radiation. Grasshoppers/locust eat the vegetables and turn into mutant giants that swarm the city of Chicago. Your mission, Jim, if you decide to accept it is to star in this film and save the possible destruction of mankind. As always, the secretary of SAG will not hold it against you. This tape, but not the movie, will self destruct in 5 seconds. Good luck, Jim.”
Tom Cruise Would Find This Mission Impossible
Long before Tom Cruise took over the franchise there was Peter Graves as Jim Phelps, leading the IMF Impossible Mission Forces.
Before that, he acted in a lot of “b-movies” to try and establish himself and not capitalize on the success of his famous brother James Arness (Gunsmoke). This movie is one of them. Upon it’s release it was a profitable movie and in some markets came in 2nd to a Disney reissue of Bambi.
Somewhere, subliminally, “Beginning of he End” kind of throws a 50’s shade of biblical reference os a plague of locust and replacing Egypt with Chicago, USA. The heightened scare of nuclear war, radioactivity in the 50’s add to that. What’s interesting as well, it starts off where experiments are being tried to address world hunger, something that we, in this modern world, have yet to get a grip on. So, there is a bit more going on beyond the surface. Then the locust begin to devour the vegetables and celluloid.
In “Beginning of the End”, Graves does his best playing it straight as a scientist against the cheesy special effects, that Bert I. Gordon is legendary for, of giant grasshoppers with only the RMF (Ridiculous Mission Forces) to help. In the 60’s-70’s he led the IMF on Mission Impossible and was in another “disaster” movie “Airplane”.
The rest of the cast, Peggy Castle, Morris Ankrum, are kind of Okay. The real stars are the giant grasshoppers and vegetables. The vegetables help lure you into a state of vegetation for the rest of the movie.
Peter Graves... Slay
To learn more about Peter Graves, please watch Crow T. Robot’s dissertation on the early life of Peter Graves.
The movie is actually kind of a fun watch and pretty humorous in perspective. The over the top, gigantic low budget special effects fits right into to defining the genre of the 50’s. Grasshoppers running across still photographs of the Wrigley Building in Chicago blown up out of proportion are hilariously bad. Before CGI there was Bert I. Gordon, Mr. B.I.G.
I asked my friend who watched this with me to rate it 1-10 on a cheese wheel and she gave it a 10.
It’s so bad it’s good.
It’s worth checking out.
