That’s the plot of this 1957 film from director Bert I. Gordon. Chicago-haters will love this film, especially the scene where General Morris Ankrum announces that he has no choice but to nuke the entire city. If you don’t hate Chicago, you can still enjoy watching Peter Graves somehow retaining his dignity while dealing with the threat of giant locusts.
For the record, I’m enough of a country girl that I fully understand just destructive locusts can be. That said, when it comes to their appearance, they’re not the most intimidating creatures out there. The worst that can be said about them is that they look like really ugly grasshoppers. A giant grasshopper still looks like a giant grasshopper. And, needless to say, locusts do not attack humans.
(I’m also enough of a Southern girl that I can remember collecting the locust exo-skeletons that would always show up in the fall and winter.)
Here is the ludicrous and entertaining BeginningoftheEnd!
The 1957 film, Beginning of the End, is perhaps the ultimate horror film for people who dislike Illinois.
Because it’s a Bert I. Gordon film and Gordon took his “Mr. Big” nickname seriously, it deals with giant monsters. In this case, the monsters are a bunch of locust who ate all of this radioactive grain that was being stored in a silo. The locusts grew to giant size and then they went on a rampage.
Fortunately, the rampage appears to be localized to Illinois. Apparently, the locusts have enough respect for state boundaries that they know better than to hop into Indiana, Missouri, or Wisconsin. Instead, the locusts take out the farming community of Ludlow and then start making their way to Chicago, perhaps hoping to battle the Chicago Outfit for control of the city’s politics. Do they seriously think Mayor Daley is just going to sit back while a bunch of locusts overrun his city?
The government wants to cover up the locust rampage because they don’t want to risk a mass panic in the 47 states that they actually care about. (This film came out before Alaska and Hawaii joined the Union.) However, when enterprising reporter Audrey Aimes (Peggie Castle) comes across the remains of Ludlow and discovers that the U.S. military has taken over the area, she is determined to discover what happened. She hooks up with Dr. Ed Wainwright (Peter Graves), whose work in making food bigger led to the giant locust attacks in the first place. In most movies, Ed would shoulder most of the blame for the locust attack but Beginning of the End seems to understand that these things happen when you’re dousing food with radiation and then keeping the food in a poorly secured silo.
Of course, the main reason why it’s not Ed’s fault is that Ed is played by Peter Graves and seriously, who could blame anything on Peter Graves? Graves was one of those actors who could deliver even the silliest of dialogue with a straight face and he certainly gets to do that in Beginning of the End. He seems to be taking the situation seriously, even if no one else is.
One reason why it is a little bit difficult to take the situation seriously is because it’s about giant locusts. Now, make no mistake about it. I’m enough a country girl that I know how destructive locusts can be. The problem is that locusts may be destructive but they don’t look all that menacing. Even giant locusts just look like really ugly grasshoppers. This film uses a lot of rear projection and still photography to create the idea of giant locusts crawling over buildings and threatening the soldiers who have been sent to fight them. As is so often the case with Bert I. Gordon’s film, there’s a definite charm to the cheap special effects. But still, locusts are locusts.
Chicago haters will love the scene where General Hanson (Morris Ankrum) announces that the locusts have only left him with one option, the drop an atomic bomb and wipe the city off the face of the Earth. Fortunately, Ed is there to suggest another solution. Good old Peter Graves. I don’t know what we would have done without him.
As a final note, I’ll just mention that the poster for this film is actually more exciting than the film itself:
The trio that brought you KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL – star John Payne, director Phil Karlson, and producer Edward Small – teamed again for 99 RIVER STREET, and while it’s not quite on a par with their film noir classic, it’s crammed with enough sex’n’violence to hold your interest for an hour and a half. Karlson’s direction is solid, as is the cast (including a knockout performance by Evelyn Keyes), and the camerawork of the great Austrian cinematographer Franz Planer gives it a wonderfully brooding touch of darkness.
The story itself is highly improbable yet highly entertaining: ex-boxer Ernie Driscoll (Payne), once a heavyweight contender now reduced to driving a cab, is married to ex-showgirl Pauline (the delectable Peggie Castle), who’s two-timing him with crook Victor Rawlins (slimebag Brad Dexter ). Ernie catches them making out through the window of the flower shop Pauline works at, and his PTSD is triggered…
A bunch of strangers sit in a bar. On the television, a blandly handsome anchorman delivers the news. He talks about foreign wars. He talks about domestic conflicts. One of the bar patrons asks the bartender to turn off the news. Who cares about all of that stuff? All he wants to do is have a nice drink before heading home to his cattle ranch. Can’t he just do that in peace? The bartender agrees and turns off the news…
That’s a scene that gets played out a lot nowadays. No one wants to watch the news. Certainly not me. I guess we all know that we should because it’s important to know what’s going on in the world and blah blah blah. But seriously, people who spend all of their time watching the news inevitably seem to end up going insane and ruining twitter. I’ve got no interest in doing that.
Here’s the thing, though. Invasion U.S.A. may open with a contemporary scene but it’s hardly a contemporary movie. Instead, it was made in 1952 and it serves as proof that we’re not the first Americans to get sick of watching the news and that our current crop of politically minded filmmakers are not the first to try to change our mind with heavy-handed propaganda.
Everyone at the bar has a complaint. The Arizona rancher resents having to pay high taxes just to support the defense department. The Chicago industrialist is upset that the government wants to use his factories to build weapons. Congressman Haroway (Wade Crosby) is a drunk. Socialite Carla Sanford (Peggie Castle) worked in a factory during World War II but she no longer follows the news. Newscaster Vince Potter (Gerald Mohr) is a cynic. Tim the Bartender (Tom Kennedy) is too busy selling cocktails to worry about the communists.
Only the mysterious Mr. Ohman (Dan O’Herlihy, who would later play Conal Cochran in Halloween III) seems to care. While holding a conspicuously oversized brandy glass, Mr. Ohman explains that he’s a forecaster. What’s a forecaster? A forecaster is … oh wait! There’s no time to explain it because the communists have invaded!
Everyone sits in the bar and watches as the news reports on the invasion of the U.S.A. (Everyone except for Mr. Ohman, who has mysteriously vanished.) In the tradition of all low-budget B-movies, the invasion is represented through stock footage. Lots and lots of stock footage. Planes drop bombs. Soldiers run out of a barracks. Cities burn.
When everyone leaves the bar, they discover that America has been crippled by people like them, people who never thought it would happen. Some of our bar patrons die heroically. (Not Tim the Bartender, though. He’s still making dumb jokes and cleaning beer mugs when the bomb drops.) Some of our patrons regret that they didn’t care enough when it would have actually made a difference. The industrialist discovers that, because he wouldn’t let the government take over his factory, he now has to take orders from sniveling little Marxist. The rancher discovers that taxis get really crowded when everyone’s fleeing the Russians. And others discover that better dead than red isn’t just a catch phrase. It’s a way of life.
Of course, there’s a twist ending. You’ll guess it as soon as you see Mr. Ohman with that brandy glass…
Invasion U.S.A. is often cited as one of the worst films ever made but I have to admit that I absolutely love it. I have a soft spot for heavy-handed, over the top propaganda films and they don’t get more heavy-handed than Invasion, U.S.A. There’s not a subtle moment to be found in the entire film. You have to love any film that features character authoritatively declaring that something will never happen mere moments before it happens. Best of all, you’ve got Dan O’Herlihy, playing Mr. Ohman with just a hint of a knowing smile, as if he’s as amused as we are.
Politically, this film is a mixed bag for me. The film argues that you should trust the government and basically, shut up and follow orders. I’m a libertarian so, as you can imagine, that’s not really my thing. At the same time, the villains were all communists and most of the communists that I’ve met in my life have been pretty obnoxious so I enjoyed the part of the film that advocated blowing them up. The only thing this film hates more than communists is indifference.
In the end, Invasion U.S.A. is a real time capsule of a film, one that shows how different things were in the past while also reminding us that times haven’t changed that much. Though the film’s politics may be pure 1952, its paranoia and its condemnation of apathy feels very contemporary.
(For the record, apathy is underrated.)
Seen today, what makes Invasion U.S.A. memorable is its mix of sincerity, paranoia, and Dan O’Herlihy. Unless the communists at YouTube take down the video, you can watch it below!
Through the Shattered Lens 