Unfortunately, the vegetables are eaten by locusts (the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers), which quickly grow to a gigantic size and attack the nearby city of Chicago.

Beginning of the End is generally known for its "atrocious" special effects, "and yet," writes reviewer Bill Warren, "there is something almost compellingly watchable about this goofy little movie".

[4] The film opens with newspaper photojournalist Audrey Aimes accidentally stumbling upon a small town (Ludlow, Illinois) which has been inexplicably destroyed.

She meets Dr. Ed Wainwright, who is experimenting with radiation as a means of growing gigantic fruits and vegetables to end world hunger.

Wainwright and Aimes begin to track down the source of the mysterious occurrences, and quickly discover that the locusts which ate the grain have grown to the size of a city bus.

[5] In September 1956, AB-PT (sometimes also called "Am-Par") announced the formation of a movie studio, and revealed a slate of six films a year in January 1957.

[12][19] Three days later, AB-PT announced that Don C. Harvey, Morris Ankrum, Pierre Watkin, Ralph Sanford, and Richard Benedict had also been cast.

[22] Larry Blake, Duane Cress, James Douglas, Eileen Jannsen, John Kranston, Ann Loos, and Jeanne Wood were added to the cast a few days later.

[23] Ankrum, Henry, and Seay were cast because they usually played military men in B movies, roles they portrayed in Beginning of the End as well.

[34] Shooting took place on the Republic Pictures backlot at 4024 Radford Avenue in Los Angeles, California (built by Mack Sennett and now home to CBS Studio Center).

"[35] He also had praise for actress Peggie Castle, and said he felt privileged to be working with an actor of Morris Ankrum's stature.

[37] So Gordon relied heavily on split screen, static mattes, and rear projection effects for the film.

[17][21] Gordon purchased 200 non-hopping, non-flying live grasshoppers in Texas (which had recently seen an outbreak of a species of exceptionally large locusts) for the film.

[21][37][38][39][40] But when he attempted to bring them into California for filming, state agricultural officials required that every single one of the animals be inspected and sexed.

[7][45][46] It played as part of a double feature with The Unearthly (a film based loosely on 1932's Island of Lost Souls and 1956's The Black Sleep), another AB-PT production.

[21] The week Beginning of the End opened, Gordon began shooting his next feature film, The Amazing Colossal Man, for AIP.

[8][56] A more recent assessment, however, concludes that the film taps more deeply into 1950s Americans' worries over invasive species and growing unease over pesticides (like DDT).

Calling the movie "derivative", the industry trade publication said, "Summarizing the plot of Beginning of the End is like rehashing the story of several dozen similar films.

"[48] One review pointed out that Gordon didn't even bother to hide the mountains in the background of the shots (Central Illinois is mostly flat prairie land).

Critics say the film covered almost the same ground as the far superior monster movie Them!,[56] and it is clear that Gordon merely wanted to "cash in" on giant bug craze rather than come up with a story that was fresh and creative.

One modern critic said "the story is adequately paced, the acting is engaging, and we still get a thrill seeing the Army guys empty their cartridges at the unstoppable insects.

"[42] Another modern reviewer found the screenplay effective, especially the beginning: "As in Deadly Mantis, the complete disappearance of the victims is especially chilling, as is the notion of 150 men, women and children being devoured overnight while in their beds.

"[61] Producer-director Bert I. Gordon said he did not care whether reviews were bad; what mattered was whether people went to see the film: "The movie audience these days consists almost entirely of teenagers.

The movie was parodied in the 11th season of the hit animated television program The Simpsons in the episode "E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)."

In that episode, Homer Simpson grows giant vegetables using radioactive materials, and automatically assumes that any animal eating the food will become monstrous.

[62] Homer even attempts to recall Beginning of the End as evidence of his claim, although he misremembers the title as Grasshopperus and the star as Chad Everett (another blond, all-American actor similar to Peter Graves).

[62] The film was the basis of an episode of the satirical cable television show Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) during its fifth season.