# Help ID the Sci-Fi Story! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 7, 2008, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635 "2008-11-07T14:57:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/1 "2008-11-07T14:57:55Z")
Anybody remember this one? It was your typical low-budget 1950’s “B” movie. A lab-coated eccentric scientist’s experiments go awry, and a flock of giant bugs (grasshoppers, ants, spiders, etc.) are loosed upon the countryside. The huge bugs are laying waste to Chicago, and the Army is called out to destroy them! After a few tanks are destroyed by the bugs, a general decides that the only thing that will stop them is the atomic bomb. Meanwhile, the dotty scientist’s beautiful daughter falls in love with the general’s aide…does this ring a bell? ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/2 "2008-11-07T15:06:50Z")
Is the aide a handsome guy who comes up with the solution? Was an eggplant involved? ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/3 "2008-11-07T15:09:15Z")
1.) This isn’t serious, is this? 2.) If it is, was it a story (I could see someone doing this) or a movie? Your Op doesn’t make it clear. 3.) If it’s a movie, you should know that the _ur_-1950s Monster Movie was **the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms** , with innovative special effects\* by Ray Harryhausen. It was ostensibnly based on Harryhausen’s pal Ray Bradbury’s short story “The Foghorn”, that appeared in the Satuirday evening Post, but that was an after-the-fact rationalization. Bradbury’s story kinda resembled the already-in-process screenplay, and they’d get brownie points for "basing’ the movie on a Post story. Bradbury later rewrote the story as a play, which was performed many times. > **[The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) ⭐ 6.6 | Horror, Sci-Fi](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0045546/)** > > 1h 20m | Approved So the first "cheap Monster Movie of the 1950s wasn’t really cheap. It wasn’t even a cliche, since this was the first time all those elements came together (they hadn’t appeared together in print before. I know – I’ve looked.) And its low-class imitators were a while in coming. 1957 was the really big spike in low-budget bad Mopnster Flicks – four years after TBf20KF. \*The film marks Harryhausen’s first use of Dynamation/Dynarama/“reality sandwich” which enabled him to dispense with the laborious (and expensive) practice of miniature-building and glass painting used in King Kong and such flicks, and turn out TBf20KF on a modest budget. ---
**Author:** ![nootlin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/49beb7/32.png) [@nootlin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nootlin)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/4 "2008-11-07T15:38:04Z")
This is a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 movie I think… ---
**Author:** ![nootlin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/49beb7/32.png) [@nootlin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nootlin)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/5 "2008-11-07T15:48:09Z")
Beginning of the End… if it’s just grasshoppers. I’m not sure about the Chicago angle. ---
**Author:** ![rowrrbazzle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rowrrbazzle/32/414_2.png) [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/6 "2008-11-07T20:07:09Z")
Yes, _Beginning of the End_ = Chicago + atomically mutated grasshoppers. No other bugs, though, IIRC. [Beginning of the End (1957) - Plot - IMDb](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050177/plotsummary) And I did catch a bit of it on MST3K’s treatment. ---
**Author:** ![NoCoolUserName](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/5fc32e/32.png) [@NoCoolUserName](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NoCoolUserName)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2008, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/7 "2008-11-07T23:08:04Z")
Isn’t that the one with the “turn your radios up as loud as they can go” quote? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2008, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/help-id-the-sci-fi-story/471635/8 "2008-11-08T00:24:57Z")
> [@rowrrbazzle](#): > > Yes, _Beginning of the End_ = Chicago + atomically mutated grasshoppers. No other bugs, though, IIRC. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050177/plotsummary](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050177/plotsummary) > > And I did catch a bit of it on MST3K’s treatment. ooh, I have to get that on MST3K. It was one of our favorites at the U of I. Especially when the shots of the grasshoppers march to Chicago had mountains in the background.