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Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the EndRating:
Release Date: 30 January, 2001 Retail Price: $19.98 Sorry, this product is not currently available. Cast: Complete Cast (15 total) |
Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Beginning of the End Reviews
"Hi. I'm Peter Graves..."
I can see MST3K co-writer/performer Trace Beaulieu was just itchin' for the show to get a bad movie with Peter Graves in it so's he could do his impression of the "Mission: Impossible" star for all the world to see (and be annoyed with). And, thanks to the future A&E Biographer starring in "The Beginning of the End"-- which sounds a heckuva lot better than "Attack of the Giant Mutant Grasshoppers", which is what its title SHOULD have been-- the man you all know as Dr. Clayton Forrester and the voice of Crow T. Robot finally gets his wish. Check out the intermission sketch where Crow and his SOL cohorts rehearse an appallingly ponderous script about Peter Graves' college years at the University of Minnesota, and you'll see what I mean. Thanks to this downright dumb moment, I'm liable to deck the next guy who utters, "Hi. I'm Peter Graves" in that trademark voice...
Annoying impressions aside, "The Beginning of the End" is one of the better flicks MST3K has taken upon itself to mercilessly goof on. There's plenty of laugh-out-loud jabs and more than a few so-dumb-they're-funny groaners (Like Tom referring to some store mannequins as being "scared stiff"). This one also has a few gags that take a second to sink in before you say, "D'oh!" and find yourself in disbelief that you didn't catch on to it sooner than ya did. Then there's the opposite type of gag, the one you can see comin' from a mile away (like Tom's shouting out the lyrics of a Monkees song in response to something a bit character utters). But even though you just knew it was comin', you simply can't believe they actually said it!
The only real drawback I saw in this presentation was the last third of the film before the climax, where our beloved SOL denizens were havin' a hard time coming up with anything particularly hilarious. Fortunately, the buildup to the climax (where the locusts invade Chicago) managed to wrangle a rather festive array of zingers from relative newcomer (at the time) Mike Nelson and the droids. Especially fun is the locusts attacking postcards of various Chicago skyscrapers, a little something the terrible trio would reenact with their vacation postcards at the end of the show.
Bottom line: While I usually find MST3K funny, its hilarity tends to be inconsistent. For every couple of really good yuk-wranglers, there's one that's mediocre, and one that's hardly funny at all. Fortunately, this one definitely falls into the "yuk-wranglers" category, albeit not as big a "yuk-wrangler" as the terrible trio's cut-down of "The Brain That Wouldn't Die". None the less, this one's highly recommended.
Also of interest: this platter not only contains the MST3K rendition of "The Beginning of the End", it also has the uncut version of the flick on the flip side so's you can do your own goofing! I tried my hand at it, and I must admit I'm not quite as good at it as Mike and the `Bots are. `Course, even without any snide commentary or razor-tongued put-downs, the flick's pretty danged funny all on its own. Sadly, the "choose which version you want to watch" feature is absent on the more recent MST3K DVD releases...
`Late
Grasshoppers crawl across postcards, and MST3K is there
Hello. I'm Peter Graves. Granted, my Peter Graves impersonation works much better when you can actually hear me do it, but you can't talk about MST3K's hilarious send-up of The Beginning of the End without following in Crow's footsteps and doing constant Peter Graves impressions. This is classic MST3K, the fifth experiment featuring Mike Nelson as the human test subject on the Satellite of Love. Those of us Joel loyalists who feared for the future of the show needn't have worried, as Mike took his new role in front of the cameras and flew with it. He was, of course, helped greatly by movies such as this one. Any Bert I. Gordon film featuring music by Albert Glasser was basically made to be riffed, and Mike and the Bots really have at it here.
The film itself features gigantic locusts laying waste to the state of Illinois, and the finest military force in the world finds itself thoroughly licked by the onslaught. Of course, things don't start out with a lot of excitement. This is a Bert I. Gordon movie, after all. The very first shot after the opening credits shows us a road with a vehicle approaching in the distance - way back in the distance, so far back you sit there and sit there wondering if anything is actually going to happen before you even spot the car. Then, Gordon throws us right into a big mystery; it seems the town of Ludlow, Illinois, has been destroyed, its population of 150 vanished into thin air. The National Guard's there, but they aren't talking, not even to famous journalist Audrey Ames (Peggy Castle). As the story begins to emerge, though, she joins up with Dr. Wainwright (Graves), a local entomologist, and quickly discovers that it's all Wainwright's fault. He's the one who was growing all the radioactive super-sized vegetables, which proved to be quite appetizing to locusts, and now there's a bazillion of the little buggers grown to immense size and destroying everything in their path. Surprisingly, the military folks don't immediately embrace this story of a plague of gigantic locusts, but they soon learn just what they are up against - and fail miserably when they try to take the critters out. Emerging out of the, ahem, world-famous Illinois mountains, the horde of mega-locusts make a, ahem, bee-line for Chicago - apparently, the locusts are Cubs fans who just can't take bear the thought of another season without a pennant. Perhaps the very fate of humanity rests in Peter Graves' hands, and his ultimate solution involves giving a locust a lie-detector test. Run for your lives!
Once the locusts get to Chicago, Bert I. Gordon goes a little crazy showing grasshoppers crawling all over postcards (I mean, buildings). There's no way the guys at Best Brains could have resisted riffing such a film. The fun doesn't stop in the theater, either. Poor naïve Mike sneaks an unscheduled peak at the Mads in the middle of the film - and it's not pretty. You also get Tom Servo's unique one-man comedy show inspired by The Beginning of the End, the unveiling of Dr. Forrester's super-comfy Re-comfy Bike, and - best of all - a little production of Crow's screenplay all about Peter Graves' years at the University of Minnesota. All of this comes together to make experiment # 517, The Beginning of the End, one of the MST3K commercial releases you really shouldn't do without.
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