Deliciously bad, this has a few thoughtful moments where reporter Peggie Castle declares in her cynical manner that you never get used to seeing the aftermath of disaster, and in this film, she gets to see her share of horror too with men bigger than her being eaten by the likes of Jimminy Cricket! There's no wishing upon a star for survival here because these giant grasshoppers/locusts/crickets (whatever you want to call them) have an outrageous appetite and are now flooding the south side of Chicago. But before you break into the Ray Price song or "Bad Bad, LeRoy Brown", check out this ultra campy 1950's B science fiction anti-nuclear power horror film where the ideals of giant strawberries and tomatoes created by nerdy scientist Peter Graves lead to the creation of giant blood thirsty creatures. When first seen, the giant cricket comes upon its unknowing victim and gets the audience's attention, not because it is scary, but because its poor victim is so pathetic and lovable. But as lovable as the victim is, that doesn't make this movie any better as the army of crickets stalk the army of man, not leaving any trace of them, just as they had done with the town first attacked by them that has the over crowded population of 132.While I can see some people putting this on their list of the worst movies ever made, I call this one a guilty pleasure, which up there with the atomic turkey in "The Giant Claw" is one of the silliest looking movie monsters ever. Photos of Chicago buildings (one of which looks like downtown Manhattan's Municipal Building) with the bugs walking on them are so blurry that the so-called special effect is entirely obvious. While I expected to see one of the bugs walk off of the building altogether, there was only a hint of that. There is the repeated shot of the crickets falling off of the building after being shot at, the panic in the streets and parks as public announcements are made of not to panic, interrupted by the loud chirping and sudden arrival of the big pesky bugs. Certainly, the producers and director knew that this would be panned and considered one of the worst movies of the year (or ever), but they knew that they could make a quick bug, oops, I mean buck, and even today, it is deliciously funny even if there was a panic of how nuclear power and other discoveries of the time could have major impacts on things on our planet we take for granted. When this is all said and done, it is an enjoyable guilty pleasure, leading to a clinch for the leading man and lady that prior to that fade-out had not even been hinted at.

This movie has all the cliches. There's the scientist who is not only handy with a tommy gun but also starts giving orders to the military. There's the terrible dialogue. A soldier says "We found some guns, the kind people keep in houses". What?? There's even a guy who says "Worshington". And of course the giant grasshoppers can climb buildings. If you only see one giant bug movie, make sure it's not this one.

Still in the year of 1957, the year of the sci-fi thriller it seems. Its pretty clear to see that this movie came to be purely from the success of 'Them!' which revolved around killer ants. Although I really have no idea which giant bug movie was thought up first from the vast array of clones. Considering this is about giant locusts/grasshoppers, which are hardly terrifying really, leaves me to think this may have been all that was left to utilise after the obvious bugs like scorpions, mantis, slug-things etc...were all in production.So what's this all about you say? well let me see. A small town with all its inhabitants vanish, well the people vanish, the town is destroyed. Onto the case stumbles a young attractive journalist who smells a rat and starts to poke around. After much dialog and wondering around from place to place we finally meet up with the good looking Dr Wainwright who is experimenting with radiation on crops to make them bigger. Hmmm I wonder if this has anything to do with it. Why yes! low and behold grasshoppers managed to eat some of the infected crops and now they are as big as a barn. Standard procedure then requires that the army (national guard) be brought in to try and stop the giant bugs, which of course proves ineffective. Thusly we are draw into a tense situation as Dr Wainwright and his attractive journalist partner must come up with a devious plan to stop the mutant hordes.Basically this is a complete rerun of 'Them!' only with much worse effects. The actors are merely props for the movies giant bugs which clamber around over awkward models. The funny thing is, the giant bugs don't actually turn up for ages! not until the 27 minute mark. Up until that point the acting is actually pretty good strangely enough, you'd think this was a proper suspense movie. Both Peter Graves and Peggie Castle are very engaging in their respective roles. I wasn't sure which way Graves's character would go to be honest, kinda thought he might be some kind of loony scientist villain for a time. Castle of course does everything a woman would do in a 1950's B-movie, scream and look pretty, but she is also quite a strong character when it comes down to it. The only other character that stuck was Morris Ankrum as Gen. Hanson who came across as the stereotypical gruff military type with a buzz haircut, almost like a Jonah Jameson type character.Once the giant bugs appear everything goes downhill terribly I can't lie. Basically what they've done is enlarged rear projection footage of real grasshoppers against the live action of the actors. This, of course, is nothing unusual in these type of movies (every driving scene ever!), but the fact that the footage is clearly real grasshoppers makes it ridiculously stupid. In other scenes they have used traveling matte effects as the bugs shuffle across live action footage of the actors, again looking awful and disjointed. But the worst has to be the cheap-ass visual effect of having the hoppers crawling on a large photo of a building...and pretending its a real building. Its actually a real eye-opener because you can clearly tell its a photo. There are one or two model shots of Chicago when the bugs attack the city, but again its so very obvious, clearly tiny bugs bumping into models.Its not all bad though, the action is quite intense at times when the actors break out the big guns and machine guns, blasting away at nothing. You could almost be fooled into thinking you're watching a gritty war flick at times. Sadly that's all though as nothing much else happens here, you don't see any form of death or attacks or anything. Every time a hopper is about to eat someone the matted hopper just moves over them and it cuts away, there is no destruction or carnage at all which makes it hard to engage in the fantasy. I'm not expecting blood and gore of course but you can tell that they weren't able to do anything due to budget limitations and the fact the hoppers were matted on top. There is never any life size models/puppets of the hoppers to interact with the actors. Don't even get me started on the finale where they drown all the hoppers, clearly real hoppers filmed in a small tube of water.I think the most interesting aspect of the whole movie is the stock footage, of which there is a lot used. There is of course lots of footage of the military in action, training wise and real war time stuff (I'm guessing), which is interesting to see...for obvious reasons really. Other stock footage shows in and around 1950's Chicago which was also pretty cool I thought, amazing to see the changes.Now I did enjoy this but mainly for hilarious reasons. Its not exactly the same as other bug B-movies, for instance there was no smartly dressed, old fashioned, crusty old scientist guy who knows everything, and they don't kill the bugs with any weapons here, they just use their ingenuity. Errr...but that's about it, every other cliché is here from the screaming female to the gruff military dude, and of course the movies poster is awesome but doesn't represent the movie whatsoever. This definitely comes under the 'so bad its good' banner I think, hokey effects, cookie cutter plot, but decent acting amazingly.6/10

There's a scene near the beginning in which reporter Peggy Castle visits Army headquarters. We watch her drive up to an office building, park the convertible, step out of it, walk up the steps, open the door, and walk through it. Cut.Ordinary, yes, but what makes it interesting is that this is a B movie shot on a small budget and coming towards the end of the Big Bug cycle. A typical B director wouldn't bother shooting the scene. Suppose Peggy Castle tripped getting out of the car? Suppose she showed too much leg? Suppose the door to the building was stuck? They'd have to do a retake and that costs money. No, in a really cheap B movie, Peggy Castle would tell someone that she's going to Army headquarters, there would be a dissolve, and she'd be talking to a general.By a commodius vicus of recirculation, all blockbusting A-budget action movies have reached the same tiptoptoloftical ergonomic peak as the cheap features of yesteryear. Somebody directing a thirty-million-dollar movie today wouldn't shoot that transitional scene either. Not because of budget constraints but because the fourteen-year-old brains in the audience might be bored by it, their attention span being limited to two seconds. They might squirm and fidget and throw JuJuBees at each other, and they might tell their friends the movie was dull. There are shekels involved at both ends of the business -- making and marketing.I now step down off this orator's platform. Please keep the cameras rolling. Somebody give me a hand; I'm suffering from a crippling case of nostalgia. Thank you.The movie itself follows such a familiar path that it's hardly worth detailing. An incident at an agricultural station involving locusts eating some radioactive material leads to the expected results. Giant bugs. Entomologist Peter Graves and his soon-to-be girlfriend, Peggy Castle, who lends an enchanting whistle to her sibilants, discover a horde of mammoth locusts who make loud noises like the giant ants in "Them". Naturally no one believes them. The National Guard slough their stories off with a chuckle. The doubtful general investigates and the locusts attack him and his men. He gets away with his life but it was a close call, I can tell you.These gargantuan grasshoppers are interesting creatures. They're always shown in blown-up rear projection or other trickery because I suppose the budget might have allowed Peggy Castle to park her car but there wasn't room for both the car and even a disembodied locust head of the proper giant size. Peter Graves shows the military a movie of locusts while he describes how terrible they are. I didn't know they could be carnivorous, but I guess I can believe it because I've watched crickets eat flies, and a more disgusting sight you've never seen. I had no idea they could grow to the size of an earth mover though. I guess my high school biology teacher was lying when he taught us about book lungs.Peter Graves, like his brother, James Arness, is likable enough -- tall and handsome. Peggy Castle is alluring but those 1957 hair styles did nobody any favors. I'm not sure Morris Ankrum ever missed a science-fiction movie. You'll recognize him at once. The director must have spent all his energy on that car-parking scene because the rest of the movie lacks any distinction. Oh, except for Graves' entomologist. The credits list him as "Doctor Ed Wainwright. That's apposite enough but everyone calls him "Mister Wainwright", a departure from the norm. Usually PhDs call each other "doctor" in these movies.Does Dr. Wainwright manage to save Chicago from the plague of locusts, or does the Air Force have to bomb the city flat? The answer is they have to use the atomic bomb and destroy Chicago but it doesn't work and they have to go on to bomb New York City, Los Angeles, New Orleans, St. Louis, London, Moscow, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, and East Quoddy, Maine.