Starring Peter Graves, Peggie Castle, Morris Ankrum, Than Wyenn, Thomas B. Henry
Directed by Bert I. Gordon
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A reporter stumbles across the destruction of a town, and recruits a scientist from the Department of Agriculture to help her investigate, and they discover that locusts have grown into a deadly menace.
Bert I. Gordon follows the successful template set up by Them! to make his own giant 1950s bug film, using his familiar technique of enlarged rear projection to magnify grasshoppers in size, and integrate them with footage of his live actors. Where the film fails is his dependence on actual live grasshoppers to play the villains, as a full-size mockup or professional puppet, as in Them! or The Deadly Mantis could have greatly enhanced his insects' impact. Without that in place, the live creatures have no ability to react to the artillery the story throws at them, and the creatures scaling of a Chicago skyscraper is unfortunately rendered by filming the grasshoppers at normal size scaling a picture postcard of the building. However, kids of the era most likely didn't notice those details, and enjoyed the fun nature of the film, which despite the grim tone, is very enjoyable with a good amount of 1950s sci-fi atmosphere. Graves is very good as the stalwart scientist, with Castle also convincing as the photojournalist who's seen her share of horrors already. As always in these types of pictures, the casting of Ankrum and Henry as determined military men helps dismiss some of the disbelief that comes with cities in peril at the hands of giant grasshoppers, and Albert Glasser's boldly dramatic score aids in that department as well.
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