User Reviews

This is among the very best episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE because it is such a great look at human nature. The show is set in a typical American city circa 1960 and has a very large and capable ensemble cast.

The show begins with strange things happening. Cars inexplicably stop, as do the televisions, radios and telephones. In fact, life pretty much comes to a grinding halt and everyone is naturally left confused and worried. Initially, the community in which this is set comes together with neighbors going out in the streets to ask what is happening. However, in a sinister twist, over time, instead of banding together, they begin sniping at each other--and people start blaming each other for the weird happenings. This is a great look at human nature and the very end of the show is a terrific twist.

This is a great episode for psychology and sociology lovers, though anyone can enjoy this subtle episode.

Disturbing tale of a Mayberry type neighborhood in the 60s coming apart at the seams when the power goes out and a young boy's warning of "Monsters from Outer Space", read from sci-fi stories, instills fear in the minds of those who live on Maple Street. When one neighbor's car starts and stops (he also accused of being up late at night "looking up at the sky as if he were waiting on something"), fingers point at him as a potential alien monster, even Steve, the voice of reason having a hard time convincing the others that what has happened in the neighborhood can be explained in a more logical sense than aliens out to get them, whose wife spoke of him "working on a radio in the basement" becomes a target of accusation.

Charlie becomes the vocal accuser who gets the others, almost completely irrational and delusional by this point, utterly convinced that there are monsters among them, allowing their imaginations to run away from them, all riled up. When the murder of a neighbor, who had went to check to see if another street had the same power outages as Maple Street (the visual of a hammer the man was carrying on his person established earlier subtly is significant), thanks to Charlie's ignorance and fear that he was a monster only encourages further mob mentality before long everyone is accusing the other, inciting a riot of violence and horror as the street is scattered with frightened people packing guns and stones, any weapon they can find to "defend themselves".

Why I think this episode is so lasting is that it really doesn't take much for a group of people, who seem civilized and rational, to unravel if placed within a pressure-cooker situation, where innocent people are considered suspect. I imagine this is perhaps a veiled indictment of the McCarthy era where Americans were blacklisted as having Communist ideals, called to defend themselves "in a kangaroo court" (as described by Claude Akins who attempts, like Hollywood screenwriters among others whose careers were ruined by scandalous rhetoric by McCarthy and his Salem witch-hunting, to stave off the mob, trying to blow out the fuse that was to detonate an uncontrollable situation about to explode) or just to warn us against accusation and innuendo, not to lose ourselves when small problems, which seem to have no explanation (or could if the problems are approached by conventional means) arise.

Maybe this episode will be considered dated, but I think the message remains a strong one, that if we encounter a crisis, not to allow ourselves to get caught up in a furor or be so quick to question those around us all because we are scared or confused. All it took was power to go on and off and for a children's scary story to plant the seed in the minds of common everyday folk who normally wouldn't behave as a terrified mob willing to shout and hurl rocks at each other, not to mention, shoot a shotgun into the darkness at someone they believe is "a monster". Appropriately intense, with a cast right out of the Andy Griffith Show, who look like any neighborhood you might stop by to visit, the kind who usually shoot the breeze, mow their yards, cook barbecue ribs on the grill in the back yard, and that is why "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" is so effective. Superb cast including Claude Akins and Jack Weston as neighbors on opposite ends of the argument that there are monsters on Maple Street, one trying to keep an escalation of violence from happening, while the other only adds fuel to the fire.

There's not much to say about this classic episode that hasn't been said, but I would like to make one observation.

The character Les Goodman ( Barry Atwater)comes under suspicion for his supposedly unusual behavior. The person who seems most eager to denounce Les and egg on the neighbors is Charlie,( Jack Weston) the loudmouth bully. Near the end, there's a total reversal, when the panicky Charlie grabs a shotgun and shoots an approaching figure in the dark, hollering about how he's going to defend himself against the monster. When the shocked neighbors gather around the body to realize it's one of their friends, the crowd slowly begins to turn against Charlie, who had been essentially the ringleader, opposing Claude Akins as Steve, the voice of reason.Les Goodman is absolutely gleeful at how the tables are now turned, as he snarls at the sweating, whining Charlie, " Why did you shoot him, Charlie? You were so quick to kill.Well, maybe you had to kill. Maybe it was because Pete there found out something you didn't want him to tell the rest of us!" Suddenly, the terrified Charlie is running from the stone throwing mob, screaming that it's not him.

Just one small detail of why this episode is one of the all time greatest of any Twilight Zone stories.

1960's "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" was written by Rod Serling and covered one of his favorite themes: mob psychology. A peaceful summer day on Maple Street in a quiet suburban town is shattered when the residents believe they're under some type of bizarre alien invasion. Nearly all of their technology (i.e. lights, autos, appliances etc.) begins to malfunction and panic sets into the neighborhood. Instead of trying to find the true cause of this disaster, however, the residents take the path to least resistance and start to accuse each other of being the "monster." Soon they're turning on their own neighbors and a vicious riot ensues. There truly are some aliens in the mix, but they're basically unobtrusive observers to the chaos. Their strategy is simply one of "divide and conquer" and the distrustful people of Maple Street are the perfect guinea pigs for their first experiment.

"The Monsters..." shows Serling's most biting and cynical side. There were many Twilight Zone episodes that dealt with mob rule as their subject matter, but this one is the best of all and a true classic in the series. Even the aliens quite smugly agree with Serling's view of human nature. "They've found the enemy, and it is themselves." The excellent cast is headed by Claude Akins. Initially he's the "voice of reason" of Maple Street but winds up in a dither like everyone else. Jack Weston is also around, pointing his finger from one suspect to the next, until it's his turn to be chased around the block. The story was remade for the new "Twilight Zone" series hosted by Forrest Whitaker and starred Andrew McCarthy.

Strange and puzzling occurrences on a heretofore quiet and peaceful suburban street cause the residents who live on it to become suspicious of each other to the point where they start turning on one another.

Director Ron Watson not only firmly grounds the chilling and gripping premise in a totally plausible everyday small town reality, but also ably crafts a strong and unsettling mood of mounting dread, unease, and paranoia. The fine acting by the bang-up cast keeps things humming, with especially stand-out contributions from Claude Akins as pragmatic voice of reason Steve Brand, Barry Atwater as the defensive Les Goodman, Jack Warden as hot-headed troublemaker Charlie Farnsworth, and Jan Handzlik as excitable and over-imaginative kid Tommy. Rod Serling's pungent script makes a frightening central point on how man's capacity for fear, anger, bias, and prejudice can lead to his own downfall and ruination as well as demonstrates with terrifying lucidity how a few unusual and inexplicable events can easily escalate into a catastrophe. One of this show's most powerful and disturbing half hours.

Everybody seems so enthusiastic about this episode. So am I, to the extent of the message it transmits, the cautionary tale, the moral it proposes. But going down to the script details, I find the neighbors' behavior insufficiently supported. After all, they start attacking each other on the flimsy basis of a power shortage, a few electrical disturbances and, above all, the sci-fi opera plot described by a teenager in the vaguest of terms. The boy is not even quoting any scientist on that; he just describes the argument for an alien-invasion movie. And the neighbors go on believing this fantasy with no question. In spite of the Norman-Rockwellian appearance of Maple Street, I wouldn't wish to live in such a non-thinking neighborhood.

Their world is full of Maple Streets, it is said, and this delightfully surprising episode of The Twilight Zone is another one that I can honestly refer to as one of "thee" best. It shows how rumor spreads, how paranoia takes over and how prejudiced destroys within its own community. With a cast led by Claude Akins, Jack Weston and Barry Atwater, this episode focuses on rumors of the arrival of extraterrestrials who are rumored to about attack the neighborhood. A power outage caused by the apparent arrival of aliens sets the townsfolk on edge and one by one, they begin to accuse each other of actually being the creatures from beyond. Jan Handzlik, whose only other appearance on film was as the young Patrick Dennis in "Auntie Mame", gets a key scene as the kid genius whose alleged conversations with the aliens leads to the panic and destruction that puts the Twilight Zone right in the heart of their community.

There have been many great films that have dealt with the issue of sudden fury, but never has it come so quickly and exploded so violently as it does in this classic Twilight Zone episode. Once again, the Twilight Zone deals with themes that are still resinated today and that makes it very powerful indeed. The neighborhood literally explodes like a volcano as the fear, frustration and finally the accusations begin to erupt and the final minutes are ingenius in explaining how an entire community can be completely destroyed simply through these destructive emotions. Once again, a fantastic script that will keep you riveted dominates the scene with powerful performances and characterizations that you won't forget. This is classic TV that can never be recreated or improved upon, and all done in under half an hour.

Why did no one ask the woman who kept hurling accusations? She's not unique of course all the neighbors ( most of them ) are quick to accuse each other. Claude Akins as Steve is the only one to stay above. He's not meek either he tells them all collectively and to some in particular just what will happen if they obsess over every man , woman and child's idiosyncrasies .

The worst of them is Charlie and is first target is Les who looks up at the sky at night . One of the neighbors a woman brings it that she noticed it but why no one asked her what she was doing up ? Maybe Tommy's mother should have asked her. Tommy the boy who brings up the idea of aliens living among them is at first mocked then they take on his idea and run with then Charlie tries to deflect suspicion off him and tries to blame Tommy. It keeps going around like that and becomes a war .

It's set at the height of the Cold War but is timeless in it's message. We can easily tear each other apart if we allow paranoia and mistrust in what we don't understand to rule us .

This is an extremely well-written and well-produced episode with a great story. However, I think the message would have been even stronger had it had a different ending.

If instead of cutting away to the aliens at the end, there was a cutaway to a control room at some government agency where engineers were talking about how a new satellite just went awry and was disrupting communications and power in a small town somewhere. Then it would have turned out that the source of the chaos on Maple St. was simply ignorance, and not extraterrestrial in origin. This would have been much closer to reality since ignorance has always been the main source of hatred and conflict since time immemorial.

It's part of Twilight Zone folklore canon that The Monsters are Due on Maple Street is an allegory on McCarthyism, people getting hysterical for unjustified reasons, unfounded prejudices. That's fine and highly admirable. It's a real socially minded episode.

But, the realness becomes sci-fi and sort of unrealistic when the ending has aliens proudly stating they're responsible for starting the mayhem. Okay, fine, but really if aliens were to be gremlin like and tinker with the electricity system of those who look suspicious etc, then you can understand why people will get into a state of panic and hysteria!! Oh well, at least these aliens can speak speak English with perfect American accents.

This is an episode that I had read the script of when I was a little kid (it was a reading assignment) and it wasn't until 14 or so years later that I actually got to see the episode. I loved the script and I thought it was very interesting, but... the final product? It has a serious issue:

The people are too stupid...

In terms of modern relevance, the episode is actually shockingly relevant in an era of victimization and intersectionality where "whoever has power must have oppressed others to get it" and the episode is literally about people having power (electricity) over others. I was originally going to give this episode a lower rating because of how much it irked me, but it's modern relevance shows that it deserves some respect. Still, the people become too stupid too quickly for it to work effectively.

They go from the power being out to believing their neighbor is an alien in less than a minute and are frightened of him. I understand that this is about McCarthyism and what not, but it doesn't come across as trying to be comedic in how absurdly stupid the people are.

I can't buy it for even a moment that people would start turning on someone as soon as their car starts working. The more likely response would be: "Oh hey, we all clearly saw it wasn't working and now it is working, so maybe there is something different about your brand of car or maybe we have no idea as to what is even going on in the first place so we don't know the mechanics of this EMP."

If the episode played out in a bit more comedic fashion to show just how dumb and stupid the people are then I think it could work, but unfortunately it has some of the intelligent characters go from "Let's not jump to conclusions" to "Are you actually an alien?" in the span of 30 seconds. It's just too stupid.

In another scene, a man shoots someone in the dark who is walking down the street and they yell, "It's the monster!"... what monster? They have mentioned aliens, but a person who is clearly wearing a plaid outfit walking down a street at night in a public neighborhood? That doesn't make any sense, even by people who are being hysterical.

Immediately following this moment the lights go on in several different houses and everyone jumps to the conclusion that those people are all aliens instead of... oh... I don't know... the power is coming back on? If everyone is getting power back then the logical conclusion is that the power is back... not aliens.

Another episode that had this same issue was "I shot an arrow into the air" where the main antagonist is too stupid, pathetic, and dehydrated in such a short amount of time that it becomes unintentionally comedic.

To conclude, I believe the message of this episode is great, just the execution is too goofy and dumb for me.

Is there a small town in America that doesn't have a Maple Street? In my case, it was Maple Avenue, also known during my childhood days as Back Street because of it's location behind Main Street. The village I grew up in during the 1950's didn't resemble the same towns that popped up in the Twilight Zone series that much; those seemed to be too idyllic to be true. Places like Homewood and Willoughby, the kind of towns I'd like to retire to on the other side of adulthood. Perhaps a place free of the small minded prejudice that takes over when rationality ceases to exist.

'The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street' is one of the TZ episodes that gets preferential programming on those ubiquitous cable marathon holidays and weekends, and with good reason. It highlights one of the classic foibles of that species called Man, that is, blame the one you don't understand, and if that doesn't work, blame someone else. And keep on blaming a moving target until there are none left to point a finger at. Blame it on the kid if you have to, if that makes it work. But in the end, it all boils down to the man in the mirror to realize what Rod Serling understood right from the very start - the most dangerous enemy one can find is one's self.

I'd like to get off the seriousness of my approach here for just a minute, long enough to ask - who the heck came up with that shirt for Charlie (Jack Weston)? Now that was scary!

If I had to make one recommendation for the way the story turned out, I would have left out the final segment that showed the two aliens discussing the way they viewed their human guinea pigs. It would have been much more effective to have one come away with a personal meaning that didn't rely on a gimmick like that. A Maple Street simply left in chaos would have challenged the viewer to come to their own conclusion about how things would have worked out, similar to the way the 1951 film, "The Day The Earth Stood Still" did. I think in this case, the twist ending with the aliens wasn't as effective as the twist already implied with the residents of Maple Street killing one of their own.