The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
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Template:Infobox TTW season one The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street is an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone.
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Details
Episode number:22
Season: 1
Production code: 173-3620
Original air date: March 4, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Ronald Winston
Music: Original score by Rene Garriguenc, conducted by Lud Gluskin
Cast
Steve Brand:Claude Akins
Charlie: Jack Weston
Tommy: Jan Handlik
Mr. Goodman: Barry Atwater
Synopsis
The location is Maple Street, USA in late summer. It is mid-evening and the street is full of playing children and adults talking. A shadow passes overhead and a loud roar is heard. Later, after it has gone dark, the residents of Maple Street find that the telephones no longer work, and there is no power or radio. They gather together in the street to discuss the matter.
Steve Brand decides to go into town and see what is happening, but his car will not start and he plans to walk instead. Tommy, a young boy from the neighborhood, pleads with him not to go. He is sure that the outages are part of an alien invasion — just as he has read in books and comics. Furthermore, he says, most of these invasions are preceded by the infiltration of aliens who look human. Naturally no-one takes him seriously, but the first signs of doubt appear.
Meanwhile another resident, Les Goodman, tries and fails to start his car. He gets out of the car and begins to walk back towards the other residents when the car starts all by itself. The bizarre behavior of his car makes Les the object of immediate suspicion. The residents begin to discuss his late nights spent standing in the garden looking up at the sky. Les claims to be an insomniac. His problem becomes worse when the lights in his house come on, and the rest of the neighborhood remains in the dark. Suspicion then suddenly switches to Steve when he tries to calm the situation and prevent it becoming a witch-hunt. Charlie, one of the loudest and most aggressive residents, pressures Steve about his hobby building a radio that no-one has ever seen.
During the discussion a man is seen walking along Maple Street through the dark and towards the gathered crowd. Panic begins to build and Charlie grabs a shotgun and kills him. When the crowd reaches the fallen man, they realize that it is Pete Van Horn, a local resident who had gone to the next block to find out the situation there.
Suddenly the lights in Charlie's house come on and he panics, realising how it looks. He is now the subject of all the suspicion. He makes a run for his house while the other residents begin to chase him and throw stones. Terrified, Charlie attempts to deflect suspicion onto Tommy, the boy who originally brought up the idea of alien infiltration. Lights begin turn on and off in different houses, lawn mowers and cars start up for no apparent reason. A riot begins and the hysterical residents smash windows, fight and switch blame from one person to another with little justification.
The episode ends with two alien observers watching the rioting on Maple Street and discussing how easy it was to create paranoia and panic, and let the people of Earth destroy themselves — one place at a time.
- "Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines... throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern... They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it's themselves."
Trivia
Filmed on MGM's Andy Hardy street.
In the newest revival of The Twilight Zone, this episode was remade and modernized, with the people of Maple Street fearing a terrorist attack had occurred. It then turned out that the Army was studying how civilians respond to an attack.
Closing narration
"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts. Attitudes. Prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and the thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone."
Themes
Often cited as Serling's warning against McCarthyism and the mass hysteria it produces. Similar themes are explored in Four O' Clock and The Shelter.
References
- Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 (second edition)
Back to: The Twilight Zone, Episode List, Season 1