Title: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”
Original transmission date: March 4 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Directed by: Ronald Winston
Starring: Claude Akins
Barry Atwater
Jack Weston
Burt Metcalfe
Setting: Earth
Timeframe: Present (at the time)
Theme(s): Alienation, paranoia, mob mentality, distrust
Parodied? Yes, frequently.
Rating: A++
Serling’s opening monologue
Maple Street, U.S.A., late summer. A tree-lined little world of front porch gliders, barbecues, the laughter of children, and the bell of an ice cream vendor. At the sound of the roar and the flash of light, it will be precisely 6:43 P.M. on Maple Street...This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street in the last calm and reflective moment—before the monsters came.
There is a glow in the sky and a flash over quiet suburban Maple Street, and suddenly nothing electrical works any more. The phones are out, power tools are mute, clocks stop. Even the cars refuse to start up. As Steve Brand, one of the neighbourhood men, sets out to walk with his friend Charlie to the police station in town to check things out, Tommy, one of the local kids who has an interest in science fiction, tells him that he believes “whoever was in that thing that went overhead” doesn’t want them to leave, and that’s why they’ve shut off all the power. He says this is what happens in every book he reads about aliens. He further warns him that there may be aliens here now, infiltrating humanity and looking just like them. His story is greeted with derision - he’s only an impressionable kid, after all - but in a very few moments eyes are beginning to narrow, heads are inclined and you can see the cogs whirring inside the minds as Tommy tells them these aliens look just like them and really could be anyone.
Suspicion is further reinforced when another neighbour, Les, trying to start his car has it fire up into life all on its own. The cold hard (and illogical but irrepressible) finger of accusation begins to point at him, the more so when the car mysteriously stops, again by itself. Questions begin to be asked: who is this family anyway? Why didn’t Les come out when the “meteor”, as they believe(d) it was, flew overhead? What do they know about this guy and his family? Real oddballs, according to Charlie. The mood gets dark and they go over to confront him, but Les insists he knows nothing. Steve tries to keep the peace, ensure everyone maintains a level head, but it’s clear his calming, matter-of-fact influence will not last long. The seed has been planted, now it must grow and put forth its ugly and terrifying harvest.
Further accusations come forth. Why is Les always looking up at the sky at night, as if he’s waiting for something? He tells them it’s insomnia, but they move away from him as if frightened, as if they don’t know him anymore, if they ever did. As if he’s no longer one of them. As if he’s the enemy. He warns them they’re starting something terrible here, something that can’t end well, but they begin to keep watch on him and his house as darkness falls. When Steve again tries to inject some common sense into proceedings, he’s accused by Charlie of siding with the enemy, Charlie is then told by another neighbour that he isn’t exactly cleared of suspicion either, and things begin to spiral out of control.
Accusations fly, Steve tries to show everyone - especially Charlie, whom he seems to have taken a dislike to, seeing how his neighbour is now reacting, leading the protests - that they are in danger of doing something stupid. Note: when a lot of stupid people get together with a stupid aim, that’s usually the definition of a mob. Suddenly the sound of someone walking, and seized by fear and anger, and a definite idea that this is one of the aliens, come to kill them, Charlie shoots and kills the intruder, who happens to be another neighbour, Pete Van Horn, who had earlier gone off to check if the power was gone in the neighbouring street. As Pete lies dead at his feet, Charlie’s house suddenly lights up, and suspicion swings to him. Why did he kill Pete? Was he afraid he was going to be exposed as the invader? Why have the lights come on just now on only his house? From being the leader, the rabble-rouser, Charlie has just become suspect zero, public enemy number one, and abruptly feels what it’s like to be on the receiving end of unfounded suspicion.
As he runs to his house, people picking up rocks at throwing them at him, breaking his windows, Charlie swears he’s not the alien, and points the finger at Tommy. It actually makes sense: nobody even thought of aliens till the kid came up with his crazy story, and he was the one standing behind Charlie as Pete walked up the road, urging him to do something, that here was the alien, come to kill them all. They chase him, but just then lights come on in this house, and then that house, and then another. Suspicions go from one to the other, people pick up rocks, grab guns, chaos descends as the inhabitants of Maple Street run this way and that, convinced this guy or that guy is the alien, the stranger among them, the one who does not belong. Steve’s efforts to maintain order are useless and all goes to hell.
From a hill overlooking the street, two aliens nod, the one gratified that his demonstration has convinced the other that they do not need to expend manpower defeating the humans, that all they have to do is sow the seeds of discord and suspicion, and the earth people will destroy themselves. “They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find,” one notes, “and it is themselves.”
Serling’s closing monologue
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 a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of 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.
The Resolution
Excellent, though you can see it coming. All it needs to turn people against each other is for an idea to be floated that someone is different, someone is responsible, someone is dangerous. Then just sit back and watch the carnage.
The Moral
Sometimes the monsters that are within each one of us are more terrifying and powerful than any we can dream up, or any that may exist.
Themes
There are definite parallels with the previous episode, in that alienation figures quite prominently here, as it did there, although here it’s a mass thing, whereas in “Mirror Image” it was just one person, then another, having the experience, but both solitarily. There are of course very obvious nods to the paranoia that spread through Nazi Germany in the 1930s, when anyone deemed “undesirable” was suspected, arrested, often never seen again, where people were blamed for things they could not possibly have been responsible for, where the overwhelming fear and hatred of the “other” took over and drove a whole country mad. Also, naturally, the panic labelled “Reds under the bed” which took hold of America in the 1950s, as fear about Communist infiltrators was fanned to fever pitch. Anyone displaying the least hint of support for or tolerance of “reds” was labelled as one, or a sympathiser, with McCarthy ready to act as the Nazi judges had.
Themes of alien invasion, which also link back to the previous one, although that’s seen as a “quiet” invasion rather than one announced by a sonic boom and a flash in the sky which knocks all the power out. Still, the idea that there are people or things out there is floated for maybe only the third or fourth time. Another theme would be intolerance; when someone is suspected - without good reason - the cry goes up “he’s not like us!” and this is enough to damn him in the eyes of the neighbourhood. Trust, too, or the lack of it, or the very erosion of it, features, as everyone looks at everyone else and wonders just how far they can trust their neighbour, how well they know them, what they might be hiding, what they might really be like.
And isn’t that…?
Claude Akins (1926 - 1994)
Sheriff Lobo himself!
Questions, and sometimes, Answers
How come Pete Van Horn took so long to come back? He only went into the next street, and the sun was shining when he did, so we assume early to late afternoon, yet it’s dark before he returns. What the hell was he doing all that time?
What kind of science fiction comic books did Tommy read? Even in the 1960s, most would have been more concentrated on stories set in space. Some would undoubtedly have themes of alien invasion, but in EVERY ONE he read, the aliens impersonated humans? Surely not.
Iconic?
Not really, but the theme of often unfounded paranoia leading to mass panic and even murder has been used since, most notably to my knowledge in Philip K. Dick’s story “Kill All Others.”
Those clever little touches
I’m not at all sure it’s meant, but both as Pete leaves and as he returns, the camera focuses on the hammer he carries strapped to his leg. Hammer being one half of the Russian flag, are they telling us something here? Given that the theme can very easily dovetail in with the fear of Communism taking over the USA, I feel it might be a subtle hint.