Twilight Zone – Twilight Zone – The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

★★★★★  March 4, 1960 Season 1 Episode 22

If you want to see where we are…HERE is a list of the episodes.

A 5-Star Classic… This episode has some alien intervention but not much. This is a wonderful study of human nature at work. The outcome could have happened without aliens. A few paranoid panicky people can start a mob and a mob can become a deadly thing. This episode is so good because you can see it build and build into panic until somebody does something that cannot be undone.

Very good character actors with faces…faces that you remember. You also have Claude Akins as the voice of reason…but even he can get caught up in it. This is a must watch…forget the Twilight Zone twist…just watch suspicion and paranoia grow.

The uniforms worn by the aliens, their spaceship’s ramp, and the shot of the flying spaceship were originally used in Forbidden Planet.

This show was written by Rod Serling

Rod Serling’s Opening Narration: 

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.

Summary

On a pleasant day, the residents of Maple Street feel something akin to a tremor and hear a loud noise. Steve Brand thinks it’s a meteorite though they didn’t hear a create. When young Tommy tells them the science fiction story he read about an alien invasion where they were first sent among humans to live with them in disguise, paranoia sets in. They first suspect Les Goodman and loudmouth Charlie Farnsworth then points the finger at Steve and then Tommy. Events turn on Charlie as everyone runs amok.

Rod Serling’s 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 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.

CAST

Rod Serling … Narrator (voice)
Claude Akins … Steve Brand
Barry Atwater … Les Goodman
Jack Weston … Charlie Farnsworth
Jan Handzlik … Tommy
Amzie Strickland… Woman
Burt Metcalfe … Don Martin
Mary Gregory … Sally
Jason Johnson … Man
Anne Barton … Myra Brand
Leah Waggner … Mrs. Goodman (as Lea Waggner)
Joan Sudlow … Old Woman
Ben Erway … Pete Van Horn
Lyn Guild … Mrs. Farnsworth
Sheldon Allman … Alien
Bill Walsh … Alien (as William Walsh)

…

Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player.

46 thoughts on “Twilight Zone – Twilight Zone – The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”

  3. Seems like one that I did see but definitely merits another viewing soon! TZ at its best.
    Funny, seems like every town has a “Maple Street”, even ones down here where there are no maple trees to be seen.

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      1. Pecans are the dominant big garden shade trees here, and yep, live oaks; scrubby little cedar in some of the rural overgrown areas which cause a whole lot more allergy problems than the omnipresent cedars of Ontario… but there’s still a Maple Ave. in this city and an Elm as well though I think we’d need to go 300 miles at least to find either tree. Maybe settlers from up north feeling nostalgic name them.

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      2. I suspect many of those folks also came from the East Coast (Crockett with his “You can go to hell and I will go to Texas…” comes to mind).

        Some of my “Texican” co-workers informed me of the importation of the Cedars and the Arizona Ashes. Neither are native, leading to tree problems and people problems (I can only speak to the Austin area). Their families date back to a time before Texas was Texas. The Ashes have short lifespans but were brought in for housing developments because of their rapid growth. I don’t know why all the Cedars were brought in. I guess they grow fast, too? No one ever put forth a reason for that, only expressing to me that they didn’t belong there and everyone had to be jacked up on hayfever meds.

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  4. One of my favorite episodes so far – yes a timeless tale that could and has happened in any time or place because we are talking about human nature. Every so often a tv show transcends its specific story to resonate with a universal truth and this was one. Absolutely loved this episode.

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    1. This one is in it’s own league. It really shows how a chain of events can lead to unbelievable chaos. An hour later you would think…how in the hell did we get at this point?

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    1. It really is one of the flagship episodes. It’s a story that is so good it didn’t need anything really strange happening to push it.

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    1. When I saw him I remembered him right away. All of these actors… this doesn’t make sense but they had faces you remember… faces with characters… maybe it’s their acting that made that happen.

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  10. It sounds like a pretty decent episode, but apparently I have not seen it. But if it’s on cable, I’ll be sure to catch the rerun! Say, have you ever heard about the 1967 series “The Prisoner”? I wouldn’t mind hearing your thoughts of it on the blog; seems like it could be a nice fit.

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    1. Oh yes I have all of the Prisoner episodes… I might do that after the TZ… I love that series…the last episode is hard to explain lol but I liked it.

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      2. Yes…I’ll try to fit it in during the Twilight Zone…because if not…It would be around a year. I’ve thought about it before but hesitated… but with the response I’ve gotten from the TZ…I’ll give it a shot. I thought I would lose readers with the TZ…because it wasn’t music…

        I have always done one off posts about other things but this is really working well…plus it gives me material for a year covering something other than music that I love.

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      3. That’s true… but it’s good that it has been successful for you. I’ve doe one off posts as well and was honestly quite bewildered when my audience expressed their connection with my topic. Like you with those drive-in trailers; that was a pleasant surprise.

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      4. Sometimes it’s like that…the ones I have no faith in…those are the ones that create a lot of comments.

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      5. My son watched that series while he was in college and liked it. I started to watch it but stopped after a bit. It’s good! I’d love to have you do it in installments after TZ.

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      6. Yea it’s too complicated to cover in one post…you are right…the TZ will have to be over.
        The last episode of the Prisoner…I’m still trying to figure parts of it out.

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      8. It was only 17 episodes so it wouldn’t take long to cover but I wouldn’t do it in one page because it was complex…I loved it though.

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      10. Yes…kind of like “Life On Mars”…the UK doesn’t milk shows for every last drop which is great in some ways but sometimes I wish it would go on a little longer.

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    2. The Prisoner reminds me in some ways of Zardoz. Have only seen a few episodes of The Prisoner but that trappedness and everything arranged just so in their society reminds me of it.

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