Tag: 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)

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