50 years of The Twilight Zone – The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

The Twilight Zone Original Series Episode 22
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street
Original airdate: 4 March 1960
Written by: Rod Serling
Director: Ron Winston
Producer: Buck Houghton
Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
Music: René Garriguenc
Cast:
Steve Brand: Claude Akins
Charlie Farnsworth: Jack Weston
Les Goodman: Barry Atwater

Hello Ghouls and Boils,

Thank you for joining us once again for our 50-years of The Twilight Zone celebration. Once a week (typically Mondays) – for the rest of the year – I will share my thoughts on one of my favorite TZ episodes. Pardon my tardiness this week, but life has kept me terrifyingly busy. I plan on making it up to you. We will have a bonus Twilight Zone article written by our guest Minion (I mean writer) Jason V Brock, coming soon! Today I am going to talk about another all-time favorite episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”. Enjoy my fiends!

Abstrusely,
Sarah L. Gerhardt

Brief Synopsis:

“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 6:43pm on Maple Street. [Narration interrupted by the effects described above] This is Maple Street on a late Saturday afternoon. Maple Street, in the last calm and reflective moment before the monsters came.”

It’s a typical summer evening in a typical suburban town. The children are outside playing, the neighbors are talking casually… and then it all changes the moment there is a flash of light and bang. The neighbors gather to discuss the incident. Was it a meteor? When the evening falls it becomes apparent that all of the houses on the street are without power. The speculation grows wilder as Tommy (a neighborhood boy) suggests it may be an alien invasion.

“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 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.”

Full episode recap and thoughts:

WARNING SPOILERS (I will talk about the ending of the episode. If you have not seen it and you would like to be surprised – come back after viewing. See the full episode on >>veoh here<< ! )

It is a late summer evening on Maple Street – children playing, adults talking at the curbside, a teenager on a bike. A shadow passes overhead. It is accompanied by a bright flash and a resounding boom.

The opening scene is a bit like looking into a time capsule. If someone asked me what 1950s suburbia looked like, I would certainly point them to this episode. Pristine houses with pristine lawns, everyone is neatly dressed in fine clothes and their hair is perfectly styled, the children are prim and proper… everyone seems unbearably happy and friendly. (But that changes swiftly.) They did a terrific job of establishing time and place. It is certainly embedded in my memory files as Suburban Neighborhood: 1950s.

There are three main characters in this episode.

Steve Brand – played by Claude Akins. Claude was a prolific television and film actor. You may remember him as Lobo from B.J. and the Bear or his numerous roles in Westerns series: Frontier, Crusader, My Friend Flicka (3 times), Boots and Saddles, Northwest Passage, Sheriff of Cochise, State Trooper, Wagon Train (4 times), Overland Trail, Laramie (4 times), The Big Valley, The Legend of Jesse James, Death Valley Days, Zane Grey Theater (4 times), The Rifleman (3 times), Gunsmoke (10 times), Bonanza (4 times), and The Oregon Trail. Steve Brand is a strong man and attempts to be the voice of reason during this crisis.
Les Goodman - played by Barry Atwater. Barry was also in a lot of television, mainly from the 50s through the 70s. He played the role of Surak on Star Trek, a vampire names Janos on The Night Stalker and even did a three year stint on General Hospital – to name but a few of his noted works. Les is the first to fall victim to the mob.
Charlie Farnsworth – played by Jack Weston. Jack was a stage, film and television actor with countless character roles. He is best known for his comic acting like in Please Don’t Eat the Dasies, but he also sometimes took on darker roles like in Wait Until Dark. Charlie is an instigator and quick to assimilate to the mob mentality.
(*side note: When I rewatched this I kept saying to Henry – He is so familiar… I know him from somewhere. I even speculated – I wonder if that is the hotel owner from Dirty Dancing. I found out after my research for this article I was right. He really didn’t change much in nearly 30 years.)

After the initial crowd reaction to the boom and light we are shifted from a late summer evening to an early summer night. Nothing in the neighborhood is working. There seems to be no power to the lights, the phones, the cars – at anybody’s house. This makes the neighbors anxious. One of the neighbors decides to go check the next street over and see if they are having the same problem.

When Steve Brand attempts to go into town to check Tommy (a young man from the neighborhood) stops him. He says “they don’t want them to leave”. He makes the suggestion that there could be aliens amongst them. Though at first the crowd brushes it off saying he reads too many comic books… But soon it becomes the kindling that starts the raging fire of paranoia. The crowd quickly spirals into a mob the moment that Les Goodman’s car begins running on its own. They venomously spew their suspicions at him. Why is his car starting and no one else’s?

As the night goes on things turn on and off in different peoples homes and accusations continue to fly. Charlie is at the lead of almost every attack. But soon the crowd turns on him when his lights flash on and off. The mob gets stirred into such a frenzy that when they see a shadowy figure approaching and fear it is the monster who is doing this to them, Charlie shoots blindly. When they approach him they see it as Pete Van Horn, the neighbor who left to check on the next street over. The mob grows chaotic – driven by fear, paranoia and anger.

The final scene is that of a spaceship and two higher-life forms. It was an experiment of sorts, to show a simpler way to take over this planet. They knew our deepest secret. We are our own worst enemies. They need only sit back and let us destroy ourselves.

This episode is a powerful one. It shows us how fear, ignorance and prejudgment can lead to blind anger and hatred. It is even shown in classrooms as an example of the dangers of prejudice and hysteria. It is well shot as usual by George T. Clemens. His camera angles and framing lent to the palpable feeling of tension in this piece. You could feel the fear and anger rising from each character. Ron Winston did a fantastic job of pulling the best emotions from his actors and setting the scene.

If you haven’t seen this, it is one that should go on your list. I highly recommend giving it a viewing. If you haven’t seen it a while, pop on over to veho and give it a watch! This episode is yet another I will have in my personal collection someday.

Fun Fact:

Several elements from “Forbidden Planet” were used in this episode including the alien suits and the spaceship departing shot. The spaceship shot was projected upside-down and in reverse from the original.