The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

I had already wrote a user comment on the imdb for this, not realizing it. I will discard the one meant for it tonight here:

Rod Serling penned the brilliant script for this memorable episode (it is my #1 personal favorite episode of the series) of the Twilight Zone, about a bright light that flashes momentarily over Maple Street, with accompanying electrical and airwaves stoppage causing burgeoning paranoia and increasing distrust among those living in the neighborhood. The persistent advice and warnings from a boy on the street, using content from sci-fi literature he reads, and a steadily building and mounting degree of suspicion regarding possible neighbors being aliens from outer space soon turns everyone against each other. A car that starts and stops by itself, lights in houses going on and off, and ominous footsteps from a distant walking “figure” (who they suspect to be an alien, despite the fact that one from their neighborhood had told them he was heading over to a different street to see if they had similar electrical problems) complicate matters. Not to mention, pointed fingers, vocal accusation, suspecting “neighborhood watch” gives way to thrown stones, a gunshot, shouting, heated reactions, frenetic chaos of scattered people looking to mob a scapegoat, and a street in ruins…all that was needed was to turn some lights, a car, and a lawn mower on and off and let the street destroy themselves.

I do get that it also took the use of a sci-fi story about aliens told from a scared kid to plant the seed that eventually blossomed into anarchy. The camera’s focus on speeding legs, tilted angles of the Maple Street sign, and direct close-ups of hysterical faces add incredibly to the narrative of how a situation can escalate out of control when feelings perhaps buried inside can surface if flamed by circumstances most unusual (the tricks used by aliens planning to colonize once the human race obliterates itself). A most superb cast: Claude Akins (who tries to be the voice of reason as accusations even point his direction because he was messing around with a ham radio!), Jack Weston (as a ringleader in the mob), Barry Atwater (as the first accused because of his car’s on and off trick), and Burt Metcalf (as a friend of Akins and Weston who soon turns on both of them) among others really aid the intentions of Serling’s story. At the beginning, seemingly hospitable, level-headed, friendly, honest, and temperate folks—representing the All-American, white picket fence family of the Cleavers or Mayberry—eventually descend into monsters themselves…done in a startlingly thirty minute show that has no fat, a lean and staggering critique on how we ourselves can become the very danger that terrifies us. When the women even participate in spreading panic, all hope seems lost.

I had it already written, so I had to do something with it. Waste not, want not.