The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

The electric is off all over the street and cars with a full tank wont start. The residents of Maple Street live in 1960 so surely such rational people could not revert to the paranoia of an ancient witch hunting mentality? The supernatural may be replaced with a fear of alien invasion, but sadly people haven't changed. Steve Brand (Claude Akins) is the lone voice of sanity as Rod Serling eloquently shows us the thinness of the veil of civilization that covers madness in human societies. The 1960 trappings of the story only serve to make this a timeless piece of television allegorical for any society in any age. A crowning achievement from Serling. An unforgettable episode.

The Twilight Zone featuring Rod Sterling is one of the finest Sci Fi show made in the history of cinema. It is a cinematic genius.

Absolutely beautiful to watch the episodes from back to back and you will love it.

If I had to isolate one episode, this is my favorite. This has the most profound ending of all TZ episodes. There is not much you can say that wouldn't qualify as a "spoiler." If you've never seen this great episode, I wouldn't want to spoil the experience for you. The story is essentially a commentary on how intelligent human beings are, and always have been. Watch the episode and form your own conclusions.

There is an old adage which says, "throw ten people in a room together and they may not pick a leader but they'll darn sure pick someone to hate." Serling plays out this adage on the screen wonderfully. A normal street in a normal town in Anywhere U.S.A. is the setting. As strange occurrences begin to happen in the neighborhood, a child's explanation of the events sparks a wave of fear and prejudice in a group of neighbors. The ensuing panic causes otherwise friendly people to turn on one another. This is a short episode (30 min), but it is flawless in portraying the truth about how people can tear themselves apart when fear and panic set in. Pay close attention to the ending - it is a statement of the human condition that still rings true today. This is perhaps my favorite episode of the entire series.

Perhaps not for the most recent films or for temporarily popular cinema hypes, but definitely for classic movies and vintage TV-shows the ratings here on IMDb are very reliable and just. Take for instance the fantastic and legendary series "The Twilight Zone"… As good as ALL episodes are terrific and they averagely rate around 7 – 8 out of 10. So, when you encounter an outlier with a rating of 9 out of 10, you can be more than confident that the episode in question is extraordinary good. "The Monsters are due on Maple Street" has a very high rating and deservedly so because, apart from having a kickass title, it's also one of the best tales thus far, with a more than intelligent screenplay and a handful of deeply disturbing but truthful observations about the human nature. The story stars one of my personal favorite – and sadly underrated – actors, Claude Akins, as a very ordinary inhabitant of the very ordinary Maple Street. During a typically sunny Saturday afternoon, whilst all the neighbors in Maple Street are doing their own thing and minding their own business, they hear a strange and unidentifiable noise above their heads. Few moments later, all electrical equipment, telephone lines, tools and car engines inexplicably stop functioning. Quite rapidly, all these normally warm and friendly people lose their rationalism and start accusing the introvert neighbors of knowing more about these mysterious circumstances. Especially when a young child hints that this could be the start of an alien invasion, they all fanatically defend their own behavior whilst randomly attacking the others. It doesn't take too long before verbal threats turn into physical aggression. "The Monters etc…" is an exemplary episode, with non-stop and gradually mounting suspense and an atmosphere that goes from calm and peaceful to grim and unsettling in less than twenty minutes. Of course the subject matter is slightly exaggerated and dramatized, but the reactions and behaviors of the protagonists are nevertheless realistic; which automatically forces you to contemplate about how cowardly our species in fact is. Are there monsters prowling around Maple Street? Yes, there definitely are… The more experienced viewer quickly sees where the whole thing is going and the actual denouement is fairly easy to guess, but that certainly isn't a blocker since the entire episode is so compelling, intense and professionally crafted.