The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

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.

Strange happenings drive ordinary neighbors into a frenzy of suspicion.

Serling takes on mob psychology in this cautionary tale about an ordinary American neighborhood with average looking people (a well-chosen cast for that effect), going about normal activities. An unusual noise followed by mysterious electrical stoppage soon has these same normal families in the street looking for those among them who may be disguised space monsters. Premise plays pretty well, considering production crew only has twenty-plus minutes to unravel a whole community, which they do, especially with a series of montage close-ups to convey the mounting hysteria. First one neighbor falls under suspicion, then another, as the most innocent daily activities suddenly become suspicious in the climate of fear, which is probably the most unnerving part of the story. The script does a good job of showing how the most ordinary pursuits can be reinterpreted as sinister undertakings once mob psychology takes over. No doubt, those familiar with the 50's will see a subtext paraphrasing the anti-communist hysteria of the time. However you take it, the theme remains an important and timely one.

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.

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.

Character actors Claude Akins and Jack Weston are the most prominent names in the Twilight Zone Story about someone spotting a flying saucer overhead which gets all the neighbors out of their houses on Maple Street USA.

Then all kinds of strange things start happening. Power going on and off and all kinds of finger pointing is started. Could one of these neighbors not be what they seem?

Claude Akins for once not a cruel and psychotic villain tries to be the voice of reason. Counterbalancing Akins is Jack Weston who starts throwing suspicion in every direction.

The story fresh from the paranoid McCarthy 50s is a warning about not rushing to judgment and giving way to panic. We could use a little of that today, wisdom from Rod Serling in a timeless classic.

Almost like Vladimir Putin watched this show.