The Twilight Zone: Season 1, Episode Twenty-Two “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street”

Original Air Date: March 4, 1960
Writer: Rod Serling
Director: Ronald Winston

“They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it’s themselves.
All we need do is sit back – and watch.”

One of the more consequential Twilight Zone episodes, “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” drops an inspiring bit of horror and science fiction into one of the safest of American conventions –a quiet street in the middle of suburbia. This episode explores Rod Serling’s oft-censored wish to address socially relevant concerns, in this case, the self-destructive nature of fanatical groupthink (i.e. McCarthyism or Puritanism). In this episode, no one is ever completely safe from the madness of crowds, especially on Maple Street.

“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.”
-Rod Serling

One summer day in the late afternoon a large burst of light appears across the sky above a safe, suburban community on Maple Street. Shortly thereafter the neighbors learn that all the household machines on the block have been rendered defective, everything from cars to lights and telephones. One boy, Tommy, explains a theory about aliens posing as humans from a comic book he read. This gives the neighbors pause as they start growing suspicious of each other. At one point, Les Goodman’s car spontaneously starts running, leading many to suspect he might be an outsider.

Gradually, as night falls, the neighborhood begins to turn on itself. Charges are leveled at various neighbors while people of Maple Street aggressively accuse one another of being foreigners, threats to the peace, aliens in some way, until total chaos breaks loose. The 300 block of Maple Street quickly descends into madness and Charlie picks up a shotgun and fires at a shadowy figure moving on the street in the darkness. But they quickly realize the now-dead man in the dark was merely Pete van Horn, the neighbor who walked over to Floral Street earlier in the episode in search of help. Following this, the lights start turning on in Charlie’s house, as the neighbors now start blaming him and pelting him with rocks.

Then Charlie, now bleeding from the head, points the finger at Tommy, the boy who suggested aliens might be walking among them. The mob of neighbors starts chasing the boy as lights go on and off at various houses and neighbors start shouting out blame directed at “Bob Weaver,” and “Don’s House,” and “the Williams’s House,” and “Charlie,” and “the kid.”

In the end, with violence spilling out into the street, the camera pans out as we discover a group of bureaucratic aliens watching Maple Street on a hilltop from afar. The two ominously comment to one another:

Alien 1: “Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines and radios and telephones and lawnmowers. Throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern.”
Alien 2: “And this pattern is always the same?”
Alien 1: “With few variations. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it’s themselves. All we need do is sit back – and watch.”
Alien 2: “Then I take it this place, this Maple Street, is not unique.”
Alien 1: “By no means. Their world is full of Maple Streets. And we’ll go from one to the other and let them destroy themselves. One to the other… one to the other… one to the other.”

The two aliens return to their spacecraft with plans to bring the same strategy of fear and intimidation to every neighborhood in America. Rather than invading and attacking a la many first contact science fiction tales (such as H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds), the aliens in “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” simply allow humanity to destroy itself.

“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 the 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.”
-Rod Serling

My Thoughts on “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”

A dark suburban satire of Cold War hysteria, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” offers another profound commentary on the human condition by Rod Serling. With increasingly unhinged, primal behavior among all the neighbors along the 300 block of Maple Street, the true horror of this predicament is the realization that we are, in fact, the monsters. In other words, we all carry these terrifying self-destructive instincts within us. “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” brings to mind other works of art like Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, or even historical examples of public mania like the mob violence seen in The French Revolution. When the comfortability provided by modern conveniences disappears, for the people on Maple Street, we see an immediate return to bestial demands for violence and a scapegoat (cue the allusions to René Girard).

My one quibble with this episode is that it all seems to hinge on a young boy, Tommy, and his science fiction comic book stories. Why would the whole neighborhood stop what they are doing, and decide not to walk down on Main Street, based solely on the credibility of child’s comic book whim? Of course the irony is that, in the end, young Tommy was completely correct about the existence of aliens and their intentions –they appear as humans and they want the neighborhood to remain isolated. Regardless of my minor eyebrow furl, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” is a potent reminder of the madness of crowds, another deeply powerful, eternally resonant episode of The Twilight Zone.

Credits:

Director: Ronald Winston
- Ronald Winston, often credited as “Ron Winston” (1932-1973) was a native of Detroit. After getting married, he settled in New York City with his wife, Gayle Hamby Winston, a fundraiser for the Kennedy political dynasty. He would frequently fly back and forth between New York and California for film work in Hollywood. Throughout his career, he directed episodes of the Johnny Carson Show, Studio One, Playhouse 90, United States Steel Hour, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Hawaii Five-O, and others. He directed three episodes of The Twilight Zone (“The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” “The Big Tall Wish,” and “Stopover in a Quiet Town“). He died in Los Angeles, California at the age of 40 in 1973 of a heart attack. He was en route to the airport to catch a plane when he got stuck in traffic and suffered a heart attack. His widow, Gayle, returned to her native North Carolina mountains after his death and became an award-winning restaurateur.
Written by: Rod Serling
Music: original music composed by Rene Garriguenc and conducted by Lud Gluskin
Director of Photography: George T. Clemens
Production Manager: Ralph W. Nelson
Art Directors: George W. Davis and William Ferrari
Film Editor: Bill Mosher
Assistant Director: Edward Denault
Set Decorations: Henry Grace and Rudy Butler
Sound: Franklin Milton and Jean Valentino
Casting Director: Mildred Gusse
Starring:
- Claude Akins…..Steve Brand
  - Claude Akins (1926-1994) was born in Nelson, Georgia and raised in Bedford, Indiana. He served as a Master Sergeant in the US Army Signal Corps during World War II. Akins was a Cherokee a character actor majored in speech and theater at Northwestern University and trained at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. He played Sonny Pruit in the 1970s show Movin’ On, the recurring character of Cotton Buckmeister on Laredo, and Sheriff Lobo on The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. He appeared in shows like Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Gunsmoke, Have Gun – Will Travel, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and others. He appeared in two Twilight Zone episodes (“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and “The Little People“) and he played Sheriff Butcher in the television movie The Night Stalker (1972) which was written by celebrated Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson. He also appeared in films like From Here to Eternity (1953), The Caine Mutiny (1954), Rio Bravo (1959), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973) to name a few. In later life, he appeared in a series of AAMCO commercials. He and his wife had three children and he died of stomach cancer in 1994. A lifelong golfer, a memorial golf tournament was created in his honor in Bedford, Indiana.
  - Claude Akins was paid $1,000 for his role in this episode.
- Barry Atwater…..Les Goodman
  - Garrett “Barry” Atwater (1918-1978) was a character actor who appeared in television shows like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, One Step Beyond, Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, Playhouse 90, Hawaii Five-0, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Outer Limits (“Corpus Earthling”). Perhaps most notably, he was one of the few actors to play a character from Spock’s home planet of Vulcan on Star Trek. He portrayed Surak in the late Season Three episode of Star Trek entitled “The Savage Curtain” (the somewhat goofy episode wherein Abraham Lincoln appears in space). Surak was the ancient philosopher who first established the Vulcan devotion to logic. Atwater famously could not achieve the Vulcan salute naturally in the episode, so when he bids farewell, he lowers his arm so that his hand is out of camera view as he pushes his fingers against his body to configure them properly. He was sometimes credited in films and television shows as “G.B. Atwater.” He later appeared in two episodes of the Rod Serling-hosted show Night Gallery (the pilot episode segment “The Cemetery” and “The Doll of Death”). And like Claude Akins, he also appeared in the television movie The Night Stalker (1972) which was written by celebrated Twilight Zone writer Richard Matheson. Atwater suffered a stroke only eight days after his sixtieth birthday. He passed away in 1978. He did not have children.
- Jack Weston…..Charlie Farnsworth
  - Morris “Jacob” Weinstein, or “Jack Weston” (1924-1996) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a shoe repairman. During World War II, he serves as a machine gunner in Italy in the U.S. Army before returning to his childhood love of acting. He appeared in a variety of television shows and movies, often as a comic character. He appeared in two Twilight Zone episodes (“The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” and “The Bard“). He later performed in the BBC-TV production of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in 1976 and a Tony Award in 1981. Some of his movies included Stage Struck (1958), Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Wait Until Dark (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Cactus Flower (1969), The Ritz (1976), The Four Seasons (1984), Dirty Dancing (1987), and Ishtar (1987). He was married twice and had one child. He died of lymphoma in New York City in 1996.
- Jan Handzlik…..Tommy
  - Jan Handzlik (1945-present) is an American lawyer and former child actor best known for playing young Patrick Dennis in the 1958 film Auntie Mame (1958). His acting career was brief, with only three credits to his name on IMDB. After retiring from acting, he became a lawyer in Los Angeles and worked as a federal prosecutor before becoming a white collar criminal defense attorney. Some of his notable clients have included: Steven Seagal, Stanley “Tookie” Williams, Joe Francis, and Florian Homm.
- Amzie Strickland…..unnamed neighbor
  - Amzie Ellen Strickland (1919-2006) was an American character actress who had a prolific acting career. She began in old-time radio, and later made some 650 television appearances. She had roles in two dozen films, appeared in numerous television movies, and also a string of TV commercials. Her television show appearances included: Adam-12, Dragnet, Gunsmoke, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, I Love Lucy, My Favorite Martian, Make Room for Daddy, My Three Sons, Leave It to Beaver, Gunsmoke, Mission: Impossible, Bonanza, and many others. She was married to radio and television actor Frank Behrens and they had one son together. She was a lifelong practicing Roman Catholic and a Republican. She died in 2006 of Alzheimer’s disease (some 20 years after her husband’s passing). She later appeared in the 1985 Twilight Zone reboot episode “Night of the Meek/But Can She Type?/The Star.”
- Burt Metcalfe…..Don Martin
  - Burt Metcalfe (1935-2022) was a Canadian-American film and television producer, director, screenwriter, and actor. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1956 to 1957 His most notable work was as a writer for the hit CBS series M*A*S*H and he was the only producer to stay with the TV series during its entire run from 1972 to 1983. He also made an uncredited appearance in the James Bond film Diamonds Are Forever (1971) as Agent Maxwell. His second wife, Jan Jorden, played Nurse Baker in nine episodes of M*A*S*H.
- Mary Gregory…..Sally, Tommy’s Mother
  - Mary Gregory (?-2018) appeared in films Like Woody Allen’s Sleeper (1973) and many television shows like Gunsmoke, Playhouse 90, Have Gun – Will Travel, My Favorite Martian, Adam-12, and Macgyver, She appeared in three episodes of The Twilight Zone (“The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street,” “The Lateness of the Hour,” and “The Shelter“). She also appeared in one Outer Limits episode (“Expanding Human”) and one episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (segment entitled: “The Different Ones”).
- Jason Johnson…..man
  - John “Jason” Johnson (1907-1977) was a Philadelphia native. He appeared in television shows like The Lone Ranger, Playhouse 90, Adventures of Superman, The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Have Gun – Will Travel, One Step Beyond, Perry Mason, Bonanza, Wonder Woman, and others. He also appeared in two Twilight Zone episodes (“The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” and “The Lateness of the Hour“). He died of a stroke in Burbank, California in 1977.
- Anne Barton…..Mrs. Myra Brand
  - Anne Barton (1924-2000) was an actress who appeared in shows like Leave It to Beaver (playing Eddie Haskell’s mother), Thriller, Perry Mason, Death Valley Days, Gunsmoke, Have Gun-Will Travel, and “Hawaii Five-0.” She appeared in two Twilight Zone episodes (“The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” and “Shadow Play“). She married actor Dan Barton, they had three children together, and she died in Los Angeles of cancer in 2000.
- Leah Waggner…..Mrs. Goodman
  - Rosemarie Dianne “Leah” Waggner (1927-2015) was born in Philadelphia, her father managed a dental supply company. She attended Longwood State Teachers College in Farmville, Virginia before relocating to California where she embarked on an acting career. Of her eighteen acting credits included appearances on Gunsmoke and The Dick Van Dyke Show. She married actor William Schallert (who was former president of The Screen Actors Guild and son of the Los Angeles Times drama editor, Edwin Schallert.), and they had four sons together. She died in 2015 at the age of 88.
- Joan Sudlow…..old woman next door
  - Joan Sudlow (1891-1970) had a brief career as a Hollywood extra (per IMDB she had twenty acting credits to her name). She died in Hollywood in 1970 due to complications from a fall.
- Ben Erway…..Pete Van Horn, the neighbor with a hammer who is tragically shot by Charlie
  - Ben Erway (1892-1981) was born in Reno, Nevada. He appeared in uncredited roles in a variety of movies throughout the 1940s, films like Son of Dracula (1943) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946), in which he played a reporter. He also appeared in television shows like Lawman, Perry Mason, and Bonanza. He died in Sun City, California in 1981.
- Lyn Guild…..Charlie’s Wife, Mrs. Farnsworth
  - Elsie Toplitzky, or “Lyn Guild” (1922-1995) has twenty-four acting credits to her name, per IMDB. She appeared in shows like Highway Patrol, The Adventures of Superman, Perry Mason, and others. She also had an uncredited role as a slave in the Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments (1956). She died in Honolulu, Hawaii in 1995.
- Sheldon Allman…..Alien #1, the more experienced of the two
  - Sheldon Allman (1924-2002) was born in Chicago and graduated from the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Apparently, he served in World War II in the Royal Canadian Air Force which is where he first began singing. He was later the singing voice for the television show Mister Ed, he also wrote and recorded songs. He also co-wrote the theme music for other children’s cartoons like George of the Jungle, Superchicken, and others. He appeared in shows like Route 66, Maverick, Cheyenne, Wagon Train, Mister Ed, Lawman, Laramie, The Travels of Jaime McPheeters, Bonanza, My Favorite Martian, Batman I Dream of Jeannie, Daniel Boone, Gunsmoke, Little House on the Prairie, Starsky and Hutch, and others. He died of heart failure in Culver City in 2002.
- William Walsh…..Alien #2, the younger of the two
  - William “Bill” Walsh (?) had a short-lived acting career, with only four credits to his name (per IMDB) including Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans (1957), the film Flaming Frontier (1958), and Adventures in Paradise (1960).
Extras:
- Bob McCord…..the ice cream vendor (uncredited)
  - Robert “Bud” or “Bob” Leigh McCord III (1915-1980) appeared in a variety of television shows, particularly in small uncredited roles in Westerns, in addition to The Twilight Zone. His first role was an uncredited appearance as an office clerk in the 1947 movie The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, and his first credited role was in an episode of the 1956 television series Schlitz Playhouse. After a couple more uncredited roles and minor appearances, he joined The Twilight Zone in 1959 (he was presumably hired by Cayuga Productions). In fact, he eventually set a record for most appearances on The Twilight Zone (75 times, mostly uncredited). He was also a stunt double on the show. He had a son named Robert IV (1938-2008) and a daughter named Penny. McCord died in 1980.
- Diane Livesey…..woman (uncredited)
- Joan Boston…..silent bit part (uncredited)
- Paul Denton…..silent bit part (uncredited)
- Beryl McCutcheon…..silent bit part (uncredited)
- William Moran…..silent bit part (uncredited)
- Vinita Murdock…..silent bit part (uncredited)
- George Washburn…..silent bit part (uncredited)

The Twilight Zone Trivia:

The uniforms worn by the aliens, their spaceship ramp, and the shots of the flying saucer were all originally borrowed from the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. This was the third episode in the series to borrow from Forbidden Planet. The shot of the departing flying saucer at the end of this episode was lifted directly from Forbidden Planet, but it was actually flipped upside down and reversed (the same shot was also used in “Third from the Sun” and the technique was also used in “To Serve Man“).
The ship from Forbidden Planet was called the C-57D cruiser.
The ending to “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” contains a similar conclusion to an earlier Rod Serling radio script “The Button Pushers” in which apocalyptic weaponry is detonated in a futuristic earth in 1970. At the end, a pair of aliens –Verus and Felovius– discuss a bet over whether or not the earth would destroy itself in the next billion years.
This entire episode was filmed on the New England Street on Lot 2 at MGM. There were two outside prop rentals costing Cayuga Productions $50 for this episode: a vending bike and a power mower. The set designs were: a “Maple Street” signpost, landscapes, automobiles and other props costing about $750. The closing scene and spaceship set cost about $1,000.
The Maple Street location was reused in the episode “Stopover in a Quiet Town.”
In this episode, one of the neighbors, Pete van Horn, mentions that the next street over from Maple Street is Floral Street.
Les Goodman’s license plate on his idling car reads: “EO 2548.”
In 2009, TIME magazine named “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street” one of the ten best Twilight Zone episodes.
This episode was remade in the 2003 reboot series with narration by Forest Whitaker.
The set for this episode was used in MGM’s Andy Hardy series (starring Mickey Rooney). It would also appear in future Twilight Zone episodes like “A World of Difference” and “Long Live Walter Jameson.”
Prior to this episode, Rod Serling tried to honor requests from individuals around the country, requesting 16mm prints of episodes, however by this point in the series, CBS started prohibiting distributions due to the high volume of requests.
The concept of electrical power being mysteriously shut off was explored in the film The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951).
In The Twilight Zone Companion Marc Scott Zicree argues this episode “may well be the greatest piece ever written about mob violence in any medium.”
Three automobiles are featured in this episode, including product placements by Ford: a 1959 Ford Sedan and a 1959 Ford Station Wagon (the same car that the mechanic worked on in “Walking Distance” as confirmed by the registration number).
Viktor Gamboa of “The Outer Limits Podcast” and Joe Meyer of “The Key of Imagination” podcast (both excellent podcasts) have highlighted similar themes between The Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” and The Outer Limits episode “A Feasibility Study.”