Disturbing tale of a Mayberry type neighborhood in the 60s coming apart at the seams when the power goes out and a young boy's warning of "Monsters from Outer Space", read from sci-fi stories, instills fear in the minds of those who live on Maple Street. When one neighbor's car starts and stops (he also accused of being up late at night "looking up at the sky as if he were waiting on something"), fingers point at him as a potential alien monster, even Steve, the voice of reason having a hard time convincing the others that what has happened in the neighborhood can be explained in a more logical sense than aliens out to get them, whose wife spoke of him "working on a radio in the basement" becomes a target of accusation.
Charlie becomes the vocal accuser who gets the others, almost completely irrational and delusional by this point, utterly convinced that there are monsters among them, allowing their imaginations to run away from them, all riled up. When the murder of a neighbor, who had went to check to see if another street had the same power outages as Maple Street (the visual of a hammer the man was carrying on his person established earlier subtly is significant), thanks to Charlie's ignorance and fear that he was a monster only encourages further mob mentality before long everyone is accusing the other, inciting a riot of violence and horror as the street is scattered with frightened people packing guns and stones, any weapon they can find to "defend themselves".
Why I think this episode is so lasting is that it really doesn't take much for a group of people, who seem civilized and rational, to unravel if placed within a pressure-cooker situation, where innocent people are considered suspect. I imagine this is perhaps a veiled indictment of the McCarthy era where Americans were blacklisted as having Communist ideals, called to defend themselves "in a kangaroo court" (as described by Claude Akins who attempts, like Hollywood screenwriters among others whose careers were ruined by scandalous rhetoric by McCarthy and his Salem witch-hunting, to stave off the mob, trying to blow out the fuse that was to detonate an uncontrollable situation about to explode) or just to warn us against accusation and innuendo, not to lose ourselves when small problems, which seem to have no explanation (or could if the problems are approached by conventional means) arise.
Maybe this episode will be considered dated, but I think the message remains a strong one, that if we encounter a crisis, not to allow ourselves to get caught up in a furor or be so quick to question those around us all because we are scared or confused. All it took was power to go on and off and for a children's scary story to plant the seed in the minds of common everyday folk who normally wouldn't behave as a terrified mob willing to shout and hurl rocks at each other, not to mention, shoot a shotgun into the darkness at someone they believe is "a monster". Appropriately intense, with a cast right out of the Andy Griffith Show, who look like any neighborhood you might stop by to visit, the kind who usually shoot the breeze, mow their yards, cook barbecue ribs on the grill in the back yard, and that is why "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" is so effective. Superb cast including Claude Akins and Jack Weston as neighbors on opposite ends of the argument that there are monsters on Maple Street, one trying to keep an escalation of violence from happening, while the other only adds fuel to the fire.
Charlie becomes the vocal accuser who gets the others, almost completely irrational and delusional by this point, utterly convinced that there are monsters among them, allowing their imaginations to run away from them, all riled up. When the murder of a neighbor, who had went to check to see if another street had the same power outages as Maple Street (the visual of a hammer the man was carrying on his person established earlier subtly is significant), thanks to Charlie's ignorance and fear that he was a monster only encourages further mob mentality before long everyone is accusing the other, inciting a riot of violence and horror as the street is scattered with frightened people packing guns and stones, any weapon they can find to "defend themselves".
Why I think this episode is so lasting is that it really doesn't take much for a group of people, who seem civilized and rational, to unravel if placed within a pressure-cooker situation, where innocent people are considered suspect. I imagine this is perhaps a veiled indictment of the McCarthy era where Americans were blacklisted as having Communist ideals, called to defend themselves "in a kangaroo court" (as described by Claude Akins who attempts, like Hollywood screenwriters among others whose careers were ruined by scandalous rhetoric by McCarthy and his Salem witch-hunting, to stave off the mob, trying to blow out the fuse that was to detonate an uncontrollable situation about to explode) or just to warn us against accusation and innuendo, not to lose ourselves when small problems, which seem to have no explanation (or could if the problems are approached by conventional means) arise.
Maybe this episode will be considered dated, but I think the message remains a strong one, that if we encounter a crisis, not to allow ourselves to get caught up in a furor or be so quick to question those around us all because we are scared or confused. All it took was power to go on and off and for a children's scary story to plant the seed in the minds of common everyday folk who normally wouldn't behave as a terrified mob willing to shout and hurl rocks at each other, not to mention, shoot a shotgun into the darkness at someone they believe is "a monster". Appropriately intense, with a cast right out of the Andy Griffith Show, who look like any neighborhood you might stop by to visit, the kind who usually shoot the breeze, mow their yards, cook barbecue ribs on the grill in the back yard, and that is why "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street" is so effective. Superb cast including Claude Akins and Jack Weston as neighbors on opposite ends of the argument that there are monsters on Maple Street, one trying to keep an escalation of violence from happening, while the other only adds fuel to the fire.