Air date: March 4, 1960
The happy-go-lucky residents of Maple Street are enjoying an ordinary summer evening when a supposed meteor flies closely overhead... but doesn't crash. Soon after, all electrical devices stop working, and when everyone starts asking questions, local boy Tommy comes forth with an idea he got from a comic book, about aliens landing and disguising themselves as normal people. While everyone initially ignores him, they start thinking...
A few hours pass, and no restoration of normal circumstances has happened. Paranoia soon gets the better of the people of Maple Street, and they start a borderline Witch Hunt against people in the neighborhood who have been perceived as acting suspicious. Even if it is just minor stuff like having a slightly different daily routine than everybody else, these people are accused of being aliens in cahoots with whoever is behind the power outage. It doesn't get any better when the power in some houses starts randomly turning on and off, and their inhabitants now have the blame cast on them.
It is in the midst of this thick atmosphere of fear that Pete van Horn, a man who went to check on the next street over, is shot and killed. The rest of the residents promptly go insane from the resultant accusations, running around and committing acts of wanton assault and vandalism as they blame everyone around them for being the enemy.
On a nearby hill, it is revealed the mysterious meteor that had flown overhead was indeed an alien spaceship. Its inhabitants, two alien observers, are watching the riot on Maple Street while using a device to manipulate the neighborhood's power. One of the aliens explains to his colleague that they have repeated this strategy all over the planet, and the result has been the same each and every time. With their plan to utilize humankind's own paranoia against them, they don't have to fire a single shot to conquer the planet. They board their UFO with the intent to spread their invasion to other places, conquering Earth one neighborhood at a time.
This episode was remade as "The Monsters Are On Maple Street" for The Twilight Zone (2002), with the fear of aliens being changed to one of terrorists.
The Tropes Are Due on Maple Street:
- Alien Among Us: Sort of. There were aliens involved, they just weren't among the residents.
- Alien Invasion: The aliens use fear and mistrust to manipulate humanity into destroying itself, long before they take over.
- An Aesop: Whether it's an atom bomb or an alien invasion, human beings don't need an external force to destroy them. All it takes is unfounded fear, suspicion, blame, contempt, and mistrust, and they'll destroy themselves just as easily. In other words, they are, indeed, the real monsters due on Maple Street...
- The Bad Guy Wins: The aliens succeed in destroying Maple Street by manipulating the residents into attacking each other, then announce they'll keep doing that to other communities until Earth is vacant.
- Batman Gambit: The aliens' plan.
- Blame Game: Everybody puts the blame for the power outage on incompetence, accidents, and eventually aliens.
- Can't Argue with Elves: The aliens are right: Humans Are the Real Monsters.
- Close-Knit Community: Maple Street is a picturesque example of suburban friendliness and unity. Unfortunately, this picture is steadily undone as the episode goes on.
- Comic-Book Adaptation: This episode was adapted as a graphic novel by Walker Paperback in 2009.
- The Corrupter: The aliens' modus operandi comes straight out of Othello.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: Tommy is the one who proposed the idea (from his comic book) that alien invaders shut off the electricity to deliberately stir up mistrust and dissent, as well as to keep everyone from leaving. Unknowingly, he was completely correct. There actually were aliens subjecting the residents to a Paranoia Gambit. Unfortunately, Tommy was not savvy enough to realize that actually letting Steve and Charlie leave Maple Street likely would've prevented the whole thing. Thus, he walked the crowd right into the aliens' trap, and ultimately got the ire of the whole community.
- Divide and Conquer: The aliens use Humans Are the Real Monsters to their advantage, stirring mistrust among the populace to let them destroy themselves.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The episode is an identifiable Take That! to the Red Scare.
- Double-Meaning Title: Whether the monsters are the Maple Street citizens themselves, or the aliens who caused the power outage.
- Dutch Angle: There are multiple such shots in the final scene when the residents of Maple Street go berserk and start rioting.
- Fantastic Aesop: Played with. We probably won't be subject to alien conquest any time soon, but the story's moral rings true all the same: paranoia and suspicion can tear people apart without aliens premeditating it, as the last line of narration proposes. Note that this was a time when the Red Scare would still have been fresh in the audience's memory.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: As part of the Take That! to the Red Scare, Serling disappointingly notes in his closing narration that (unlike so many other occurrences on this show) the horror that viewers have just seen is not confined to the Twilight Zone.
- Hanging Judge: Charlie. He's very quick to jump on and immediately convict neighbors who are accused of being alien scouts. Steve even refers to him as "a self-appointed hanging judge."
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The aliens don't need to attack Earth. They just let the dark side of human nature allow humans to destroy themselves.
- Hypocrite: For all his finger-pointing and stirring the pot, Charlie has a much different attitude when he is the one facing allegations and violence. He begs for the mercy and understanding that he was so quick to deny others.
- Jerkass: Charlie continually stirs the pot and is quick to jump on fellow neighbors who are accused.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Charlie blames Tommy of being the alien. He's wrong there, but Tommy's comic book plot about alien invasions did get the people of Maple Street to become suspicious and paranoid of each other.
- Jerkass Realization: Charlie's wife expresses disappointment with herself and the mob for so quickly distrusting their neighbors, people she says they've known for years and had considered their friends. Charlie and many others don't heed this sentiment.
- Let's You and Him Fight: What the aliens expect to happen with their plan. And they start to gloat that it worked perfectly after seeing the riot.
- Never My Fault: Charlie shoots and kills the "monster", but when said "monster" is revealed to be Pete Van Horn returning from Floral Street, Charlie refuses responsibility for killing him, blaming the darkness and asking how he was supposed to know who Pete was, when all he could've done was call out his name. Even Steve refuses to defend him when the neighbors turn on him.
- Noodle Incident: The more experienced alien tells his partner that he has seen their gambit play out in various areas, all with a handful of variations, but always the same result.
- Not Helping Your Case: Steve refuses to let the others see the ham radio set in the basement, and prove to them that it's just that, without a search warrant for Lord knows what reason.
- Charlie's aggressiveness also gets used against him when suspicion is cast on him.
- Not So Above It All: Despite his skepticism, Steve slips into believing the alien story a few times.
- Only Sane Man: Steve is the voice of reason among the residents of Maple Street.
- Paranoia Gambit: A large-scale version is the aliens' endgame.
- Poor Communication Kills: For both sides. The crowd sees a mysterious figure walking out of the darkness. Knowing how tense everything is at the moment, instead of calling out to the figure, or the figure calling out to them, Charlie grabs a shotgun and shoots the figure. Turns out it was one of their neighbors, Pete, who was going over to the next block to see if that street had power, so he was killed for nothing. It gets worse when you realize what Pete could've told them.
- Sarcasm Mode: In the face of questions about who he talks to on his ham radio, Steve mockingly says he talks to monsters and aliens, of course. His wife urges him to stop out of concern of what the others will do in response to this sarcasm.
- The Scapegoat: Steve points out that what the mob really wants is someone, anyone, to condemn and take to task just so that they can go back to feeling safe. Serling's closing narration also notes the "thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat" can affect generations to come.
- Shaming the Mob: Steve does this to the neighbors for quickly accusing others, but it didn't last.
- Southern Gothic Satan: The aliens are a sci-fi version, drawing out the townsfolk's worst sins in order to get them to destroy themselves.
- Stock Footage: A shot of the C-57D in space is taken from Forbidden Planet (shown here turned upside down).
- Too Dumb to Live: Maple Street itself. Without power, running cars, and electricity, they devolve back to primitive violence and start killing each other out of envy that one house has power and the rest do not.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If Tommy hadn't told everyone about his Alien Among Us comic book, it's possible the entire plot wouldn't have happened. Him screaming "It's the monster!" when the crowd spots Pete in the darkness doesn't help one bit.
- You Fool!: Steve shouts this as the neighborhood descends into chaos.
