The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street

The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street was an episode of the Original Twilight zone, one of the most famous actually. The episode revolved around a small suburban neighborhood and the suspicion that aliens might soon be coming. When the whole block loses power its easy for the people to suspect this is part of the alien plot, but when one person gets their power turned back on it is thought he must be one of the alien conspirators.

Eventually the a mob gathers and ends up killing the man who's light had come on, but one of the most outspoken members of the mob returns home to find his lights on and knows how it must look. The last shot in the episode is of two aliens speaking on a hilltop overlooking the town.

"Understand the procedure now? Just stop a few of their machines...throw them into darkness for a few hours and then sit back and watch the pattern. They pick the most dangerous enemy they can find and it's themselves."

This episode has been remade once, using terrorism instead of aliens. But the main thing to see here is that when face with adversity people often turn on each other. Its easy to point the finger instead of trying to fix the problem. The end of the show narration went like this:

"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."