Said H.P. Lovecraft famously:
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.”
For me, what has always separated horror from, say, an average mystery or action story is this element just outside the realm of the knowable and the conscious. Things we can’t explain – aliens, monsters, apparitions, demons -- are inherently terrifying because… if you can’t know it, you can’t beat it. This is the place where Rod Serling takes us in THE TWILIGHT ZONE.
According to Devendra Varma, who was an expert in gothic literature, the difference between terror and horror is “the difference between awful apprehension and sickening revulsion.” This is to say that terror is the emotion we feel when we know something unimaginably awful is going to occur; horror is the emotion we feel when we sit in the realization that something unimaginably awful has just happened. The reason “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street” is an exemplary script lies in how Serling takes us from terror (anticipation) to horror (realization).
Like all the great episodes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, this is a one-two stomach punch – like a macabre Aesop fable.
In the vein of Arthur Miller’s witch-hunting play, THE CRUCIBLE (which premiered on Broadway nearly eight years before “Maple Street” aired) Serling explores how, as people, we can often be our own greatest enemies; how in the face of things which can’t be explained (like a power outage), humans are quick to point fingers, blame and ultimately sacrifice each other.
This commentary on human nature remains achingly accurate, especially at this point in history. At the urging of a little boy who’s read one too many alien comics, the adults on Maple Street start to look for an alien enemy among themselves. When the power goes out and the phone lines go dead and the cars won’t start, there must be a person at fault. As viewers, we watch the proverbial dominos fall.