Treehouse of Horror Month
A daily, episode by episode review of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Anthologies
Welcome to me desperately trying to make up for the fact a bunch of you gave me money for a newsletter that fell off as I tried to get my book (which you also gave me money for) finished and out into the world.
And what better way to do that than for me to take advantage of the season to write about The Simpsons and Halloween every day of October.
So with some help from Wikipedia1 I’ll be doing one Treehouse of Horror episode a day (and a couple of two a days, since there are more than 31 episodes now).
So now that my Marge Disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get into the very first TREEHOUSE OF HORROR!
The Simpson Halloween Special (aka Treehouse of Horror 1)
Season 2 episode 4, October 20, 1990
Stories:
Bad Dream House
To Serve Man
The Raven
A brief overview of the the Halloween Special as a concept, as an event, and as a legacy should be addressed. Anthology horror, the telling of several stories that are either connected by a framing device, or that serve as stand alone stories, is not new. It is a storytelling mode that has existed in books, comics, film, and television, ranging from story collections, The EC comics horror line of the pre-comics code days, Amicus Pictures horror anthologies (as well as other studios), Creep Show, to Tales from the Crypt, Twilight Zone, Nightmare Gallery, and more.
The Simpsons, much like Loony Tunes, being a reflection of pop culture as a source of humor, took their first foray into an Anthology Episode2 in season 2, with their Halloween Special.
The episode begins with a warning/disclaimer from Marge (linked above) about the nature of the show/episode, transitioning into a brand new opening credits sequence featuring grim and comedic tombstones, and blood letters that read out the name of the title, while the credits are in dripping green slime.
I watched this as it aired, and it felt like an event.
The faming device to the episode, the kids telling each other ghost stories in the treehouse as Homer eavesdrops, is what allows the show within its much more grounded at the time narrative continuity ti pivot into the fantastical. The framing device is touched on after each ad break, and ti wrap up the episode.
One of the reasons why the framing device fell away was due to the increase in ad time, including fewer minutes of episode broadcast time and an additional ad break.
Bad Dream House: The first story told, by Bart, is the story of the family buying a house that turns out to be haunted, tried to drive them out, convince them to kill each other, and then ultimately chooses to destroy itself than have the family as inhabitants.
The humor of the episode is in the family tangling with the supernatural, throwing stuff in an inter-dimensional portal, and then ending with the big punchline that they’re worse than the evil murder ghost int he house.
It’s very much early season cynicism, something that appears in the second story as well, and is an homage to all manner of haunted house stories from Amityvlle Horror to Poltergeist.
Hungry Are the Damned: In the second story, also told by Bart, the family is abducted from their backyard by octopus-like green aliens with drooling mouths and big central eyes. They are treated as guests on the spaceship, with promises to be taken to paradise, and constantly fed to their hearts content.
Lisa pokes around, finds a cookbook that along with the aliens ominous comments, leads her t think that they are going to be eaten.
It’s a big misunderstanding, and the family is dropped off back at home after offending the aliens.
This is the first appearance of Kang and Kodos, who will become staples in future Halloween episodes.
This is a parody fo the Twilight Zone episode (I’ve never watched “To Serve Man”.
The Raven: The third story, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, read by Lisa, and narrated by James earl Jones, is the poem as depicted by Homer as the man and Bart as the raven. It’s a fantastic artistic adaptation, and the high point of the episode as well as being something the show never attempts to do again.
The episode with Homer in bed with Marge, spooked by the stories, and seeing the Raven/Bart outside the window.
Funniest Bit: At the time of airing, I think I thought the house imploding on itself instead of wanting to exist with the Simpons inside, or the moment where the family as all picked up weapons and are getting ready to murder each other, with the reveal that Marge was just making a sandwich, were the funniest to me.
Now, compared to the more joke-y nature and the more overt big-laugh style of the show that would come about a few years later, it’s hard to say what was truly the most hah-hah funny (not to be confused with Nelson’s Haw-haw).
There are a lot of solid jokes, especially with the aliens, but none of the jokes stand out more than the big punchline ironies at the end of the first two stories.
Moment of Note: Bart’s assessment of the escalation of horror during the framing device, saying that The Raven is just not that scary in the way that the first Friday the 13th does’t compare in bloodshed to its later entries.
See you tomorrow for Treehouse of Horror 2
This is the episode guide that I’ll be using to help refresh my memory. I thought about also watching the first 18 of them again with the audio commentary, but they generally aren’t that great… generally. I have watched the audio commentary for every episode of the first 19 seasons of the show, and there’s a lot of good stuff, but it’s real pitchy.
Other non-Halloween anthology episodes include: Simpsons Bible Stories, Tales from the Public Domain, The Wettest Story Ever Told, Simpsons Tall Tales, and more. Anthology episodes started to become a semi-regular fixture starting in season 8 with Simpsons Spinoff Showcase, while the show had also broken format with clip shows that also used a framing device, and The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular from season 7.