The Simpsons was an unconventional TV show when it first hit the airwaves. Originally intended as shorts on The Tracy Ullman Show, a sketch variety show, on Fox. The Simpsons had become popular thanks to the Butterfinger commercials and then the 1989 Christmas show which wowed audiences which its crudeness and humor more irreverent than most cartoons of the time. There’s Homer Simpson (voiced by Dan Castellanata) screaming “Damn it!” when bumpng his head in front of kids as he’s dressed as Santa. And the line “I’m Bart Simpson. Who the hell are you?!” was echoed by kids on the playgrounds.
After the first uneven season, the show began to find its footing in the second season. This began a tradition that has become both impressive and tiresome as the seasons have gone on. I basically stopped watching the show years ago. The tone and appeal that first attracted me was gone. I felt like I was watching an imitation. Even the Halloween episodes didn’t have the same feel to them. I think they started go off the rails around the early 2000s. This was following the additions of Mike Scully and Ian Maxtone-Graham to the staff who are believed to have changed the tone of the show of which it’s not been able to recover.
But on Oct. 25, 1990, audiences tuned in for the first ever Treehouse of Horror. The plot involves Homer returning home from trick-or-treating to notice that his kids are up in the treehouse. Bart (voiced by Nancy Cartwright), Lisa (voiced by Yeardley Smith) and Maggie are telling ghost stories. In someway, it reminds me of Trilogy of Terror, the 1975 TV movie in which Karen Black was featured in an anthology movie of three stories.
Bart, not to happy with the stories Lisa is telling, begins his own called “Bad Dream House.” This is an ode to the haunted house trope, such as The Amityville Horror or Poltergeist. The Simpsons have moved into a house that is built on a Native American burial ground and experience paranormal activity with a voice even telling them to “Get out!” But Marge (voiced by Julie Kavner) stands her ground and says the evil entity isn’t going to push them around. Realizing it has to live with the Simpsons, it destroys the house by imploding into a portal.
The second story, “Hungry Are the Damned” is the first to feature the aliens, Kang (voiced by Harry Shearer) and Kodos (voiced by Castellanata) who abduct the Simpsons. Despite some initial scares, the aliens, who are green with tentacle-like arms and one large eye, offer the Simpsons foods they like. They keep feeding the Simpsons as they say they are heading to the planet of Rigel IV. But Lisa becomes suspicious and notices that Serak the Preparer (voiced by James Earl Jones) has a cookbook titled How to Cook Humans.
This is an ode to the famous Twilight Zone episode “To Serve Man” in which humanoid aliens played by Richard Kiel have arrived on Earth. People eventually realizes that the book left behind during a meeting titled To Serve Man is a cookbook as the aliens abduct humans. But Lisa and the aliens have a disagreement as the book has dust on the cover that the book is really about cooking for humans. Upset that the Simpsons thought the aliens were fattening them up for a feast, they actually just wanted to communicate with other beings. So, they take them back to Earth leaving them.
The story ends with a Rod Sterling-like twist with Lisa proclaiming “There really were monsters on that ship, and truly we were them.” The is also a reference to Twilight Zone episode “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” where a neighborhood black-out leads normal people to suspect there’s something sinister behind it and their neighbors are causing it.
The third and final story is Lisa reading Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven” which transitions into Jone’s voice as Homer is playing the unnamed narrator of the length poem. Marge, in a picture, is Lenore. Maggie and Lisa are the seraphim angels and Bart is the Raven. This is an abridged version of the poem. If anything else, it’s a great example of what the show would later be capable of with their references and jokes. “The Raven” is the one that scares Homer the most.
Every Halloween season after this, the show would feature a Treehouse of Horror getting more edgier and outrageous with parodies of King Kong, The Dead Zone, The Shining and other Twilight Zone episodes. However, by the end of the 1990s, you could tell steam was running out. Some of the stories had more sci-fi/fantasy elements rather than horror/thriller.
But by the beginning of the 2000s, it seems most of the episodes were trying to see how grody they could be with a Harry Potter parody in which Bart as a wizard produces a reptillian creature that vomits. And later episodes have Homer eating parts of his body. I will give them credit for referencing the Burt Lancaster version of Dr. Moreau rather than the Marlon Brando version.
While the episodes were usually great from beginning to end, now, they’re mostly more miss than hit. In 2022, they made a Death Note anime story which works. And the Westworld parody had some interesting moments. Maybe what works about the 2022 episode was it had multiple writers which was different than Season 14 which included the Moreau parody.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 