With nearly 100 Treehouse of Horror segments produced and aired at this point, some rank
right up there with both the best-ever moments on The Simpsons, and perhaps even with the
creepy tales that inspired them. Watch on to experience the very best Treehouse of Horror
installments...if you dare.
The uniting theme of "Treehouse of Horror II" is that if you eat too much Halloween
candy, some bad dreams will definitely follow. Despite any warnings, though, the Simpson's
kids (and Homer) go overboard. So follows "Bart's Nightmare," a parody of "The Good
Life," one of the most famous episodes of The Twilight Zone.
The proud underachiever dreams that he can both read minds and manipulate reality with
a thought. As a result, all of Springfield fears even having a negative thought about
Bart, lest he deliver repercussions. He uses his powers to fulfill even his most mundane
wishes.
For example, when Homer refuses to turn off a football game for The Krusty the Clown Show,
Bart makes Homer the game ball, and he flies into a goal post. When an angry Homer tries
to smash Bart with a chair, the boy mentally transforms him into a jack-in-the-box. Marge
tires of the fighting and sends the two to Dr. Marvin Monroe for some much needed family
therapy, and the doc tells Bart and Homer to spend more time together.
That leads to a montage of wholesome activities that's hilariously out of place in a Halloween
episode, complete with fishing, baseball, and church. The positive attention from Homer,
which he may desperately need in regular life, renders his powers less effective, and brings
them together for some genuine fatherly affection. That's so horrifying to Bart that he wakes
up screaming. Maybe they should try that therapist in real life.
Bart Simpson has always been a troublemaker, and in the eighth season "Treehouse of Horror"
segment "The Thing and I," Simpsons writers provided a logical reason why Bart is so bad:
He's evil.
It all starts when Bart and Lisa hear spooky monster noises in the attic, and they're only
more curious when Homer carts off a bucket of fish heads to feed something he calls..."it."
That "it" turns out to be a "he," and he escapes its shackles among the attic's many unsold
copies of Be Sharps records and Homer's autobiography. Finally, Marge, along with Dr. Hibbert, clues
in the kids, explaining that Bart was born as part of a pair of conjoined twins, and
that the other one, which they named Hugo, was pure evil, a fact confirmed by medical
science.
"But what to do with poor Hugo? Too crazy for Boys Town, too much of a boy for Crazy
Town. The child was an outcast."
The only solution was for the Simpson family to embrace the time-honored traditions of
gothic horror and chain evil Hugo in the attic, occasionally feeding him some fish heads.
That's when Hugo returns with plans to sew himself back to his twin, only for Dr. Hibbert
to save the day. Well, not for Bart, as the doc realizes that Bart was the evil twin all
along and then forces him into a life as the secret, restrained attic child and grants
the weird, maladjusted Hugo his freedom.
"I Know What You Diddily-Iddly-Did" parodied the trendy teen horror movies of the late
'90s, particularly, and obviously, I Know What You Did Last Summer. If you missed it,
that movie concerns a group of young people who accidentally run a guy over and cover
it up, only to be haunted by the dead man.
The Simpsosn version opens with a misdirect, as the Simpsons drive along a twisty road
on a foggy night, having already escaped vampires who'd stolen their Super Sugar Crisp (obviously).
But it just so happens that they're driving down the same road where neighborino Ned Flanders
is enjoying one of his famous "fog walks," and that's where Marge hits him.
"We've got to go to the police!"
"They'll never believe a Simpson killed a Flanders by accident. Even I have my doubts."
Instead of calling the authorities, Homer engages in a twisted round of Weekend at Bernie's
re-creation, hauling around Ned's rotten corpse to stage a fake death and take the heat off
of Marge. After the funeral (where Homer basically confesses), the family is haunted by a man
in a raincoat with a hook, and they flee to a series of spooky horror movie locales until
the mysterious stalker reveals himself. It's Ned, of course, but it turns out Marge didn't
kill him after all. He was never dead because he's already undead, having been turned into
a werewolf earlier that night. The moral of the story? Stay out of the dang fog.
In this segment from the sixth "Treehouse of Horror" special, The Simpsons ramps up
the satire, skewering the crassness of outdoor advertising while also taking Homer to task
for his gluttony. When he buys a "colossal" size donut at Lard Lad that turns out to be
only slightly larger than a regular pastry, Homer gets so angry that he steals the giant
metal donut held aloft by the store's 50-foot-tall mascot statue. Unfortunately, this act of
vandalism coincides with an ionic disturbance, which jolts Lard Lad and other massive, tacky
advertising characters to life, including parodies of Mr. Peanut, the Pep Boys mascots,
and even The Simpsons' own Kent Brockman. Needless to say, these commercially motivated
horrors immediately wreak havoc on Springfield, devastating the town in revenge for Homer's
theft..
The police are no help, of course. In a joke that feels way too grim for The Simpsons,
Chief Wiggum shoots at the first tall thing he sees, which turns out to be a high school
basketball player. It's up to our favorite family to set things right, so Lisa consults
an old advertising executive, who explains that since the mascots are commercials, the
only way to stop them is by ignoring them. They further enlist the aid of '60s pop crooner
Paul Anka, who writes an anti-ad jingle to convince Springfieldians to "just don't look,"
fighting the ads with ads of their own. The tactic works, and the raging monsters fall
over and die...right onto the orphanage and children's hospital, crushing them in the
process. The moral of the story? You can't win 'em all.
Even the scariest of the "Treehouse of Horror" segments lean on the comical side. From what
we can tell, a ratio of three parts funny to one part scary seems to roughly approximate
the Simpsons' writers formula. However, every so often, one of these Halloween installments
is downright scary, if not gruesome. "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace" is both of those things,
and still manages to be funny.
Bart dreams that a Freddy Krueger-esque, rake-wielding Groundskeeper Willie tries to kill him...and
he wakes up with rake wounds on his chest. He learns that Lisa and the other kids at
school were similarly attacked with maintenance equipment in their dreams, while poor Martin
is choked to death by Willie's giant tongue during a desk nap about Latin conjugation.
Marge finally clues in the kids that Willie is indeed trying to eliminate the children
of Springfield Elementary in their dreams as revenge for the parents who callously looked
on when he burned to death in a furnace mishap during a budget meeting held on the spookiest
day of the Simpsons' calendar: "Smarch the 13th."
That's when Bart heads into his dreams to force Willie into a fight to the bitter end,
leading to a terrifying scene featuring eerie green skies, spooky music, and Willie taking
the forms of both a monster tractor and a horrifying combination of bagpipes and a giant
spider. Fortunately, the frequently unsung Maggie plays the hero, saving the day by plugging
Willie's bagpipe/exhaust pipe with her pacifier.
The story of selling one's soul to the devil in exchange for worldly abundance is an old
one, but "The Devil and Homer Simpson", a parody of the classic short story and film
"The Devil and Daniel Webster", definitely puts its own spin on things. Homer is so desperate
for a donut that he offers to sell his soul for one. Immediately, Satan appears, and in
a big twist, it's the ultra-pious Ned Flanders. Homer signs the deal, stipulating that Satan
gets his soul the moment he finishes the donut, and while he tries to get out of it by leaving
the last bite untouched, it's just too devilishly delicious to resist.
"Mm, forbidden donut."
Hell's finest torturers try to dish out one of the usual ironic punishments for gluttony
by forcing Homer to eat an endless amount of donuts, but for Homer, that's closer to
heaven. Eventually, at Lisa's behest, Homer gets a trial. In the end, it's Satan Flanders
who gets the ironic punishment, as Homer's gluttony saves his soul. See, on the back
of his wedding photo, taken in a hospital because he ate his entire wedding cake before
the wedding, there's a love note he wrote to Marge, in which he already pledged his
undying soul to her. As a result, Homer doesn't go to hell, but he does wind up with his own
head turned into a donut, which he has a tough time not eating.
While many "Treehouse of Horror" segments focus on the deadly sin of gluttony, "Fly
vs. Fly" concerns sloth. In this installment, Homer buys two walk-in matter transporters
at Professor Frink's garage sale and uses them to be lazier than ever. He places the
transporters at the top and bottom of stairs to avoid five seconds of exercise. Then he
goes even further, first by using it to get a beer without getting up from the couch,
and then by using the machine as a shortcut to the bathroom, and not for his whole body.
Things really go wrong when Bart sneaks downstairs in the middle of the night to experiment with
the machines, and Snowball II and Santa's Little Helper head into one device, emerging
as a two-headed cat-dog and a two-bottomed monster, respectively. When Bart sees a fly
enter the transporter, though, he proves that he's been reading too many comics by imagining
himself transforming into a muscular, fly-boy hybrid superhero named Superfly.
Instead, well, it goes a little more like it did with the family pets. Fly-headed Bart
loves his new life of feasting on sugar and syrup and tries to permanently replace both
fly-body Bart and Lisa. Finally, monster Bart eats little Bart and gets shoved into a transporter,
restoring Bart to his regular state, and everything goes back to normal for the family. Of course,
Homer does threaten to chop Bart up with an ax because he dared to mess with his dad's
new toys without permission, but like we said: back to normal for The Simpsons.
Springfield Elementary is a woefully underfunded and poorly-run school, and that's rarely illustrated
better than it is in "Nightmare Cafeteria." The detention room is overpacked and Lunchlady
Doris has resorted to using "Grade F" meat, so Principal Skinner comes up with a monstrous
solution that solves both problems, kill, serve, and eat the misbehaving children. The
teachers are nothing but amused when they taste their first round of "Sloppy Jimbos."
German exchange student Uter likes them too, but Skinner finds an arbitrary reason to send
him to detention, simply because the kid looks so tasty. Sure enough, the next day, the school
is eating "Uterbraten," and Skinner accidentally admits the whole cannibalism gambit to Bart
and Lisa.
"In fact, you might even say we just ate Uter, and he's in our stomachs right now! Ha ha
ha!
What's maybe even more horrifying is that Marge refuses to help the kids, utilizing
this as a teaching moment to encourage them to stand up for themselves and refuse to be
eaten. Despite Groundskeeper Willy's ill-fated attempts to intervene, Skinner and Lunchlady
Doris corner the Simpson kids and Milhouse, and our young sitcom kids experience a surprisingly
grisly end. Fortunately, it was all just another bad dream that Bart was having. Unfortunately,
in the waking world, there's a fog going around that turns people inside out. And so this
"Treehouse of Horror" episode ends with a double fake-out and the skin-less Simpson
family performing an incredibly gross musical number that reveals Marge's hair has muscles
and veins. Classic Simpsons.
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