Treehouse of Horror (The Simpsons episode)

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"Treehouse of Horror"
Treehouse of Horror series to actually take place in the treehouse.
Episode no.Season 2
Episode 3
Directed byBad Dream House:
Wes Archer
Hungry Are the Damned:
Rich Moore
The Raven:
David Silverman
Written byBad Dream House:
John Swartzwelder
Hungry Are the Damned:
Jay Kogen
Wallace Wolodarsky
The Raven:
Edgar Allan Poe
Sam Simon
Production code7F04
Original air dateOctober 25, 1990 (1990-10-25)
Guest appearances
  • James Earl Jones as the mover, Serak the Preparer and the Narrator of "The Raven"
Episode features
CommentaryMatt Groening
James L. Brooks
David Silverman
Al Jean
Mike Reiss
Jay Kogen
Wallace Wolodarsky
Episode chronology
← Previous
"Simpson and Delilah" 		Next →
"Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish"
The Simpsons season 2
List of episodes

"Treehouse of Horror" is the third episode of the second season of the American animated television series The Simpsons. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 25, 1990. The episode was inspired by 1950s horror comics, and begins with a disclaimer that it may be too scary for children. It is the first Treehouse of Horror episode. These episodes do not obey the show's rule of realism and are not treated as canon. The opening disclaimer and a panning shot through a cemetery with humorous tombstones were features that were used sporadically in the Treehouse of Horror series and eventually dropped. This is also the first episode to have the music composed by Alf Clausen.

The plot revolves around three scary stories told by the Simpson children in the family's treehouse. The first segment involves a haunted house that is based on various haunted house films, primarily The Amityville Horror (1979) and Poltergeist (1982). In the second segment, Kang and Kodos are introduced when the Simpsons are abducted by aliens. The third segment is an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 poem "The Raven". James Earl Jones guest starred in all three segments. The episode was received positively, being included in several critics' "best of" lists. Critics singled out The Raven for praise, although Simpsons creator Matt Groening was concerned that it would be seen as pretentious.

Plot

On

trick or treating
, eavesdrops on them.

In "Bad Dream House", Bart tells a story where

knives. Unlike the others however, Marge is using her knife to spread mayonnaise on a sandwich and intervenes, breaking the trance. Afterwards, Lisa discovers the source of the haunting—a Native American
burial ground hidden in the basement (something which the realtors had apparently mentioned to Homer repeatedly). After the house threatens them again, Marge confronts the house, demanding that it treat them with respect during their stay. The house thinks it over and opts to destroy itself rather than live with the Simpsons.

In "Hungry Are the Damned", Bart tells a story where the Simpsons are abducted from their backyard by two aliens named Kang and Kodos. The aliens take the Simpsons to their home planet Rigel IV for a feast. En route they present the Simpsons with enormous amounts of food and watch eagerly as the Simpsons gorge themselves. Suspicious of the aliens' intentions, Lisa finds a book in the kitchen titled How to Cook Humans. Kang blows off space dust obscuring the real title, How To Cook for Forty Humans. Enraged at Lisa's mistrust, they return the Simpsons to Earth. Kang explains that Lisa has ruined the family's chance at paradise.

In "The Raven", Lisa reads "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe. In this adaptation, Bart is depicted as the raven, Homer appears as the poem's narrator, and Marge appears in a portrait as Lenore. The Narrator, infuriated by the Raven's mockery of his grief over his lost Lenore, flies into a fit of rage chasing it across his study, ending with the Raven's eventual victory and the Narrator staring helplessly at it as he sits on the floor amid a scatter of books and broken objects.

Homer returns to bed, terrified of the stories the children told.

Production

Unlike a typical Simpsons episode, "Treehouse of Horror" is divided into three segments.

Addams family house.[4] The second segment's cookbook is a reference to the 1962 The Twilight Zone episode "To Serve Man".[3] The third segment reimagines Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven".[3]

In 2011, staff writer Al Jean commented on the episode: "The idea of it to parody EC Comics was really original and kind of shocking for a cartoon on network television. [Executive producer] Jim Brooks said, 'We better have a disclaimer at the beginning of this Halloween show,' so Marge came out and warned people that they were going to see something scary. And the funny thing is it's now very tame by our Halloween standards and by network animation standards."[6] According to M. Keith Booker, author of Drawn to Television, the warning only made the episode more attractive to children.[3] The entire segment was a parody of the opening of the 1931 film Frankenstein.[7] While similar "warnings" were used to open the second and third "Treehouse" episodes, these quickly became a burden to write and there was no warning for the fourth episode. Instead, it had Marge ask Bart to warn people how frightening the show was during his introduction paying homage to Night Gallery. The tradition was revived for "Treehouse of Horror V"; after that, they were permanently dropped and the writers did not make any attempts at reviving them.[8] In the opening segment of the episode, and the four subsequent episodes, the camera zooms through a cemetery where tombstones with humorous epitaphs can be seen. These messages include the names of canceled shows from the previous television season and celebrities such as Walt Disney and Jim Morrison. They were last used in "Treehouse of Horror V", which included a solitary tombstone with the words "Amusing Tombstones" to signal this.[9] The tombstone gags were easy for the writers in the first episode, but like Marge's warnings, they eventually got more difficult to write, so they were abandoned.[7] Of the series, "Treehouse of Horror" was the only one that included a treehouse as a setting.[2] "Treehouse of Horror" was the first time an alternate version of the theme that airs over the end credits was used. Originally it was supposed to use a theremin (an early electronic musical instrument), but one could not be found that could hit all the necessary notes.[2]

James Earl Jones voices minor characters and narrates "The Raven".

Village Recorder in West Los Angeles; he chewed on a cookie close to his microphone to perform drooling sounds for the aliens.[2]

The sibling aliens Kang and Kodos first appeared on the show on this episode. Every Treehouse of Horror episode since this one must have Kang and Kodos as characters, states an unofficial Simpsons rule.

Kang was a Klingon captain portrayed by actor Michael Ansara in the episode "Day of the Dove", whereas Kodos the Executioner was a human villain from "The Conscience of the King".[7] Harry Shearer voices Kang, and Dan Castellaneta voices Kodos.[2]
A third alien named Serak the Preparer also made its first and only appearance in the series.

Reception

In its original broadcast, "Treehouse of Horror" finished 25th in ratings for the week of October 22–28, 1990, with a

Nielsen rating of 15.7, equivalent to approximately 14.6 million viewing households. It was the highest-rated show on Fox that week, beating Married... with Children.[13]

Since airing, the episode has received mostly positive reviews from television critics. In 1998,

TV Squad in 2005. Budke described the segment as "one of the most refined Simpsons pop references ever" and knows "people [who] consider this the point that they realized The Simpsons could be both highly hilarious and highly intelligent".[17] "Hungry are the Damned" was selected as the fifth best Treehouse of Horror segment by Eric Goldman, Dan Iverson and Brian Zoromski of IGN in 2008. The IGN reviewers singled out the How to Cook for Forty Humans section of the segment as its funniest moment.[18]

Critics also praised the episode's relationship to various television shows and Poe's "The Raven". Michael Stailey of DVD Verdict described the three Treehouse of Horror segments as "brilliantly crafted tales capturing the best elements of The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, injecting them into the Simpsons' universe".[19] DVD reviewer Doug Pratt described "The Raven" as a "perfect adaptation".[1] Kurt M. Koenigsberger said in his book Leaving Springfield that The Simpsons, while "not strictly a literary form ... is certainly the most literate of all situation comedies".[20] Koenigsberger uses "The Raven" as one example in support of the statement "The Simpsons is steeped in the American literary context into which Arnold Bennett made such a splash on his tour in 1911."[20]

In popular media

A clip from the "Hungry are the Damned" segment is shown on a TV in a hotel room in Gus Van Sant's 1991 film My Own Private Idaho.

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 978-1-932916-01-0
    .
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Groening, Matt (2002). The Simpsons season 2 DVD commentary for the episode "Treehouse of Horror" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0-275-99019-0
    .
  4. ^ a b c d Jean, Al (2002). The Simpsons season 2 DVD commentary for the episode "Treehouse of Horror" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  5. ^
    Canwest News Service. October 28, 2008. Archived from the original
    on October 29, 2008. Retrieved 2009-05-03.
  6. ^ Snierson, Dan (2011-10-28). "'Simpsons': 'Treehouse of Horror' Top 10!". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 2022-01-15.
  7. ^ a b c Reiss, Mike (2003). The Simpsons season 3 DVD commentary for the episode "Treehouse of Horror" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  8. ^ Oakley, Bill (2005). The Simpsons season 7 DVD commentary for the episode "Treehouse of Horror VI" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  9. ^ Daniels, Greg; McGrath, Dan; Cohen, David S.; Kushell, Bob; Reardon, Jim (1994-10-30). "Treehouse of Horror V". The Simpsons. Season 6. Episode 06. Fox.
  10. ISBN 978-1-55652-473-8
    .
  11. ^ Kogen, Jay (2002). The Simpsons season 2 DVD commentary for the episode "Treehouse of Horror" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  12. ^ Reiss, Mike (2003). The Simpsons season 3 DVD commentary for the episode "Treehouse of Horror II" (DVD). 20th Century Fox.
  13. ^ Hastings, Deborah (November 2, 1990). "60 Minutes' No. 1 with Salman Rushdie interview". St. Petersburg Times. p. 5D.
  14. ^ "A Dozen Doozies". TV Guide. January 3–9, 1998. Retrieved January 13, 2019.
  15. ^ Belam, Martin (November 28, 2019). "The Simpsons: the five greatest episodes in the iconic show's history". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-11-30.
  16. ^ Martyn, Warren; Wood, Adrian (2000). "Treehouse of Horror". BBC. Archived from the original on 2009-05-28. Retrieved 2009-05-12.
  17. ^ Budke, Ryan (October 26, 2005). "The Five: Best Simpsons Treehouse of Horror Segments". HuffPost TV. Archived from the original on May 25, 2012. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  18. ^ Goldman, Eric; Dan Iverson; Brian Zoromski (November 5, 2010). "The Simpsons' Best Treehouse of Horror Segments". IGN. Archived from the original on October 24, 2009. Retrieved January 15, 2022.
  19. ^ Stailey, Michael (November 20, 2003). "The Simpsons' Treehouse Of Horror". DVDVerdict.com. Archived from the original on April 28, 2009. Retrieved 2009-05-03.
  20. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8143-2849-1
    . Treehouse of Horror original.

External links

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