(Sorry to everyone who clicked the earlier link. I realised after publishing them separately that you can combine an article with a podcast post so here they are together all in one place!)
Since it’s spooky season, here are my top ten favourite instalments of the Simpsons’ Halloween episodes, the ‘Treehouse of Horror’ series. Giving his insights too in my very first long-form recorded interview is my good friend Tyler Shores who created The Simpsons and Philosophy course at UC Berkeley and was even featured in an episode!
Treehouse of horror is a Simpsons tradition that has been going since the second season back in 1990. It takes its name from the framing device of the first ever episode, when Lisa and Bart tell scary stories in their treehouse. Typically an episode consists of three short stories, most are based on famous horror franchises.
Here are my top ten stories — this was tough, there are so many I love. Read on to see how my list compares with Tyler’s.
10. Bad Dream House
Season 2, episode 3, based on “Poltergeist” and “The Amityville Horror.”
There were a few I debated including in the number 10 spot (Tyler reminded me of The Shinning which should probably be in my top ten), but I’ve given preference to this one because it was the very first and is a great horror parody with brilliantly atmospheric music and some memorable lines.
The Simpsons family buys a cursed house and strange things immediately start occurring as it gets inside their heads. The voice they hear is genuinely creepy, whispering “get out” and encouraging them to kill each other, but there’s a great moment when Bart asks it “are you my conscience?” and it’s briefly speechless at this stupidity before gleefully replying “…yes, yes I am.” An ‘ancient Indian burial ground’ is discovered lurking very conspicuously in the basement which is causing all the fuss.
Marge confronts the house but it decides to self-destruct rather than continue to live with the Simpsons. It’s a strong start to the Treehouse of Horror tradition.
9. Fly vs Fly
Season 9 episode 5, based on “The Fly.”
Homer buys a pair of teleportation pods from Professor Frink’s yard sale and uses them to avoid climbing the stairs and to reach for a beer from the fridge whilst watching the TV.
Bart realises he can use the machine to splice creatures together and merges himself with a fly to create two new beings: himself with the body of a fly and a fly-brained monster with his body. There are some great lines in this one, notably when Homer haggles with Professor Frink over the machine “Two bucks. And it only transports matter? …I’ll give you 35 cents.”
8. Hungry are the Damned
Season 2, episode 3, based on “To Serve Man.”
Ah Kang and Kodos. Get ready because there’s a lot of them on this list, I adore them so much. We first meet Kang and Kodos as the aliens who abduct the Simpsons and feed them a suspicious amount of food whilst making ominous comments like:
“Your wife is quite a dish…”
The best moment is when Lisa finds a book called ‘how to cook humans’ which becomes ‘how to cook for humans’ when some space dust is blown off. More dust is wiped away and it becomes ‘how to cook forty’ humans then, finally, it becomes ‘how to cook for forty humans.’ It turns out Kang and Kodos and their crew were genuinely trying to show them heavenly gustatory delights. It’s Bart’s story, so Lisa’s interfering actually ruins their chance at this paradise.
Kang and Kodos would become recurring characters throughout Treehouse of Horror who have a cameo in every episode and occasionally get their own complete stories, so ‘Hungry are the Damned’ marked the start of a mini tradition within the non-canonical series. It also has James Earl Jones voicing alien chef Serak the Preparer.
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7. Starship Poopers
Season 10, episode 4
Maggie gets her first tooth which turns out to be a fang and her arms and legs fall off to be replaced by a set of tentacles — Marge has been impregnated by aliens, and that can only mean one thing. Oh yes, it’s time for another great Kang and Kodos story.
Apart from anything else, Maggie makes an adorable monster baby. I’ve always enjoyed how expressive she is despite not speaking, but here she gets up to all sorts of endearingly disturbing antics including leaping at Jerry Springer’s face.
But the real fun is to be had from the story of how Kang and Kodos arranged the impregnation complete, as ever, with their dubious approximation of human behaviour: “Woah, wow, look at the time, I’d love to stay but I have an early meeting tomorrow. You’re a super girl though, I’ll call you some time.” *presses ‘dump’ button and ejects Marge from ship.*
6. Terror at 5½ Feet
Season 5, episode 5, based on ‘Nightmare at 20000 feet,’ an episode of ‘The Twilight Zone.”
This is a parody of an iconic Twilight Zone episode where William Shatner plays a passenger on a plane who sees a strange creature on the wing interfering with the engine. Here, Bart sees a creepy (but oddly cute) gremlin on the side of his school bus pulling nuts and bolts out of the wheels and tearing up the metal. No one else sees it and Bart wonders whether he’s going mad.
When the creature is thrown from the bus, Flanders adopts what he thinks is some kind of baby. Bart is taken to a madhouse but the creature peeks through the window of the ambulance before waggling Ned’s severed head. It’s a solid, fun adaptation and the fondness for its source material shines through.
5. King Homer
Season 4, episode 5, based on King Kong
I always love it when a Treehouse story gets laughs out of very carefully observed elements of its source material. Here, Marge is the Ann Durrow character of the original 1933 film, sailing with a dodgy captain to an island full of giant monsters. In the original film, much is made of the perils of having a woman on a ship which here inspires Smithers’ line “I think women and seamen don’t mix.” “We know what you think,” says Mr. Burns.
The Kong/Ann relationship maps easily onto Homer/Marge, and it’s also got one of my favourite Simpsons jokes:
“Hey I heard we’re going to ape island”
“Yeah to capture a giant ape. I wish we were going to Candy Apple Island”
“Candy Apple Island, what have they got there?”
“Apes. But they’re not so big.”
4. The Devil and Homer Simpson
Season 5, episode 5, based on ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster.’
This episode has one of the most iconic Treehouse lines when the devil appears to Homer and we find out that he’s been Ned Flanders all along: “It’s always the one you least expect.”
Homer sells his soul for a doughnut and all he has to do to avoid damnation is resist eating that final bite. You can guess how that goes, so we get a fun trip through the ‘ironic punishments division’ of hell where Homer frustrates his demon torturer by happily stuffing himself to bursting with doughnuts.
It’s another sweet ending when Marge produces proof that Homer formerly promised her his soul so he wasn’t in a position to sell it to the devil and the contract is void. Awwwwwwww…
3. Hell Toupée
Season 10, episode 4, based on Amazing Stories.
This title alone deserves a spot in the top 10 but this is also an absolutely brilliant Treehouse episode. It’s got comedy, it’s got, horror, it’s got pathos, it’s got a hair transplant removed from an executed criminal that makes Homer go on a vengeful killing spree…
What I particularly like about this episode is that it’s a story where Homer has to learn a lesson and resist his own worse nature to prove his love for his children. Since Bart was one of the witnesses responsible for the guilty verdict, the hair tries to force Homer to kill him, but he resists the temptation to keep looking younger and handsomer, and rescues Bart by overcoming his own vanity and tearing off the hair.
The way the hair is animated when it tries to kill Bart and escape on its own is brilliantly expressive, and there’s some great Doctor Nick content here too as he performs the dubious transplant. “This drug will make the operation seem like a beautiful dream” he tells Homer, before knocking him out with his fist and injecting his own arm.
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2. Citizen Kang
Season 8, episode 1, based on the 1996 US presidential election.
This is my all-time favourite Kang and Kodos episode. When I first watched it I was expecting a lot of the humour to be so topical that it wouldn’t be as funny anymore, but it turns out that the absurdities of US politics have not so much changed as become more pronounced so it works perfectly.
Homer is abducted by Kang and Kodos who have ‘reached the limits of what rectal probing can teach’ and insist on being taken to Homer’s leader. Trouble is, there’s an election going on and it’s not clear who the leader will be. The aliens disguise themselves as both candidates, Bill Clinton and Bob Dole, so that either way they will rule America after the election. This is alien invasion via democracy.
When one of Clinton’s aides warns him that people are starting to wonder why the two candidates are constantly walking around holding hands, he is told:
“We are merely exchanging long protein strings. If you can think of a simpler way, I’d like to hear it.”
Even when they’ve been unmasked, Kang and Kodos’ plan proves unbeatable: it’s a two party system, what are you going to do? Choose an independent candidate and throw your vote away? *evil alien laughs*
1. The Raven
Season 2, episode 3, based on “The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe
I never doubted that this story would top my list. “The Raven” is the final tale told in the very first Treehouse of Horror and it’s perfect. Not only do we get to hear James Earl Jones read the original poem itself, but it somehow manages to be totally Simpsons and totally Poe — which should be an impossible combination to pull off.
It’s genuinely creepy with a nightmarish quality that allows the horror of the text to breathe: “darkness there and nothing more…” That the raven itself is modelled on Bart draws out the animosity between him and the narrator (played by Homer) since the slapstick violence we associate with this pairing now illustrates how the bird torments the grieving man. There’s also something unexpectedly brilliant about watching Homer cry “quaff oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore” at a portrait of Marge (with an extra frame to fit in the rest of her hair.”
The best parodies understand and love their source material. This is a great example, and is still used by English teachers with their students.
What do you think? What are your top ten Treehouse stories? Let me know below.
Links:
Tyler’s course on Simpsons and Philosophy: https://thesimpsonsandphilosophy.com/
The episode where you can catch Tyler’s cameo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monkey_Suit
The episode where Tyler’s course is parodied: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Girl_in_the_Big_Ten
The kill counts of Treehouse episodes: https://killcounts.fandom.com/wiki/Deaths_on_The_Simpsons_Treehouse_of_Horror
You can watch Tyler’s interview with Simpsons cast member Harry Shearer at the Jesus College Cambridge Intellectual Forum here:
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Top Treehouse of Horror Episodes