Simpson's Treehouse of Horror

A September Extra for my Gloriest Goriest Members!

If you’re creepy and you know it, clap your hands!

The Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror!

The first ToH aired in 1990, during the second season. One weird thing about ToH is that sometimes it’s aired three weeks before Halloween, sometimes on Halloween, and many times it didn’t air until November, up to a week past Halloween, with the early episodes titled “The Simpsons Halloween Special”.

Though there are some original stories, ToH episodes are often parodies of well-known horror books and movies, or The Twilight Zone. They love The Twilight Zone. Most ToHs consist of three stories, though there was a single story episode in the 31^st season titled “Thanksgiving of Horror”, and another in the 33^rd season that was a parody of It.

“Itchy & Scratchy” cartoons aside, the ToH specials tend to be much gorier than the average Simpsons episode, with blood puddles and characters being chopped up on a fairly regular basis.

Here’s the list, with a few asides from me because I can’t leave well enough alone.

I- Aired: 10/25/1990. Bad Dream House, Hungry Are the Damned, The Raven. The first ToH segment ever aired, Bad Dream House, had the Simpsons moving into a haunted house with an evil vortex. The last segment had Homer screeching out Edgar Allen Poe’s poem. Poe is given writer’s credit in the opening. Guest voice: James Earl Jones.

Bad Dream House:

II- Aired: 10/31/1991. The Monkey’s Paw, A Small Talent for War, The Bart Zone. The Bart Zone is a parody of The Twilight Zone’s “It’s a Good Life”, with Bart turning Homer into a Jack in the Box. The Monkey’s Paw is a re-telling of the W.W. Jacobs classic.

III- Aired: 10/29/92. Various characters tell scary stories at the Simpson’s Halloween party. Clown Without Pity, King Homer (King Kong parody), Dial ‘Z’ for Zombies. Writer Jon Vitti also wrote for The Office.

IV- Aired: 10/28/93. Wraparounds, The Devil and Homer Simpson (The Devil and Daniel Webster parody), Terror at 5 & 1/2 Feet, Bart Simpson’s Dracula. The Wraparounds were inspired by Night Gallery and written by Conan O’ Brien.

V- Aired 10/30/94. The Shinning, Time and Punishment, Nightmare Cafeteria (a Soylent Green parody where the lunch staff cooks the students). Guest voice: James Earl Jones.

Nightmare Cafeteria:

VI- Aired 10/29/95. Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores (an original story of Springfield’s advertising mascots coming to life), Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace, Homer3, where Homer enters our dimension to the horror of people on an L.A. street. The erotic cake shop Homer walks into is actually a photography studio on Ventura Blvd.

Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace:

VII- Aired 10/27/96. The Thing and I, The Genesis Tub, Citizen Kang. The first story has Bart learning he has an evil twin. Guest voice: Phil Hartman.

VIII- Aired 10/26/97. The Homega Man, Fly vs. Fly, Easy Bake Coven. The last segment has Marge, Patti and Selma as evil witches.

IX- Aired 10/25/98. Hell Toupe, when Homer wears the hair of a criminal and becomes evil, The Terror of Tiny Toon, Starship Poopers. Guest voices: Robert Englund, Ed Mcmahon, Kathie Lee Gifford, Regis Philbin, Jerry Springer.

X- Aired 10/31/99. I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did, Desperately Xeeking Xena, Life’s A Glitch, Then You Die. Guest voice: Lucy Lawless and Dick Clark.

I Know What You Diddily-Iddily-Did:

XI- Aired 11/1/2000. G-G-Ghost D-D-Dad, Scary Tales Can Come True, Night of the Dolphin (parody of The Birds).

XII- Aired 11/6/01. Hex and the City, House of Whacks, Wiz Kids (Harry Potter parody). Guest voices: Pierce Brosnan and Matthew Perry.

XIII- Aired 11/3/02. Send in the Clones, The Fright to Creep and Scare Arms, The Island of Dr. Hibbert (parody of Doctor Moreau). The last segment was written by Kevin Curran, who not only wrote for Married with Children, but was also the voice of Buck the dog.

XIV- Aired 11/2/03. Reaper Madness, Frinkelstein, Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off. Guest voices: Jerry Lewis, Jennifer Garner, Oscar De La Hoya.

Stop the World, I Want to Goof Off:

XV- Aired 11/7/04. The Ned Zone, Four Beheadings and a Funeral, In the Belly of the Boss, a send-up of Fantastic Voyage in which the Simpsons are shrunk and sent into Mr. Burns. The whole episode was written by Bill Odenkirk, younger brother of Breaking Bad’s Bob.

XVI- Aired 11/6/05. B.I. Bartificial Intelligence, Survival of the Fattest, I’ve Grown a Costume on Your Face. Guest voices: Dennis Rodman, Terry Bradshaw.

XVII- Aired 11/5/06. Married to the Blob, You Gotta Know When to Golem, The Day the Earth Looked Stupid (parody of Welles’s The War of the Worlds broadcast). Guest voices: Richard Lewis Fran Drescher, Sir Mix-a-Lot.

XVIII- Aired 11/4/07. E.T. Go Home has Bart and Lisa helping alien Kodos, Mr. & Mrs. Simpson, Heck House, where Flanders turns the church into a “Heck House” on Halloween to scare the kids into behaving.

XIX- Aired 11/2/08. Untitled Robot Parody, How to Get Ahead in Dead-vertising, It’s the Grand Pumpkin, Milhouse. Features “Psycho Killer” by The Talking Heads.

XX- Aired 10/18/09. Dial M for Murder or Press # to Return to Main Menu, Don’t Have a Cow, Mankind, There’s No Business Like Moe Business. The last segment has Moe allowing Homer to die slowly while impaled on the beer equipment.

XXI- Aired 11/7/10. War and Pieces, Master and Cadaver, Tweenlight, where Lisa falls in love with a vampire. Guest voices: Daniel Radcliffe and Hugh Laurie.

XXII- Aired 10/30/11. An opening parody of 127 Hours with Homer being pinned in a canyon and chewing an arm and leg off to free himself. The Diving Bell and the Butterball, Dial D for Diddly, In the Na’Vi (Avatar parody in which Bart gets his creature girlfriend pregnant) Guest voice: Jackie Mason.

XXIII- Aired 10/7/12. The Greatest Story Ever Holed, Un-normal Activity, Bart & Homer’s Excellent Adventure. This episode was co-written by David Mandel, who also wrote for Seinfeld and was showrunner for Veep.

XXIV- Aired 10/6/13. Oh, the Places You’ll D’oh (excellent segment with Homer as a sinister Cat in the Hat), Dead and Shoulders, Freaks, No Geeks (Freaks parody).

Guillermo Del Toro directed the opening couch gag for this one:

XXV- Aired 10/19/14. School is Hell, A Clockwork Yellow (Moe as the leader of a Droog-like gang), The Others. Guest voice: John Ratzenberger. This episode was nominated for an Emmy.

XXVI- Aired 10/25/15. Wanted: Dead, Then Alive, Homerzilla, Telepaths of Glory. Written by prolific Simpsons writer Joel H. Cohen. Guest voice: Kelsey Grammer.

XXVII-Aired 10/16/16. Dry Hard (Hunger Games/ Mad Max parody), BFF R.I.P., Moefinger (James Bond parody). Guest voices: Kelsey Grammer, Drew Carey, Sarah Silverman.

XXVIII- Aired 10/22/17. The Sweets Hereafter, The Exor-sis (Maggie is possessed), Coralisa, Mmm...Homer. Guest voices: Ben Daniels, director William Friedkin, Mario Batali, and Neil Gaiman voices Snowball the cat.

The Exor-sis:

XXIX- Aired 10/21/18. Opener has Homer challenging Cthulhu in an oyster eating contest. Intrusion of the Pod-y Switchers, Multiplisa-ty, Geriatric Park ( Springfield seniors turn into dinosaurs). The 643^rd episode of the show.

XXX-Aired 10/20/19. Prologue (parody of The Omen), Danger Things, Heaven Swipes Right, When Hairy Met Slimy (The Shape of Water parody).

XXXI- Aired 11/1/20. Toy Gory, Into the Homerverse, Be Nine, Rewind (a parody of Happy Death Day mashed up with a surprisingly heavy political message). Guest voice: Ben Mankiewicz.

XXXII- Aired 10/10/21. Barti (Bambi parody), Bong Joon Ho’s This Side of Parasite, Nightmare on Elm Tree, Poetic Interlude ( an Edward Gorey-inspired version of “The Telltale Heart”), Dead Ringer.

Not It- Aired 10/23/22. Aka “Treehouse of Horror Presents Not It”. A single story episode parody of IT and IT: Chapter Two. The show had sponsored a Krusty the Clown artwork contest, with the 20 winners shown during this episode’s closing credits.

XXXIII- Aired 10/30/22. The Pookadook, Death Tome (anime-style Death Note parody), Simpsons World (Westworld parody featuring Linda Belcher from Bob’s Burgers). The 734^th episode of the show. Guest voices: Hank Williams Jr and John Roberts.

No air date yet on this year’s ToH, though posters for the episode were given out at San Diego’s ComicCon in July and, going by the graphics, looks like a Silence of the Lambs parody can be expected.

Just asking, are you familiar with the Ned Flanders metal band Okilly Dokilly?

If you found this trip down Evergreen Terrace Lane fun/helpful/an interesting time-suck, how ‘bout tapping that ‘like’ button? Gosh diddily darn it, that would be swell!