20 Years of The Treehouse of Horror

By James Melzer on October 16th, 2009

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“You know, Halloween is a very strange holiday. Personally, I don’t understand it…” It was those opening words almost 20 years ago that spawned an October tradition. Yellow, loud and obnoxious, it can only be The Simpsons, and since it’s Halloween around these parts, we’re talking about The Treehouse of Horror.

First airing on October 25, 1990, with the second episode of season two, The Treehouse of Horror quickly became a fan favorite. Known for being more dark and violent than a regular Simpsons episode, the specials are set with an old EC Comics/Twilight Zone kind of feel, and just like you can always count on your drunk Uncle Lou regaling you with tales of his days as a meat packer after Thanksgiving dinner, you can always count on The Treehouse of Horror to be broken down into four, chilling parts.

Opening Introduction/Credits

Sometimes it’s a warning from Marge, an introduction similar to Alfred Hitchcock from Homer, a parody, or even Mr. Burns putting in his two-cents. Either way, the opening introduction to The Treehouse of Horror is a staple. Like Pepsi for breakfast at my house. The very first one was put in sincerely to warn younger viewers that the episode was more scary than most, but they quickly became a burden for the writers to do a monologue for Marge every year. The fourth TOH had no intro, but it was revived for the fifth and every episode since has had an introduction in some form or another.

The opening credits in The Treehouse of Horror differ from those of regular epsiodes. Often injecting the names of the creators and writers with scary nicknames such as Bat Groening, Disfigured Dan McGrath and Greg “It’s Aliiive!” Daniels. Also, the first five specials had the camera panning through a cemetery, featuring names of dead celebrities on tombstones and recently cancelled shows on FOX, but those were abandoned with the fifth TOH having a single, lone tombstone that read Amusing Tombstones.

The Stories

Parodying everything from A Nightmare on Elm Street and The Shining to King Kong and The Twilight Zone episode To Serve Man, The Treehouse of Horror always has three stories that are not just meant to be frightful, they also serve as political and social commentary on today’s pop culture. Perhaps the most known and lovable characters from the specials are Kang and Kodos, two intergalactic aliens from planet Rigel VII. They have appeared in at least one segment in all 19 episodes. It’s been said that the writers are attracted to The Treehouse of Horror episodes because it allows them to break the rules and add in more violence. Sometimes they’ll have ideas that are so over the top that they will save them for the Treehouse of Horror specials, knowing that they couldn’t get away with them on a regular episode of the show. More recently, they have stepped outside of the typical horror genre, doing parodies of movies like Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Transformers and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Regardless of the tales they tell, we can always look forward to The Treehouse of Horror specials to bring us laughs, chills and the occasional groan. They’ve become so popular that there is a variety of merchandise already on the shelves marketed after these specific episodes. Comic books, DVD’s, a Monopoly board game and of course, action figures, can all be found that center around a Simpsons Halloween theme.

This year, the writers and animators will be doing stories that will feature elements from 28 Days Later and Children of Men, with Krusty the Clown dishing out Mad Cow Burgers and turning the citizens of Springfield into zombies. I know I’m looking forward to it and to commemorate the occasion, I’ll be having a marathon of all past Treehouse of Horror episodes leading up to the new one, since, you know…I have all the DVD’s.

So forget Garfield and Charlie Brown, this Halloween season take a second to reflect on  America’s longest running animated family, grab your bag of candy and a bottle of Rolaids, sit back and let The Simpsons do what they do best every year. I’m James ‘Macabre’ Melzer and I’ll see you in the treehouse.