There’s been plenty of harping on this webzone about the importance of gateway media when it comes to monster stuff especially—few of us would ever think to be interested in this stuff if not for something else, likely with a broader reach, introducing us to it. Much of the time, that gateway comes from a writer or artist calling back to something that was important to them, sharing that love across the years to another generation, and making the younger and less familiar members of the audience curious about what those things are. That could be a more straightforward informative work, or a homage with more modern sensibilities, or an affectionate parody. Let’s talk about that third one.
Plenty of kids watched The Simpsons, and it became a part of us all by pitching plenty of jokes at our younger level while also throwing in many adult-oriented ones that we could look back on and appreciate later. That’s especially true for reference-based jokes—there’s a number of direct nods to movie and television especially, with full scenes from Citizen Kane and The Godfather recreated on a regular basis (and even more hardcore callbacks to things like William Friedkin’s Sorcerer), down to the shot composition and staging. There’s so many that fans would be able to stitch together those jokes to make passing facsimiles of the movies themselves. This is a perfect example of gateway media: many people were probably introduced to these things through The Simpsons, and sometimes don’t even know it until they decide to check out the source material themselves.
This is especially true for the show’s annual Treehouse of Horror Halloween specials, a staple since the second season in 1990, each consisting of a collection of short segments that are more often than not directly lifted from famous horror stories. The Treehouse specials are an important venue not just for the writers and animators to shove in even more parodies, but also to allow them to go outside the (relatively) grounded nature of the show and really up the wackiness, and especially up the bloodshed in a winkingly grotesque manner—I can imagine getting to reshape and slaughter this series’ beloved cast over and over again is really fun for the people behind the scenes. Of course, if they’re doing parodies of scary stories, that’s going to include a fair share of classic monster stories as well (while the Treehouse segments would include more contemporary references, a good chunk of them from the first ten or so years were based on decades-old standards)—so, basically, the same things I write about on here. I mean, the mascots of these episodes are Kang and Kodos, a pair of classic Bug-Eyed Monsters that are a perfect Simpsons distillation of pulp Sci-Fi from the forties and fifties, so it’s clear that monster stuff is close to the hearts of the crew. For this post, I’ve singled out three segments from three different Treehouse of Horror episodes, all of which demonstrate how well-observed and inventive The Simpsons‘ comedy recreations of monster media could be.
“Treehouse of Horror III” from Season 4 includes a big one (which it the kind of tired joke that these shows thankfully don’t indulge in)—”King Homer” was a segment that was probably incredibly obvious, considering the number of times Homer was compared to an ape in the show proper (drawings of Homer as King Kong probably existed before this episode aired.) As of the ur-text of giant monster movies, and one of the most well-known pieces of cinema ever, Kong has been parodied almost ad nauseam before (I’ve written about plenty of those already), but this not only manages to make all the obvious jokes hilarious, but is also a good example of how devoted The Simpsons could be to getting the look of something right. Making the entire segment black-and-white is an obvious method, but moments like Homer staring down from the trees or pulling Marge out of the hotel window are very precise homages to the 1933 original, which shows to me that the animators especially probably saw the movie over and over again as kids, just like I did (the segment was directed by Carlos Baeza, who also directed great episodes like “Selma’s Choice” and “The Last Temptation of Homer”, while the writers of it were the classic team of Jay Kogen and Wally Wolodarski, who would follow this with “Last Exit to Springfield.”) There’s plenty of visually interesting touches throughout the segment (Homer breaking out of the chains is fun), and its especially noteworthy considering that this entire episode was apparently heavily re-edited at the last minute (with plenty of re-recorded lines covered up with reused animation), and the somewhat wonky animation is really obvious when you re-watch it now.
While it could just coast on the inherent fun of seeing Simpsons characters cast in the story, alongside expected jokes based on some of the silly things from the original movie (“Well, the ape’s going to stand around for three hours or so”) and a few of the old-timey references that the show loves so much, some of the best moments are just classic Simpsons absurdity, such as the “Candy Apple Island” exchange or both the jokes involving Barney. This has some top tier material for Mr. Burns (taking the Carl Denham role), who is more quippy and energetic in this than he usually is. Even the more direct riffs on the movie usually go one step farther—Homer being too out-of-shape to climb the building is an obvious joke, but the framing of it and the addition of the jokes with the biplane pilots makes it so much funnier. Also, we get the famously censor-baiting “Women and seamen don’t mix” line from Smithers in here (one of a few dirtier jokes in this episode, alongside Bart listing names of condom brands in the zombie segment), so there’s also that. It’s a good example of an observant parody that also uses the King Kong elements as a springboard for completely original gags.
“Treehouse of Horror IV” from Season 5 is the one that younger me always thought of as “the legitimately scary one”, and the “Nightmare at 5 1/2 Feet” segment was the primary reason why. As you could probably guess, this is a take-off of the classic Richard Matheson Twilight Zone episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”, except taking place on a school bus (but not a “ghoul bus” as Bart would have preferred during the Night Gallery wraparound sections) rather than a plane, and with Bart taking the role once filled by William Shatner AND John Lithgow (in the movie version.) The thing is, I still think this segment plays into legitimate fears not unlike the original (there are more auto accidents than plane crashes, after all), and Bart’s ragged emotions and the way he is disbelieved by everyone else are also surprisingly anxiety-inducing. The gremlin tearing the bus apart has an almost cute Matt Groening-style design, a perfect Simpsons monster, but the swings between curious animal destruction and precise maliciousness actually makes it as intimidating as the gremlins in the Twilight Zone versions.
They really try to leaven it with some very silly jokes—you can’t go wrong with having bad things happen to Hans Moleman, and this segment even introduced German stereotype kid Uter and his marzipan JoyJoys (“Mit iodine!”)—but it’s still surprisingly intense. The thing that probably disturbed me most about it as a kid, though, was the ending—as much with the idea of Bart being dragged off to an asylum (exactly the same as the source material) as with the final moment of Ned Flanders’ severed head. It’s actually pretty audacious that it doesn’t even end on a real joke, and in some ways this is less a parody but rather a more comedic retelling of the original story. All credit should go to writing legends Bill Oakley & Josh Weinstein (the latter of whom got to write some more fun monster stuff years later on Gravity Falls) and directing legend David Silverman for finding that careful balance.
The show returned to giant monsters in “Treehouse of Horror VI” from Season 7 (in contrast to be “IV” being the scary one, this one I always thought of as the super wacky Halloween special) with “Attack of the 50-Foot Eyesores”, which in an interesting Simpsons twist is as much a mid-nineties social commentary as it is a kaiju homage (although they do get a “real” Godzilla roar in this, I still wonder if they actually got Toho’s permission or were just daring them to get litigious)—one would expect nothing less from longtime series writer John Swartzwelder. The entire idea here is that the giant monsters wrecking up Springfield are the gaudy advertising mascots that seemed to be dotting the urban landscape of North America, mocking the obnoxious ubiquity of advertising at the time (and the reactions of some Springfield citizens to the sudden animation of these mascots is a cynical comment on how people willingly bought into it.) Some of them are based on very real examples, and the design and animation details on many of the rampaging ads are pretty great—the jokes about the “Zip Boys” are a highlight, and I love all of Lard Lad’s sinister facial expressions. Of all the segments I’ve written about here, this is the one with the most gags per minute, the best assortment of background jokes and brief asides (as well as lines like “He came to life. Good for him”), which feels like a Swartzwelder specialty—and if you wanted to see the giant monster carnage of “King Homer” taken to its logical extreme, this is where you’ll find it.
Another Swartzwelder specialty is pure mean comedy for its own sake—while the premise of the segment comes from observation, it’s really not using it for much more than all-purpose mockery (“Don’t you ever get tired of being wrong all the time?” “Sometimes”), which, really, is probably about all you could fit into a six-or-seven minute cartoon. That actually fits perfectly with a giant monster pastiche, which allows for many darkly comic scenes of death and destruction that Swartzwelder and director Bob Anderson more than indulge in. You can really see the sense of freedom they have in a story that isn’t weighed down with the burden of having to be meaningful, or even particularly logical (I love that there’s even a mumbo jumbo “explanation” for the mascots coming to life, something pulled right from fifties sci-fi, that Homer immediately dismisses.) I mean, the segment ends with a borderline deus ex machina resolution, complete with Paul Anka musical number, but the goofiness fits the comically indifferent tone. When given a mandate for mayhem, some people really thrive.
REVIEW ALL MONSTERS 