One Simpsons episode you're going to be hearing a lot about at the moment is Season 2's "Treehouse of Horror" (episode 7F04), which is currently in the process of celebrating its 30th anniversary, having debuted on October 25th 1990, where it kickstarted one of the most cherished and enduring of Simpsons traditions - the annual Halloween special. When discussing this episode, it has become something of a cliche to reflect on the retroactive irony of the opening sequence, which has Marge speak directly to the viewer a la Edward Van Sloan in Frankenstein (1931), to warn them of the episode's off-colour content (only the second of the relatively small number of occasions in which a character has straight-up broken the fourth wall, the first being the epilogue to "Bart The General"). Although it was mercilessly parodied in succeeding installments, this was apparently a sincere insertion on behalf of the production team, who fretted that audiences might not be prepared for how much darker an experience this was to be than your regular Simpsons outing (particularly given the series' popularity with children) - the irony, of course, being that the original "Treehouse of Horror" feels so much tamer and more restrained than any of its successors. The mortality figure is zero (unless we count Marge as the lost Lenore), the writers not yet having discovered the single greatest pleasure of these regular non-canonical interludes - the freedom to slaughter recurring characters in a graphic bloodbath.
"Treehouse of Horror" is so muted a Halloween entertainment, by comparison, that it's easy to dismiss the episode as bland. Nathan Rabin of The AV Club does pretty much that, asserting that the horror-comic cocktail is "a highwire balancing act the first “Treehouse of Horrors” doesn’t
entirely nail; the third segment in particular has the deadening air of
the classroom while the two segments the precede it are relatively short
on jokes and gags." His sentiments echo those expressed by Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood in I Can't Believe It's An Unofficial Simpsons Guide, who feel that "the first two segments work better than the third", and though they praise the episode as having "set a high standard for the Hallowe'en specials to come", also describe "Treehouse of Horror II" as a "marked improvement". I'll concede that "Treehouse of Horror" feels rougher around the edges than subsequent Halloween installments, but I don't think that has to do with the segments per se. I think the segments themselves are actually all very good (and I really like "The Raven", so there). The middle segment, "Hungry Are The Damned", admittedly lands less well for me than the other two (it has a lot of great moments, but the story frankly cheats), and yet no segment is a failure. No, I think the real issue with this episode has to do with the wraparound narrative, where Homer eavesdrops on Bart and Lisa telling these stories inside their treehouse, which is mostly dead weight. It's not entirely without merits - for one, it was solely responsible for putting the "Treehouse" in "Treehouse of Horror" (treehouses were not a recurring motif of the series, despite the name), Bart has that brilliantly inspired line about Friday The 13th, and it opens with Bart taking down one of the hoariest urban legends of all-time (if anybody tells you that When A Stranger Calls is a good movie - don't listen, they're nuts!). But it's here that the episode most obviously struggles with its experimental integration of realism and fantasy.
Wraparounds were a characteristic of early Treehouse of Horror installments that got jettisoned quite soon into their run. In their fledgling days, they were a necessary means of establishing that the stories existed outside of the series' regular continuity, but I suppose that by the time we got to number five they figured that this was by now common knowledge and that the wraparounds had outlived their usefulness (obviously, the Amusing Tombstones were next to go). The four that we got were a decidedly mixed bag, in which the evens fared much better than the odds (just like original Star Trek movies*). "Treehouse of Horror II" plants a wickedly inventive twist at the end of its framing story, and the Night Gallery parody in "Treehouse of Horror IV" is beautifully executed but, let's be honest, there is something incredibly hokey about the two where the family sit down to tell fantastical stories staring themselves. I mean, the vanity of it all. The original "Treehouse of Horror" in particular suffers from an obvious disconnect between the stories being told and the context in which they are related. Of the three segments, only one, "The Raven", takes advantage of the fact that these are supposedly stories being exchanged by a couple of children inside a treehouse, with Bart supplying regular interjections to Lisa's recital of the classic Edgar Allan Poe poem (in-universe, Lisa is doing the reciting, but from the viewer's perspective her voice transmutes eerily into that of James Earl Jones). The other two, though, feel only arbitrarily connected to the overarching setting. Compare this to "Treehouse of Horror II", where there is a far richer interplay between the segments and their connective tissue, and what happens in the family's fantasy lives actually reaps consequences in the "real" world (sometimes shockingly so). By contrast, "Treehouse of Horror" feels less confident, less assured. So perfunctory is the relationship between narrative and narrator that there are times when the supposed real-world context weighs uneasily upon the content of the stories. I'd say this is a problem in particular for "Hungry Are The Damned", which acquires an unintentionally sour note at the very end, when the rest of the family berates Lisa for falsely (though not unreasonably) accusing Rigellians Kodos and Kang of harbouring unsavoury intentions in taking them aboard their craft, and poisoning Earthling-Rigellian relations in the process. It follows that they would be upset, but keep in mind that this is supposedly a story being told by Bart, to Lisa. It kind of leaves a bad taste in your mouth, don't it? (Admittedly, if we see "Hungry are The Damned" as the brainchild of ten-year-old logic, then it might explain why, technically speaking, the story is such a hole-filled mess, and the moral so damned sketchy.)
For me, the real draw of "Treehouse of Horror" would be the opening segment, "Bad Dream House", which wastes no time in introducing us to the darker, more demented rules of the Halloween specials - not least that the family are permitted to the occasional knife fight. The basic premise for the segment is derived from The Amityville Horror (1979), with our unsuspecting family moving into a cursed property where some malign force is intent on driving them out or goading them into murdering one another (either works), and "Bad Dream House" provides a brilliantly subversive overview of a wide variety of haunted house movie cliches in roughly six minutes. The only really obvious one missing is the family dog going berserk (I doubt I'll
ever say this again, but maybe some input from Santa's Little Helper
wouldn't have gone amiss here). Some details, such as the blood dripping from the walls, are transplanted wholesale from Amityville. There are also multiple nods to Poltergeist (1982), such as Bart being attacked by a barrage of floating inanimate objects, the misshapen tree outside Lisa's window as she is beckoned toward the butcher knife, and the vortex inside the kitchen. Elsewhere, there's a reference to The Exorcist (1973), with Maggie's head rotating, and a sequence where Homer gets to channel Jack Nicholson's character from The Shining (1980), four years before he was called upon to repeat the trick in "The Shinning" segment of "Treehouse of Horror V". Horror buffs will no doubt delight in picking out the familiar moments, but "Bad Dream House" does more than simply homage a few creepy classics. It's an engaging, bite-sized story in which we get to see the family react to the unknown and face off against an atypical kind of adversary (one who may actually be quite a familiar voice all along, by which I don't mean Harry Shearer), deconstructing a few inevitable story beats as they go. Humor throughout the segment largely derives from the relatively nonchalant way the family responds to paranormal phenomena - Marge, for example, on noting the blood running from the walls, observes that the kitchen "certainly could use a woman's touch". Homer, while releasing Bart from the grip of a levitating lamp cord, challenges his son to "talk yourself out of this one". Even the infamously intense sequence in which the family come close to hacking one another to death with various sharp instruments is shrugged off fairly casually, with the family readily snapping out of it and hastily apologising to one another. One of the best gags involves the vortex in the kitchen, which turns out to be entirely incidental to the story, providing merely an opportunity for the Simpsons to prove themselves undesirable neighbours (Homer
tests out the powers of the vortex by feeding a piece of fruit into it,
and receives a note from someone on the other side requesting that he
stop throwing garbage into their dimension). There are also moments when the emotional realism of the early seasons seeps in in surprising ways - notably, the climax of the segment, which manifests in a verbal confrontation between Marge and the house, and is a legitimately affecting sequence, accompanied by a superb performance from Kavner. It's a rare instance where Marge completely loses her cool, but it feels entirely genuine, as though she's truly reached her breaking point, and it's followed by a moment where she stops to reflect on her surprise at her own anger. It's such an authentic, beautifully-observed moment, and yet we also have to consolidate it with the absurdity we are, after all, watching a woman argue with a possessed (and slightly nonplussed) house. In typical Marge fashion, she rounds off her ultimatum with a token of politeness ("We're all going to have to live together, so you'd better get used to it...please"). Halloween episodes perhaps aren't renowned for their deep character-building (after all, they have no bearing on the rest of the series, and are chiefly about cramming in as much demented fun as possible), but this is such a wonderfully on point sequence for Marge that I sincerely regret that it has no place within the official canon.
It's interesting that "Bad Dream House" and "Hungry Are The Damned" both arrive at effectively the same conclusion, with the monstrous entity (or entities) that has accommodated the family throughout the segment (whether wilfully or not) ultimately leaving them standing out in the cold because they are the more unpleasant beings. Both segments trade cleverly on our expectations regarding their chosen archetypal horror narratives, be they buildings with cursed histories or close encounters with visitors from unfamiliar civilisations. "Hungry Are The Damned" takes inspiration from the Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man" (another characteristic of classic era Treehouse of Horrors is that there'd typically be at least one segment ripping off an episode of The Twilight Zone - with the exception of "Treehouse of Horror V", which instead settles for ripping off an episode of Ray Bradbury Theater), and then directly subverts that story's infamous twist ending ("It's a cookbook!"), but you don't need to be familiar with the source to be instantly wary of the Rigellians' intentions. The script repeatedly drops anvil-sized hints that they might have an extremely sinister ulterior motive for wanting the family to indulge themselves. And while the final denouement - apparently, the aliens were benevolent all along - is hilariously executed, particularly as a counterpoint to the Twilight Zone episode it's spoofing, as a twist in itself I don't think it works. The Rigellians' disturbing obsession with seeing the family gain weight is not accounted for, their motivation for wanting to treat the Simpsons like gods remains a mystery, and the ending also ducks out of the overarching question as to whether the kind of excessive gluttony encouraged by the Rigellians is actually wholesome.** I'm also not clear on just how straight the segment means to play Lisa's final observation that, "There were monsters on that ship, and truly we were them." I don't know, I think that's severely undermined by Marge's preceding observation that, "For a superior race, they really rub it in." But I suppose my biggest issue with "Hungry With The Damned" is that I'm just not fond of it all coming down to Lisa's actions and having the rest of the family turn on her at the end (it's much worse for the fact that the story is supposedly Bart's construction, but I suspect I'd have a problem with it anyway). Not only is the "we were the real monsters" subtext conveyed which a much subtler hand in "Bad Dream House", but that ending involves the family being rejected together and finding unity in that. They may be undesirable monsters, but they are so together, and they have each other's backs.
Something that stands out as a potential indicator of the relative tameness of the initial "Treehouse of Horror" is that both "Bad Dream House" and "Hungry Are The Damned", despite being fictitious stories in-universe, end with a return to the regular status quo. The Halloween specials were not yet at the point where they were bold enough to end stories at truly bleak or disturbing places. Indeed, one of the factors that makes the twist ending to "Treehouse of Horror II" so deliciously subversive is that it actively, and startlingly, flies against the status quo. But perhaps that's only ostensibly true for "Bad Dream House", which ends with the family slinking off into the night, away from the site where their "dream" house once stood, with nothing left but one another and the clothes they stood up in. Where exactly are they going? Unlike "Hungry Are The Damned", there's no guarantee that they still have their house at Evergreen Terrace to return to. So this is a case of the Simpsons disappearing to an uncertain future. The ending is reminiscent of both The Amityville Horror and Poltergeist, each of which concludes with their respective households abandoning their cursed properties, although more so of the latter, which also involved the house being obliterated behind them. The house's big secret - it was built on Native American burial ground - is a characteristic shared with both the Cuesta Verde of Poltergeist and the Overlook Hotel of The Shining. This was a much more prominent plot point in the former picture, which climaxes with the skeletal corpses of the desecrated dead rising from the earth and reclaiming the once pristine suburban home, whereas in The Shining it was given as a seemingly incidental background detail (note that the same detail appears in "The Shinning" of "Treehouse of Horror V"), that nevertheless provided further context to the cursed history of the hotel. It is a prevalent horror image because its is a haunting reminder of America's violent history and the dark side of the American dream, an idea likewise evoked in the segment's very title "Bad Dream House". The "bad dream" in question resides in Homer's desire to acquire the American dream at a bargain price, and it is his refusal to relinquish that dream that exposes his family to danger. Naturally, the dream comes with a hidden cost, and one that Homer was perhaps aware of all along - when he angrily telephones his real estate agent to complain about not being informed of the Native American burial ground, he is reminded that it was mentioned five or six times.
Although it is Homer who insists on staying throughout the segment, while Marge makes multiple attempts to convince the family to vacate the building, it is ironically Marge who takes the ultimate stand with the house and insists that they will not be driven out - in her case, she is motivated not by the prospect of saving a few thousand bucks, but by her indignation at the house's violent spurning of her family, which she ends up taking very personally. When the house fails to scare the Simpsons out upon arrival, it attacks the family during the night by turning them against one another, and to that end it is not surprising that Marge should prove the most resistant to the house's malevolent tactics, for she has traditionally always been the "emotional glue" that has enabled the family to function. The house, apparently, cannot goad her into joining into the knife fight with the others - we are led to believe that she is doing thus, because we see her reaching for the bread knife, but it turns out she is innocently preparing a sandwich (this, unlike the revelation that the Rigellians are actually nice guys, is a well-constructed twist - she does call out, "I'm in the kitchen, Homer!", in a suspiciously stilted manner, but not so stilted that it bothers me). When Marge finally stands her ground against the house, she asserts that, "My name is Marge Simpson! This is my family and we're not going anywhere!" Marge rallies behind her imperfect family against the disdain of the possessed house as she would any voice of external judgement.
The Amityville Horror, Poltergeist and The Shining all involve a family under attack from malign forces, with the pivotal question as to whether their unity can endure. For both the Lutzs and the Freelings it does, right down to the family dog, although their survival, both as individuals and as a unit, comes at the expense of having to abandon their material wealth and abort their American dream. In both cases, we have a family under siege from an external threat. (Things go slightly differently for the Torrances, for in Kubrick's film there is some ambiguity as to whether their misfortunes are wholly down to the negative influence of the Overlook or if there is already something intrinsically toxic about their particular family unit. There is at least one line of dialogue suggesting that Jack is susceptible to the cursed aura of the place because it appeals to some latent hostility he harbours toward his wife and son - Grady, another violent patriarch who resided there before him, informs him that he has "always been the caretaker".) The ending of "Bad Dream House" has the Simpsons find unity, albeit through a direct inversion on the way the Freelings achieved it - in spite of Marge's valiant attempts to convince the house that it has to accept them, the house still gets the final say in the matter, and permanently rejects the Simpsons, but at a grave cost to itself, for it does so by consigning itself to oblivion (I stated above that the mortality figure is zero, but I suppose the house technically dies). To ponder the significance of this, we might consider what it actually being rejected by the Freelings in Poltergeist, particularly in the film's final punchline, where the homeless family seeks refuge in a hotel, but only on the condition that the TV is ejected into the balcony outside, the family having apparently sworn off off the cyclops for life following their youngest daughter's abduction through one. In his book Horror Films of The 1980s, John Kenneth Muir, in addressing the well-known controversy as to whether the film is to be attributed more to the vision of director Tobe Hooper or executive producer Steven Spielberg, lauds Poltergeist as an indictment of the evils of corporate America and white bread suburbia, one that "[casts] blame on the middle class for the greed and business practices of corporations...Hardly the stuff of an artist who admires suburbia, benefits from mass merchandising and product placement, and whose vision of America is so close to 1950s sitcoms." (p.270) Devin Faraci, on Birth Movies Death, argues that the vision of suburbia presented in Hooper/Spielberg's film has not been hijacked by the malign presence, but rather is the malign presence: "These identical masses of homes are like rapidly metastasizing cancer cells (Cuesta Verde is about to expand yet again in the next phase of development), and they aren’t just eating at the land, they’re eating at the very values that made the American dream." The television is the most malign invader of them all, and Poltergeist plays none-too-subtly on parental fears regarding its detrimental influence on children, and on family life. ("The Shinning" in "Treehouse of Horror V" has precisely the opposite stance - in keeping with the episode's glorious middle figure salute to recent congressional efforts to curb television violence, it is the absence of a functional TV that causes the family unit to breakdown - as Wilson Bryan Key would certainly have agreed, the television is the greatest pacifier of them all). Still, the reservations about television expressed in Poltergeist are not limited to the moral panic of the Helen Lovejoys of the world. The television is the vessel through which corporate America exercises its powers, but bombarding of viewers with visions of ideal living - as Muir writes, "Liberty, freedom and ideals have become fuzzy, blurred (like the static-ridden picture) before the unblinkering eye of a TV that sells fast food, cars and other items twenty-four hours a day." For the Freelings, unity is achieved through a rejection of the various items that have been sold to them as components of the American Dream, so that in the end the family have nothing remaining but one another. They are forced to abandon their house, or else be dragged down with it into the depths of Hell (or wherever that vortex leads). "Bad Dream House" concludes with precisely the opposite scenario - the house rejects the family, and destroys itself, rather than be dragged into the domestic Hell propagated by the Simpsons.
At the end of the segment, Lisa muses that the house, "chose to destroy itself rather than live with us. You can't help but feel a little rejected." It's a much subtler and wittier punchline than her observation at the end of "Hungry Are The Damned" about the family being the real monsters, and it amounts to much the same thing. The family, after all, were the malign force in this scenario. They invaded a house that, by its own admission, desired to be left alone, above the spirits of the dead that wanted to be allowed to rest in peace, and adjacent to a vortex whose occupants did not wish to be pelted with fruit from their neighbouring dimension. Perhaps we shouldn't blame the house for its defensive actions. And yet I think we also feel Lisa's sorrow at being so brutally rejected by the house. Considering the segment in relation to Poltergeist's denouncement of television as the root of all evil, I can't help but think of the Simpsons here as a television family who, although wildly popular, were not universally welcomed on arrival, and I like to see Marge's stand against the house as a metaphorical plea to for acceptance among the moral guardians who decried The Simpsons as a negative influence in its early years. Marge stands proudly by her family, imperfections and all, and insists to their detractors that they aren't going anywhere. Here, her gambit does not pay off, for so great is the house's revulsion at co-existing with the family - and the house does make it clear that it is specifically life with the Simpsons that it is rejecting, not the possibility of life with any family at all. Notably, the house, the embodiment of external judgement of the family, is not the kind of pristine, outwardly respectable suburban home seen throughout Poltergeist. It incorporates a few of the visual characteristics of 112 Ocean Avenue, the setting of The Amityville Horror, such as the quarter circle windows that resemble beady eyes, but overall it's very much an old-fashioned spookhouse - as is noted in the episode's DVD commentary, it is not unlike the one inhabited by an another eccentric and much-misunderstood television family, The Addams Family. Perhaps the Addams would have been right at home there. After all, they're an old-school horror family. The Simpsons, meanwhile, are a reflection a more contemporary kind of family, laid bare in all of its ugly detail, and that's something this house was just not ready for.
* I kid. Actually I really like The Search For Spock.
** There's also that "Your wife is quite a dish line", implying that if our Rigellian friend Serak doesn't actually want to eat Marge, he wants to...fuck her? And why would Bart include such a detail about his own mother in his story, the Oedipal devil? Of course, Marge and Kang actually did the deed in "Treehouse of Horror IX", so perhaps we should take it as foreshadowing.
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