The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #19: Whiskas Singles - The Wisdom of Robert Mitchum

There is a scene in the 1988 movie Scrooged where Robert Mitchum's character, a media boss, informs Bill Murray that a new study has revealed that cats and dogs might represent the next wave of devoted television viewers, and suggests that "we occasionally throw in a little pet appeal...what about a cop that dangles string? That's his gimmick." It all sounds ridiculous as hell, but barely more than a decade later, Whiskas cat food gave us a stirring glimpse into Mitchum's bold vision of what a TV broadcast specifically designed with pet appeal in mind might actually look like, with what was heavily touted as "The First Ever Commercial For Cats". First airing on ITV on 27th January 2019, the 40-second ad was specifically designed to get your cat's eyes glued to the screen and maybe even swiping an eager paw at the vast array of curiosities bombarded at them - fluffy birds on strings, laser pointers, things darting in and out from mouse-holes...basically, every wonderful item that traditionally causes cats to lose their marbles. This is a first for our Horrifying Advertising Animals retrospective - an ad in which the animals in question are never actually seen, merely heard. Rather, this ambitious ad attempts to put you in the perspective of the cat, so that you too can experience the wonder and insanity of a world full of enticing dangling things and scuttering prey, amid which only the cold, wet embrace of a pouch of Whiskas Singles brings any kind of momentary clarity.

The ad in question was created by Ketchum Life, who carefully researched the kinds of sounds and images that cats were liable to respond to and incorporated as many as possible into forty seconds. According to this Campaign article, it was also preceded by an extensive publicity campaign, with many news outlets running reports on the supposedly ground-breaking ad, and some lucky reports being sent exclusive cat bowls bearing the inscription, "The Most Exciting Night Of Your Nine Lives." As I recall, this ad actually had two parts - typically, it was shown toward the end of the ad break, and was preceded by a shorter spot earlier in the same break advising that the much-publicised ad was coming up, so you should ensure that your cat was watching (that part, I think, involved a shot of a cat leaping up onto a settee and basking in the warm glow of the chattering cyclops).

First things first, did it actually work the intended magic on its ostensible target audience? From personal experience, I can say yes - our cat Cleo did look at the screen while this ad was on, and she kept her eyes fixed for the full duration. In my opinion she looked more confused than she did curious. According to this contemporary BBC article, however, most cats remained their typically cool selves when presented with the ad - at most they had the same reaction as Cleo, and would give the screen their attention, however fleeting, but it seems that only a minority of cats were enticed to get up and start attacking the items onscreen. But then the whole "first ever commercial for cats" angle was never anything more than a novelty designed to generate discussion among pet owners and to bring the brand to the forefront of their attentions. Back in 1999, I remember feeling slightly bemused at the specific portion of the ad in which purring noises are played to a close-up shot of a pouch of Whiskas singles being ripped open. It seemed laughable in how on the nose it was. Surely, Whiskas didn't suppose that they could brainwash their alleged four-legged audience into associating pleasure with their specific brand? How is a cat expected to make such a connection? But then, as the BBC article wryly observes, "Getting your moggy to respond to the new ad may be one thing - getting it to do the shopping may be more difficult." We all know that cats were never really the intended audience for this ad, but rather cat people. It incorporates more pet appeal than Mitchum in Scrooged, in his naive innocence, could ever have dreamed of, but its primary purpose was always to endear the brand to the hearts of human viewers, who were probably just as likely to be amused by their cat's non-reaction as any genuine display of enthusiasm, and that purring sound attached to the image of an opening pouch was a message aimed squarely at them.

Editor Stefano Hatfield is quoted in the aforementioned Campaign article as deeming the ad to be "nice" but "nothing special, really", and was surprised that media outlets gave it as much oxygen as they did. Personally, though, I always found this ad to be borderline epic in terms of how discombobulating it was, which in part has to do with my own raw experience of it. I missed the initial media blitz back in January 1999, and during my first encounter with this ad was fortuitous enough to have tuned in about a fourth of the way in, meaning that I missed that vital, context-giving title card. As such, words cannot do justice to just how baffling an experience it was. Try to imagine being bombarded with this cacophony of squeaks, squawks and meows, and with this succession of randomness darting across the screen, and not having a clue what it was in aid of. When I saw the Whiskas pouches, I twigged that this likely had something to do with the mindset of a cat, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why Whiskas had gone down such a confusingly artistic route. To watch this ad is indeed to experience the bizarre sensation of being spoken to in an alien language targeted at something distinctively non-human, but the punchline is such a blatant and discernible one - that is, the sound of purring next to that close-up shot of the Whiskas brand name - as to make it plain that this whole "for cats" angle was nothing more than an elaborate set-up all along. The gag lies chiefly in the illusion that we've been watching a commercial "for cats", conveyed in a secret cat code, which climaxes in a winking reminder that, actually, this ad is speaking in precisely our own tongue. If it happens to entertain our cats on the side, then that is a delightful bonus.

Perhaps the most unnerving thing about this ad is that, for as strange and alien as it might seem, it's a a striking reminder that what Whiskas were alleging to be doing to our feline friends in this novelty spot is exactly what advertisers are doing to us every ten minutes, or less. In the end, all any ad break really amounts to is a confounding succession of string being dangled above our heads, in the hopes that we'll look and might even be riveted enough to raise a paw.

Video Pirates: My Girl's Mad At Me

In recent months, I've discovered just how much I love ex-rental VHS tapes. More specifically, how much I love ex-rental VHS tapes distributed by Columbia TriStar. Not only do they come in lovely coloured boxes (and occasionally, the tapes themselves come in lovely colours too), but often you'll find some of the most arbitrary and unexpected goodies at the start of those things. It all started back in April when I acquired an ex-rental of the 1992 movie Accidental Hero, which came packaged with a surprisingly ominous advertisement for British Telecom, a cheaply-made preview reel assembled by the (now-defunct) Irish radio station Atlantic 252, and the dorkiest, most frugal-looking promo imaginable urging me to support my local rental store ("It could be a year before it's on satellite!"). The entire experience was like digging up a glorious little time capsule from a bygone age. It reminded me that my deep-seated love of VHS isn't just limited to the fascination in watching a collection of images fade and degrade with the passage of time, but for all the wonderful odds and ends you have navigate your way through before you get to the main feature - the uncanny dialing noises at the start of the tape (which were actually signals indicating where the video was to be cut during the manufacturing process), the emotionally scarring production/distribution logos, the thorough explanations as to what to expect from the certificate of my chosen title (sadly, Columbia TriStar didn't have the ones with Simon Bates doing the honors - I still titter like a school kid at his use of the term "sexual swear words"), the previews, the random ads (on some ex-rentals) and, of course, the portentous anti-piracy warnings. Going back to my childhood, I can recall the immense unease I always felt at having to sit through those cautionary spots at the start of Disney VHS tapes lecturing me about the evils of "Poor quality illegal video cassettes" and the importance of ensuring that I had purchased "A GENUINE COPY". They were relatively mild in tone, but the sternness of that voice-over coupled with the foreboding sight of a Disney VHS suspended above a sickening blue void was enough to make me very afraid as to what alien horrors masquerading as wholesome entertainment could potentially be making their way into my living room and damaging my video cassette recorder as we speak. The suggestion that not even something as reliable as a Disney video cassette could be automatically trusted to do what it said on the tin made the world seem just a little more precarious.

There came a point, around 1997, where the UK Columbia TriStar rentals all started featuring the "Daylight Robbery" anti-piracy film, in which a dissatisfied customer attempts to return a dodgy copy of Trainspotting to a particularly lippy market vendor, and which, compared to other anti-piracy warnings, went largely for the humour factor (some years later, this also popped up on the limited edition VHS release of the 2014 film Beyond Clueless, suggesting that it even holds a certain nostalgia for some). The vendor's sporadically witty rebuffs aside ("No trains in it either; I suppose that's my fault as well?"), I have gotten a little tired of seeing this one, although I am somewhat amused by the overall inconsequence of the scenario; for the extremely dour tones adopted by the announcer in cautioning me that "There's no comeback!", it's inferred that the customer only paid about £4.99 for his unwatchable copy of Trainspotting. It's annoying, sure, but somehow I think he'll live.

The anti-piracy warning lying in wait on the 1995 Billy Crystal comedy Forget Paris, by contrast, was a real find. Compared to the lightness of the "Daylight Robbery" film, this one feels borderline apocalyptic in nature, pulling out every stop to convince me that civilisation gets one step closer to teetering on the brink of collapse every time some thoughtless git buys a knock-off VHS cassette. It starts out wholesomely enough, with a husband setting off for work and kissing his wife goodbye, before announcing that he picked up that VHS tape their daughter Rebecca has been hankering for. We get our first sign of trouble when he admits that "It only cost a fiver from that bloke down the market", and his wife cheerfully responds, "Great, it's not even out yet!" Clearly, neither of them sees anything suspect or unkosher about this scenario. We then cut to the unwitting Rebecca watching the video while her mother tends to the garden outside. Turns out, the video Rebecca wanted comes with the most unpleasantly frenetic-sounding cartoon music, which is already enough to set the viewer on edge, but things take an even queasier turn as her innocent laughter is juxtaposed with onslaught of text flashing across the screen to warn us that there are unseen evils at work in the form of drug dealers, terrorists and organsied crime - all of which, we are told, benefit tremendously from your purchase of pirated video cassettes. At the climax of the film...honestly, I'm not sure what happens. Rebecca's ill-gotten video apparently conks out and she looks to her mother in distress, but that intense dolly shot makes it seem as if something far more dramatic is unfolding. Not to mention, the cartoon music fades and is replaced by the sounds of gunshots and people screaming. It's an awful lot of hoopla for what must, again, boil down to a minor annoyance as far as this family are concerned. A fiver blown on a faulty video tape and a little girl who is presumably confused and disappointed by the experience. But unlike "Daylight Robbery", this one really strives to hit the viewer where it hurts, in suggesting that their lack of vigilance may have catastrophic effect that extends way beyond a mundane living room blow-out, and that the day-to-day security with which our children live will certainly be the first thing to go.

The film is discomforting in the way it intersects the cozy domesticity of Rebecca's world with the sense of a potent destructiveness stirring just away from view, and the feeling that this force is in the process of infiltrating and corrupting the innocent souls who dwell within. At first I wondered if perhaps some inappropriate material had wormed its way onto Rebecca's video, and that this is what has rendered her so shocked and confused at the climax, but on closer inspection I don't think that's it. Rather, I think Rebecca has had some kind of premonition of the pending devastation, and of her parents' complicity in this, and when she looks to her mother, it's not a plea for assistance - no, it's a look of full-on accusation, as she realises just what kind of society the ostensibly respectable adults in her life are building for her. (Incidentally, it does seem a mite unfair that her mother should have to bear the brunt of Rebecca's fury when it was her sleazy father who actually purchased the insidious cassette, but I suppose her mother's nonchalant attitude makes her just as culpable in all of this.) Ultimately, the family only blew a fiver on this unwatchable VHS, but it's clear that Rebecca's world is never going to be the same again. She's seen too much amid that unsightly distortion, and there's no comeback. The world is burning outside and it's all your fault, you witless pirate-enabler. Having to face the accusatory gaze of the children you let down with your cheese-paring purchases is perhaps the cruelest punishment of all.

Of course, as we moved away from cassette-based media and into the age of digital downloads, piracy only became all the more prevalent in our daily lives - with the rise of the internet, it was no longer a matter of making your way to a lippy market vendor to blow £4.99 on a dubious copy of Trainspotting, but having instant access to whatever you wanted with just a couple of mouse-clicks, and all for free. Accordingly, the anti-piracy warnings became less entertaining and began to reek more and more of sheer frustration - for example, the Federation Against Copyright Theft's infamous "You Wouldn't Steal A Car" campaign, which always played as though it were competing in some kind of condescension Olympics (some might consider the "Rebecca" spot condescending, what with its flagrantly dramatic scare-mongering tactics, but at least it doesn't deploy an endless succession of "You"s throughout, subjecting the viewer to the unpleasant sensation of having a finger thumped against their chest with every beat). Honestly, the number of DVDs I encountered that on which wouldn't even let me skip the damned thing left me feeling very, very resentful of the campaign, not least because my reward for buying a DVD lawfully was now all-too typically to be treated like a prospective criminal. Which does ultimately call to mind the probable futility of all of these efforts - they were rather a matter of preaching to the converted, were they not? Who was going to see them other than those who already bought or rented their media the legitimate way? But then I suppose the purpose of those early ads was never to show dodgy media buyers the error of their ways, but to create distrust among the law-abiding as to what could happen if they strayed off the branded path. It's a scary world out there. So stay inside and stick to products with our genuine label hologram.

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #18: Arthur The Kattomeat Cat (A Toothless Tale - Or Not)

Arthur the Kattomeat cat is a rare advertising critter who gets into the horrifying club not because of anything overtly disturbing about the content of the campaign itself, but for the grisly bit of folklore that accompanied it. At least two generations of UK television viewers will be familiar with the image of a white cat satiating his hankerings for marrowbone jelly by inserting his paw into a tin of cat food and shoveling the meaty debris into his jaws. If you're of the older generation, then perhaps you also recall the lurid scandal that made the rounds in the late 1960s, when a troubling rumour was circulated throughout the press as to how this particular dumb pet trick was procured. And if you're of the younger generation, then perhaps your parents shared their memories of that scandal, permanently harpooning the cuteness of the campaign in one fell swoop.

That was how it was for me. One day, I brought it up in a conversation how enamored I was by the cat's paw-dipping antics, only for my dad to give me a compelling reason why I shouldn't be. "Do you know why that cat ate food with its paw?" he asked. "It's because they had all of its teeth surgically removed. It couldn't pick up and chew food with its mouth like a normal cat so it had no choice but to lick it off its paw." Both of my parents seemed very convinced of this fact. If that story were true, then obviously it would be beyond revolting, and would certainly destroy any enjoyment to be had from the ads - once you contemplate the notion that this charismatic cat is sucking processed sheep intestines through toothless gums, all of the charm does rather evaporate. Is it true, though? I do think it's important to always be mindful wherever animals are exhibited for entertainment purposes, and certainly there are some appalling examples of film-makers treating animals in highly unpleasant ways to elicit certain behaviours before the camera, and yet there was a part of me that was unwilling to completely swallow this story. Something about it struck me as vaguely far-fetched, in that it somehow didn't seem beyond the realm of possibility to teach a cat to lick food off its paw using more orthodox methods.

 

The brand of cat food Arthur was accustomed to pawing, by one means or another, was Kattomeat, the feline counterpart to Kennomeat dog food, both of which were owned by Spillers. In 1992, Kattomeat was renamed Arthur's, owing to the enduring popularity of the paw-dipping mascot, although the brand has since been discontinued and Spillers has now merged with Purina. I later discovered that the Arthur campaign went as far back as 1966, so the original Arthur to whom my parents referred would presumably have been long gone by the time I arrived. The campaign ran on until at least the late 1990s (when somebody finally had the bright idea of teaming the cat up with popular culture's other iconic Arthur - although the connection is not made explicit in the above ad with Dudley Moore). Obviously, the role was filled by multiple cats. Did they all have their teeth extracted, then? Or just the original Arthur, at a time when animal welfare regulations were less stringent? If so, then what made the latter cats trainable and not Arthur? It merited further investigation.

Fortunately, the skin-crawling story does not appear to check out. This BBC article on celebrity cats contains only a very scant biography of Arthur, but within that finds time to assure its readers that the allegations of the cat being deliberately rendered toothless were a filthy lie. It also confirms that at least three cats played the role across the decade - Arthur's successors were Arthur II and Arthur III. This article on British cat food brands, meanwhile, assures me that paw-dipping is perfectly natural behaviour among cats. If so, then how did the story about Arthur's draconian dental work get started? As with some of the grislier rumours regarding Spuds MacKenzie and the Taco Bell Chihuahua, it's assuredly the case that humans have a real penchant for substituting our own punchlines in cases where either none exists or the story demands a more lurid punchline than that on offer by reality. And what could be more lurid than a pet trick as simple and innocuous as a cat dipping with its paw coming attached to such a disturbing behind-the-scenes anecdote? But in Arthur's case, we may even have been encouraged to adopt this narrative by a single individual with an agenda. Arthur, it seems, led a complex existence, enough for writer John Montgomery to pen a biography about him, Arthur The Television Cat, in 1975. Arthur was fifteen years old at the time and anticipating retirement following nine years occupied not merely with the filming of numerous television commercials, but also heated legal disputes among the various humans in his life. Arthur's celebrity came at a price - if not his teeth, then in everybody wanting a piece of him.

According to Montgomery, Arthur was originally introduced and hired out to advertising agency Geers, Gross by the actress June Clyne, but after Clyne passed away from an unspecified illness, confusion arose as to who then claimed legal ownership of Arthur. One such candidate was Clyne's partner, Irish actor Toneye Manning, who reported encountering the cat as a stray earmarked for destruction in 1964, and keeping him as a pet for a period of time prior to his TV debut. Manning was paid a fee by Spillers for ownership of Arthur in 1967, but in 1968 he contested this and attempted to reclaim the cat as his own. Arthur was temporarily returned to Manning's care, and although the ensuing court hearings concluded that Spillers were the rightful owners, Manning refused to relinquish Arthur. As per Montogmery's account, the allegations that Spillers had had Arthur's teeth removed for the sake of their commercials point toward originating with Manning, who claimed to be acting in the interests of the cat's welfare:

"...it was reported in the press that [Manning] had protested that [Spillers]...were not fit to look after animals because Arthur's teeth had been extracted "just for the sake of a commercial on television"...The accusation that Arthur's teeth had been removed to ensure that he ate with his paw was spread across newspapers all over the world. Spillers at one point issued a statement saying that it was untrue, and "completely without foundation", adding that "Arthur had the same number of teeth when last in Spillers' care as when Mr Manning handed him over to Spillers in September 1967."" (p.70)

This grisly legend, then, might have been nothing more than a malicious story spread by Manning in order to prop up his case, although Montogmery's book reveals that there may have been a smidgen of truth in the story, in that Arthur did indeed suffer in the dental department. It seems that Arthur had an ulcerated mouth, which resulted in some tooth loss, although Spillers maintained that this had occurred before the cat came into their full-time care in 1967, and when Arthur was presented in court, an inspection of his mouth revealed that he still possessed a sufficient set of teeth. Whether Manning was aware of Arthur's dental history and attempting to use this to his advantage, or he sincerely believed Spillers to be responsible for the cat's tooth loss is another matter. Either way, Manning later withdrew his allegation and the cat was returned to Spillers, although that wasn't the end of Arthur's turmoils. He later went missing from his home in 1974, presumed stolen, and eventually showed up on some farm in Dunstable.

Given that, one way or another, Arthur was cursed with a blemished mouth, is there still the chance that his celebrated dipping behaviours were in response to his oral abnormalities? Montgomery doesn't entertain the possibility. He assures us that paw-dipping is normal behaviour, particularly where a cat is reluctant to submerge its face into the food source. Montgomery's book also informs us that there was another, considerably less prevalent rumour that Arthur was really a female cat named Samantha, although this too may have rooted in another of Manning's eccentricities. According to Montgomery, Manning was in the habit of calling the cat "Samantha", although Arthur was indeed a castrated male. Arthur left no descendants, unless he managed to sire them during his time as a stray. Which was probably a good thing. There's a lot of talk in Montgomery's book about the number of unwanted kittens that get destroyed every year (at least back in the 1970s), and when Montgomery was writing, drowning was still considered an acceptable method of kitten disposal in some circles. Montgomery condemns such practices as extremely cruel, but even his suggestion that "Unwanted pets should be put to sleep at birth, but only by a qualified vet", might seem a bit gruesome to modern sensibilities. Just get your cat spayed or neutered, and this whole discussion will hopefully be moot.

Amusing Tombstones V: The Final Gasp (Treehouse of Horror V edition)

Finally, we're at "Treehouse of Horror V", which aired 30th October 1994, and was in many respects the transitional episode for the Halloween specials. It was the last to feature an opening skit in which a family member (usually Marge) warned the viewer about the disturbing content of the episode, and the first NOT to feature a wraparound narrative. It was also our last go with the amusing tombstones, and we only got one at that:

Amusing Tombstones: Self-explanatory. This running gag had run its course, and this was the writers' polite way of asking if they could be allowed to put it to rest. It was fun while it lasted.

The opening sequence of "Treehouse of Horror IV" featured a gag lampooning the contemporary backlash against televised violence, one of the hot political buttons of the day, in which a tombstone with the engraving "TV Violence" is mercilessly gunned down and left to bleed by offscreen detractors. This gag was carried over into "Treehouse of Horror V" - the episode starts with Marge receiving notice that, due to the episode's violent content, Congress have barred them from showing it, thus laying the tone perfectly for "Treehouse of Horror V", which plays unmistakably like an act of rebellion against congressional efforts to moderate media content. Marge's warning was no bluff, for "V" was unquestionably the most violent and gory Treehouse of Horror to date - characters are brutally axed in the back (or rather, one character is, on multiple occasions), helpless children are consumed by cannibalistic adults, and the upbeat finale involves the family being turned inside out so that their vital organs are exposed, whereupon Santa's Little Helper makes Alpo out of Bart's intestines. It was a classic example of The Simpsons sticking it to The Man, middle finger first. This defiance was felt all throughout the opening sequence, which still took place in the Springfield Cemetery, only in lieu of the amusing tombstones, we were treated to the sight of several characters being executed in alarmingly graphic ways.

Keep in mind that it wasn't just Congress who were wringing their hands over this kind of willfully unsavoury viewing. In the UK, Sky 1 had their own fairly strict set of censorship rules, meaning that Simpsons episodes were frequently vetted to remove some of the racier gags. It was always a revelation for the seasoned Sky 1 viewer to catch the very same episodes on BBC2 slightly later on in the decade and be treated to a barrage of extra Simpsons moments that were not there before. A while back, I took a look at Sky 1's handling of one of my favourite episodes, "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", in which several cuts were made to remove multiple uses of the word "ass" and a couple of scenes in which Bob threatens Bart with a flick-knife, to an extent that sadly made mincemeat of the episode's overall narrative coherency. "Treehouse of Horror V" was another of the more heavily-edited episodes, and that opening sequence in particular took one heck of a savage slicing. Unfortunately, my old VHS recording of the Sky 1 edit of "Treehouse of Horror V" looks to have been permanently misplaced, so I cannot provide the kind of in-depth run-down that I did for "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", but here's what I recall from memory:

• The scene with Moe hanging from a tree (during which you can clearly hear his neck breaking) and then opening his eyes in an undead state was removed in its entirety.
•  The scene with Reverend Lovejoy burning Patty and Selma at the stake was edited to remove the part where he actually sets them ablaze. In the Sky 1 edit, we cut directly to Patty and Selma tied to the burning pyre and using the blaze to light their cigarettes. You could still pick out Lovejoy standing there with his lit torch, if you were particularly eagle-eyed.
• The scene with Bart, Skinner and the guillotine was edited to remove the part in which Skinner is decapitated. We saw Bart jump upon the severed heads of Willie, Krabappel and Wiggum, and promptly cut away once Skinner had given him the thumbs up sign.

The episode itself likewise endured a number of (often inexplicable) brushes with the censorship scissors. In "The Shinning", the scene with Moe ordering Homer to kill his family in exchange for a beer (an allusion to the "white man's burden" scene from Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film The Shining) was removed in its entirety, making it super-confusing when Moe later shows up to complain that the project isn't moving forward as planned. Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't recall the moment with Lisa asking Marge if Homer is going to kill them being in there either. The greatest casualty, however, was the running gag connecting all three segments, in which Groundskeeper Willie makes a heroic bid to save one or more of the Simpson family, only to be gruesomely offed with an axe in the back (a parody of the fate of Scatman Crothers' character in the aforementioned The Shining - I guess somebody in the Simpsons writing staff thought it hilarious that he came an awfully long way to help little Danny Torrance, only to meet a bloody end at the hands of an axe-wielding Jack Nicholson). Here's how the gag was presented in the Sky 1 edit:

• In "The Shinning", we still saw Homer axe Willie in the back, but the scene cut away as quickly as possible, so that we didn't see the part in which Willie turns around to taunt Homer, bloodied axe protruding from the spine, and then keels over. You still got the message that Willie was dead, however, so this was definitely the least harmful of the edits.
• "Time and Punishment", by contrast, had the most egregious cut, to an extent that really betrayed the overall lack of thought and care that went into making these edits appear seamless. Included in the Sky 1 edit was the part with Willie warning Homer that he still wasn't in his own timeline and offering to help him get home, but the moment where Maggie axes him in the back (and talks to Homer with James Earl Jones' voice) was cut completely. Instead, we cut straight from Willie assuring Homer he could get him home to Homer returning to prehistoric times and killing everything around him in a violent frenzy. Even without having seen the unedited episode, it was always extremely obvious that something was missing here.
• In "Nightmare Cafeteria", we saw the bit with Skinner axing Willie in the back but, as with "The Shinning", they cut away immediately. Gone was the part with Willie acknowledging, with his very last breath, that he was really bad at this rescuing business, thus giving closure to the whole gag.

Ah well, thank fudge my days as a Sky 1 viewer are over.

Lastly, rest in peace Amusing Tombstones. And also Casper (Friendly Boy mode), Elvis, Bambi's Mom, Drexell's Class, R. Buckminster Fuller and Subtle Political Satire. You may all be gone, but your memory is always lying in wait with each revisit to the Treehouse of Horror.

Amusing Tombstones IV: The Political Special! (Treehouse of Horror IV edition)

Onto "Treehouse of Horror IV", which aired on 28th October 1993, and our penultimate romp through the Springfield Cemetery. Change was in the air for the Treehouse of Horror, as it began to shift away from its relatively grounded origins - in that the segments were originally contextualised as stories being told (or else dreamed) by the Simpsons characters - and into something altogether more divorced from the core reality of the series. A subtle deviation in "Treehouse of Horror III" had already indicated the waning importance of the wraparound narrative - unlike previous years, the episode did not return to the wraparound for a final punchline (possibly because the one used in "Treehouse of Horror II" was a tough act to follow) and instead allowed the segment to have the last word. "Treehouse of Horror IV" was the last to contain any kind of wraparound narrative; in this case, less a narrative than a spoof of Night Gallery, with Bart in the role of Rod Serling.

The amusing tombstones continued as usual, but their days too were numbered. At this point the writers had pretty much exhausted their options when it came to uncanny urban legends and macabre pop cultural digs, and so, following on from that American Workmanship tomb seen in "Treehouse of Horror III", most of the tombstones here have a conspicuously political slant.

Elvis - Accept It: The writers' weariness at having to bash out new tombstones year after year was by now becoming evident. This is basically a retread of a gag from the original "Treehouse of Horror", except that here the joke is made much more explicit, so that you can't possibly miss the point being made. I guess by now the world was growing weary of the "Elvis lives" conspiracy theory too.

A Balanced Budget: An allusion to another horrifying US tradition that happens to coincide with October time - that is, the start of the federal fiscal year.

Subtle Political Satire: Obviously this thing is as dead as the dinosaur. Although it does serve as a sardonic echo to the preceding tombstone.

TV Violence: Media violence in general was a subject of much hand-wringing and much congressional discussion in the early 1990s, as many attributed an apparent rise in violent crime to the availability of gory images in increasingly media-saturated times. The Television Violence Act of 1990, authored by Senator Paul Simon, gave the broadcast industry three years in which to enforce stricter standards regarding televised violence, although Simon claimed that the act was to be taken as an encouragement, not a requirement. By August 1993, the major networks had responded with no response, and Simon was threatening a much stricter crackdown. Meanwhile, V-Chip technology was being discussed as a means of filtering out violent imagery within the family home, and elsewhere in the entertainment industry, video games triggered a moral panic that ultimately led to the infamous congressional hearing on 9th December 1993 (at which Night Trap, one of the daftest, most ridiculously innocuous items ever devised by man, was held up as a textbook example of our increasingly degenerate society).

The joke at the start of "Treehouse of Horror IV" is very clever - here, we see TV Violence come under fire of a more literal nature, as the tombstone is desecrated by a barrage of bullets and blood starts to gush out of the holes. A statement, I suppose, that the moral outcry against TV violence was part of the same vicious cycle of mindless aggression that it posited itself as fighting against. Oh, and did we just say that subtle political satire was dead?

Amusing Tombstones III: Love Thy Neighbour (Treehouse of Horror III edition)

And now onto "Treehouse of Horror III", which aired on 29th October 1992. By now, The Simpsons was into its fourth season, and had been around for long enough to have demonstrated that its popularity was no passing fad - as such, the show was feeling confident enough about its own longevity to be taking swipes at less fortunate programs that had already come and gone within its own lifetime. Speaking of which...

Drexell's Class: A short-lived Fox sitcom that aired on Thursdays after The Simpsons throughout the 1991-1992 season. It starred Dabney Coleman as Otis Drexell, a convicted tax dodger who was forced to take a job as an elementary school teacher in order to pay off his taxes, all while grappling with the challenges of being a single father. The show lasted for eighteen episodes and was not renewed for a second season, so here The Simpsons was paying loving tribute to its deceased neighbour...while exuding an obvious air of schadenfreude.

Drexell's Class may have been dead, but Coleman's career playing gruff educational authority figures was not - he went on to voice Principal Prickly in the Disney animated series Recess.

Drexell's Class wasn't the only failed contemporary series to be skewered in "Treehouse of Horror III" - elsewhere in the episode, they also danced on the graves of Fish Police, Capitol Critters and Family Dog, three gruesomely unsuccessful attempts at answering The Simpsons' own unprecedented success on the prime-time animation front. I covered this gag a long time ago in this post. Family Dog, as you know, I have an inexplicable affection for, but I'm generally indifferent toward Fish Police and I flat-out don't like Capitol Critters.

At the time of typing there are two and three-quarters episodes of Drexell's Class at large on YouTube, so you can check it out and judge for yourself if it was put into the grave prematurely, or put out of its misery in good time.

I'm With Stupid: A popular slogan found on novelty t-shirts, the general inanity of which was lampooned in greater detail in the Season 8 episode "Hurricane Neddy".

R. Buckminster Fuller: Richard Buckminster Fuller (1895 - 1983), an American architect, best known for popularising the geodesic dome (the actual invention of which is to be credited to German engineer Walther Bauersfield). A miniature replica of the dome can be seen at the top of Fuller's tombstone. Unfortunately for Fuller, his grave is standing adjacent to the I'm With Stupid one, rendering him the subject of perpetual mockery.

Slapstick: We don't get a particularly good look at this one, but the grave is wide open...indicating that slapstick has risen from the dead? Alternatively, the gravedigger fell in. Woob woob woob!

American Workmanship: The tombstone promptly disintegrates. A commentary on America's current economic position (America was still feeling the effects of the early 1990s recession, which ended in March 1991, although unemployment rates remained high throughout 1992) and the declining US manufacturing industry.

Amusing Tombstones II: Driver, Where You Taking Us? (Treehouse of Horror II edition)

Continuing our tribute to the once-traditional stroll through the Springfield Cemetery that launched each Simpsons Halloween special in the show's early years, let's take a look at the macabre delights on offer in the opening sequence to "Treehouse of Horror II". This episode first aired on 31st October 1991, as the world remained haunted by everything from the bizarre legacies of its rock and animation juggernauts to the eating habits of the preceding decade.

Bambi's Mom: Since its debut in 1942, Walt Disney's feature animation Bambi has caused no shortage of childhood heartbreak with its stark and upsetting depiction of the death of the titular character's mother (Bambi's coming of age, and the death of his mother, was first depicted in the novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten, but it is the Disney adaptation that gave this shocking narrative moment its indispensable cultural legacy). Bambi's mother (who was voiced by Paula Winslowe) has no name of her own, or at least none is ever given - she is simply a force of maternal benevolence, tender, knowledgeable and nurturing, and the viewer comes to feel as reassured by her presence and guidance as does Bambi, making her death a terrible blow on both counts.

After enduring a harsh winter, Bambi and his mother are relieved to finally stumble across spring grass in the thawing snow, with its promises of regeneration and new life. Fate, however, has played a particularly cruel trick on them, for it is in stopping to eat the supply of grass that they leave themselves vulnerable to attack from offscreen hunters, whose presence Bambi's mother senses too late. Bambi himself escapes, but his mother is not so fortunate. Significantly, the sequence where his mother dies is the last point in the story in which we see Bambi as a fawn, for her death is an indication that his childhood has come to an abrupt halt. Spring is still on the way (the grass didn't lie about that much), but things will never be the same again. The fade-out at the end of this sequence is followed by a startling transition, in which we discover the forest in full spring mode, with a lot of twitterpated birds eagerly singing about the joys of romance and procreation - a symbol of life going on that nevertheless seems disturbing in its indifference to what the viewer has just witnessed. That life carries on after The End, oblivious to one's personal suffering, is perhaps the very harshest lesson to be learned. The tombstone seen at the start of "Treehouse of Horror II" is an unsettling reminder of everything this character death symbolises, both for Bambi and for the viewer - the carcass of this benevolent Disney doe lies six feet under at the Springfield Cemetery, and our childhood innocence lies dead and buried along with her.

Jim Morrison: Lead vocalist of psychedelic rock band The Doors, who joined the infamous "27 Club" after suffering heroin-induced heart failure on 3rd July 1971. In actuality, Morrison is buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris; his grave was initially unmarked, and only received an official headstone in 1981, on the 10th anniversary of his death. This was courtesy of Croatian sculptor Mladen Mikulin, who also supplied a bust of Morrison. The depiction in "Treehouse of Horror II" shows the famous tombstone adorned with graffiti, and with a couple of hippie types camped out beside it - Morrison's grave swiftly became a popular place of pilgrimage for fans, many of whom wished to leave their own unorthodox tributes in the form of tags, which also spread to adjacent cemetery features (so Bambi's Mom's tombstone probably wouldn't look so spotless). Mikulin's bust was stolen in 1988, and in 1990 the grave underwent renovation, during which Mikulin's then heavily-defaced tombstone was destroyed and replaced - so the appearance at the start of "Treehouse House II" is as much a tribute to the lost tombstone itself as to Morrison and his cultural legacy. This website contains a visual history of Morrison's grave over the years.

Cajun Cooking: America went through something of a "Cajun Craze" in the 1980s, inspired largely by the popularity of Louisianian celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme. His recipe for blackened redfish became a hit and led to Cajun-style restaurants opening up all over the country, many of whom apparently knew little about what constituted authentic Cajun cuisine. The craze had died down by the 1990s, although not without leaving a critical dent in the wild redfish population.

Walt Disney: Not far from the resting place of his most notoriously ill-fated character lies the big D himself. Walt Disney's tombstone has icicles hanging off it, an allusion to the urban legend that Disney, on being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, had himself cryogenically frozen so that he could be revived and treated at such a time when medical science had caught up with his condition. I love this legend as much as the next person (and whatever your feelings on Disney as a person, the notion of him being frozen in an underground ice chamber beneath the Pirates of The Caribbean ride at Disneyland is all kinds of rad) but in reality, Disney died on 15th December 1966 and all evidence points to his body being cremated two days later. The cryogenics rumor goes at least as far back as 1969, where it was mentioned in a publication of the magazine Ici Paris. It was later promoted by Leonard Mosely's 1986 biography Disney's World, and later still by Walt Disney - Hollywood's Dark Prince by Marc Eliot in 1993, both of which suggest that Disney had an interest in cryogenics, although neither is considered a credible source.

Other aspects of Disney iconography adorn the grave - a pair of Mickey Mouse ears can be discerned at the top of the tombstone, and the engraving is done in the famous Disney script (often thought to be a recreation of Disney's own signature, although that too is dubious).

Lose Weight Now Ask Me How: The marketing slogan of Herbalife Nutrition, a company specicalising in dietary products and supplements. The slogan was worn on pin badges by Herbalife distributors as an open invitation to the public to approach them and ask them about subjects related to their product. The gag here is obvious, in that the peddler, in this case, is dead. So good luck getting answers.

Amusing Tombstones: A Spirited Beginning (Treehouse of Horror edition)

It took The Simpsons six years to revisit the holiday season that kicked off their run as a standalone series, but they had no such hesitation about ringing in Halloween year after year, a tradition established with their sixteenth episode, "Treehouse of Horror" (which bore the more conventional onscreen title "The Simpsons Halloween Special"). And little wonder - the Halloween episodes yielded the perfect excuse to snake into darker and weirder territory than a regular episode would allow. Twenty-nine sequels later and the basic formula has remained unaltered - three self-contained stories, each with no bearing on the show's continuity - but the series has undergone its share of evolution over the years, and it's inevitable that we've seen a few of the early conceits and innovations be discarded along the way (for one, only the first "Treehouse of Horror" was set principally inside a treehouse, meaning that the title hasn't made a whole lot of subsequent sense, except as a callback to that original episode).

One early tradition that lasted for only the first few Treehouse of Horrors was the opening pan through the Springfield Cemetery (which, in Halloween episodes, was always conveniently located directly before the Simpsons' house), complete with an annual selection of tombstones bearing sardonic engravings. These were abandoned after "Treehouse of Horror V" because the writers figured that they had exhausted all possibilities on that front (and in fairness, they were already starting to repeat themselves by "Treehouse of Horror IV"), but for as long as they lasted, the Springfield Cemetery served as a nice all-purpose resting ground for the macabre heritage that continues to haunt our collective cultural psyches. From contemporary pop cultural digs to bizarre urban legends, it all lay buried six feet under, and only metres from the Simpsons' front yard. To mark the twenty-ninth anniversary of the original "Treehouse of Horror" (which first aired on 25th October 1990), here's a run-down of what lies beneath throughout our first graveyard stroll:

Ishmael Simpson, Ezekiel Simpson and Cornelius V. Simpson: I assumed at first that these alluded to actual historical people with the name Simpson, but my research has come up disappointingly short on the matter. So I think they're just supposed to be members of the Simpson lineage from earlier generations. Cornelius V. Simpson, though, may be an allusion to Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), a prominent 19th century American business magnate who had a major hand in shaping the country's railroad industry. Incidentally, Ishmael and Ezekiel were also the names of the two children who, in the Season 3 episode "Bart's Friend Falls In Love", were permitted to step outside and pray for us all during Ms Krabappel's sex ed class.

Garfield: I presume this refers to the fictional cat created by cartoonist Jim Davis in 1978, and not the US president James A. Garfield. As such, I'm not entirely sure what this is getting at, for in 1990 both the Garfield comic strip and TV series Garfield and Friends were still going strong. But if I were to hazard a guess, I'd say it has to do with the fact that, in 1990, Garfield was twelve years old, which is about the average lifespan for a domestic cat (it is not at all uncommon for cats to make it into their teens, but a cat as morbidly obese as Garfield probably wouldn't fare so well).

The Grateful Dead: Californian rock band founded by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron McKernan, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann in 1965. I don't think there's any greater subtext here than what's in the name. Dead and thankful for it.

Casper The Friendly Boy: Casper The Friendly Ghost was a character created by Seymour Reit and Joe Oriolo in 1939 for a children's book, The Friendly Ghost, who later went on to appear in a series of theatrical animated shorts from Famous Studios between 1945 and 1959, and a popular series of spin-off comics published by Harvey Comics. Casper was a young, non-threatening ghost with a greater interest in befriending the living than in haunting them, but people tended to run screaming from him anyway (as most humans don't like staring their own mortality in the face). The tombstone glimpsed at the start of "Treehouse of Horror" touches on the grim implications of the concept, in that Casper was presumably once a living child who died at a tragically young age. In the 1995 feature film Casper it was established that he died of pneumonia after playing out too long in the snow, but I think I prefer Bart and Lisa's joint hypothesis in the Season 2 episode "Three Men and A Comic Book". Bart offers a theory that Casper is the ghost of Richie Rich (a young millionaire, also of the Harvey Comics line-up). Lisa acknowledges that they do look eerily similar and muses, "Perhaps he realised how hollow the pursuit of money is and took his own life." Suddenly everything is clear.

Elvis: Rock n' roll legend Elvis Presley died of a heart attack on 16th August 1977, but the general public doesn't relinquish its cultural icons quite so easily, and since that fateful day various conspiracy theories have abounded that Elvis faked his death in order to escape the tyranny of fame and live out a private life. Hopeful fans have subsequently spotted their hero everywhere, from the Memphis International Airport to the 1990 film Home Alone (where you can reportedly see The King lingering in the background in one of the airport scenes just behind Catherine O'Hara). The Elvis conspiracy is touched on, among other places, in the 1991 film Slacker, in which a character theorises that if Elvis were alive and half-ass cool, he would be working as an Elvis impersonator in Las Vegas, living out the daily spiritual hell of having to parody himself at the height of his ridiculous - which is what those of us who are over 28 are having to do every day of our lives anyway.

Your Name Here: Self-Explanatory.

Paul McCartney: More rock n' roll mythology, only this one pushing in the opposite direction of the aforementioned Elvis Presley legend. Because while we as a species might have this thing about letting go of our cultural icons, what we're really suckers for, at the end of the day, is a good cover-up story. Paul McCartney, of course, is alive and well and would later make a guest appearance in the Season 7 episode "Lisa The Vegetarian", but back in 1967 rumors circulated that he had been killed in a traffic accident and replaced with a lookalike, and lo, the "Paul Is Dead" conspiracy theory was forever cemented into popular culture. Proponents of the theory were scanning the Beatles' recent discography for hidden "clues" that the Paul featured therein was an imposter, and came up with a wealth of compelling evidence - among them, that the cover to the band's 1969 album Abbey Road showed the foursome walking in a funeral procession, amid which Paul is conspicuously out of sync with the others, and is the only one walking barefoot (because he represents the "corpse"). Paul, who was left-handed, was also holding a cigarette in his right hand, while the license plate on a car in the backdrop reads "28IF", alluding to what would have been McCartney's age, IF he had lived (in actuality, McCartney was 27 at the time). Elsewhere, some fans thought they heard John Lennon blurting out "I buried Paul" at the coda to the band's 1967 single "Strawberry Fields Forever" (the actual words, according to Lennon, were "Cranberry sauce"). Plus, the Beatles did seem eager to push this mysterious Billy Shears in "Sgt Peppers", so...might that be the true identity of our imposter? The most credible explanation would be that human beings are simply highly adept at seeing whatever they want to see, but even today there are those who remain fascinated by this legend.

Disco: Well, there is this tendency to equate disco music with death. Although as a personal rule, anyone who uses the phrase "deader than disco" is not getting into my good books.