The Simpsons Season 36’s Best Horror Treehouse Segment Finally Revives an Iconic Part of the Original, 34 Years Later

Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for The Simpsons Season 36, Episode 5, “Treehouse of Horror XXXV”

While The Simpsons Season 36’s Treehouse of Horror Halloween special wasn’t perfect, the best segment of the ride made an ingenious decision by returning to a classic source of inspiration. The SimpsonsTreehouse of Horror’s annual Halloween specials have been around almost as long as the show itself. The first episode 3 of season 2, “Treehouse of Horror”, aired in 1990 and The Simpsons Since then, it has provided one of those horror anthology parodies a year. Some, like “Treehouse of Horror XV” or “Treehouse of Horror X,” mark the beginning and end of eras in the show’s history.

Others are a mishmash of forgettable parodies, some of which don’t even focus on the horror genre. Season 36, Episode 5, “Treehouse of Horror XXXV,” falls somewhere between these two extremes. As in the last two seasons of the series, The Simpsons Season 36 was a marked improvement on the show’s critical low point, seasons 30-33. However, of all 38 Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episodes, “Treehouse of Horror XXXV” is not among the best. That said, the outing includes one of the best standalone segments in years, and the reason this story works so well is the show’s history.

“Fall of the House of Monty” from The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXV is based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe

Treehouse of Horror adapted “The Raven” in 1990

In 1990, “Treehouse of Horror” ended with an ambitious segment that parodied Edgar Allan Poe’s iconic gothic poem “The Raven.” Compared to previous parodies of The Amityville Horror and The Twilight Zonethis segment was surprisingly scary. There were plenty of jokes, but guest star James Early Jones’ narration, combined with the poem’s dark story, meant the segment had a genuinely scary atmosphere. In “Treehouse of Horror XXXV,” The Simpsons season 36 adapted Edgar Allan Poe for the second timeand the result was another uncharacteristically scary segment that stood head and shoulders above its competitors.

Compared to “The Raven,” “Fall of the House of Monty” is a much busier segment. Although its title and basic setting are borrowed from Poe’s short story “The Fall of the House of Usher”, there are also references to “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Business Man”, and “The Masque of the Red Death”. Despite this, and the fact that The Simpsons The Treehouse of Horror season 36 Halloween special arrived in November, the segment is a triumph. Filled with allusions to Poe, the story also benefits from the rich history of The Simpsons through several clever Easter eggs for longtime viewers.

Edgar Allan Poe’s parody of Treehouse of Horror XXXV is the episode’s highlight

The Simpsons’ second Poe parody takes its scares seriously

Like “The Raven,” “Fall of the House of Monty” is filled with atmosphere and genuinely scary moments. Moe jumping to his death to eat some peas on the way down is comically silly, but Homer’s death in a vat of boiling corn syrup is authentically scary. Likewise, the ghostly apparitions that visit Burns ensure the haunting is hilarious as they scream “Jump scare!”Whenever they scare him. However, the sight of their ghostly forms passing through a feast Burns made as a peace offering and turning it into piles of rotting, maggot-ridden food is surprisingly grotesque.

By taking its horror elements comparatively seriously, “Fall of the House of Monty” excels where the episode’s previous and subsequent segments fail. ONE Pacific Rim Parody based on the vaguest possible idea of ​​political division fails in trying to centralize politics while at the same time avoiding anything that could be interpreted as a political statement. THE Poison the “Denim” parody isn’t too bad, but it mostly relies on jokes about Homer’s symbiotic jeans having a mind of their own. In contrast, “The Fall of the House of Monty” tells a complete story and draws on numerous sources.

Poe adaptation of The Simpsons season 36 parodies a Netflix hit

Treehouse of Horror XXXV parody of The Fall of the House of Usher, by Mike Flanagan

The segment not only functions as a love letter to Poe’s work, but “Fall of the House of Monty” also parodies Mike Flanagan’s Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher. This miniseries was an atypically broad and darkly comic offering from the horror legend that updated Poe’s story to focus on a modern pharmaceutical dynasty and their gruesome deaths. Very similar The Simpsons Season 36 Episode 4, “Shoddy Heat,” “Fall of the House of Monty” paired Burns with Agnes Skinner as his resentful lover. However, some of its plot beats were not borrowed from Poe, but from the Netflix show.

The explosion at the Burns corn syrup factory, which claims the lives of Homer and the rest of the workers, is framed as The Fall of the House of Usherthe memorable and horrific warehouse rave, although the victims are much more sympathetic in The Simpsons. Likewise, a warning from a ghost who informs Burns of the future harmful effects of his corn syrup empire is similarly illustrated with the human cost of the Usher family’s pharmaceutical fortune. While the Usher family profited from the addiction their painkillers caused, resulting in a global opioid epidemic, Burns made a fortune from the divisive food additive.

“Fall of the House of Monty” from The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXV is based on his past

The segment is strengthened by constant references to The Simpsons

Although The Simpsons Season 36’s Grandpa’s age plot hole proves that the series clearly isn’t too concerned with consistent canon. One of the best things about “Fall of the House of Monty” is its references to previous episodes of the series. The Simpsons uses his own story to his advantage in “Fall of the House of Monty,” be Agnes using the phrase “Embiggen” or Burns’s Escher-esque mansion, featuring the impossible little hallway of Flanders’s poorly reconstructed house. The geometrically impossible corridor built by Barney in Season 8, Episode 8, “Hurricane Neddy,” resurfaces here.

This time, the construction is part of Burns’ terrifying chase through his mansion. This recontextualization of existing jokes proves that The Simpsons can use the show’s lore ingeniously. YouTube creator Wolf Super Eyepatch drew attention to this phenomenon when he noted that season 34 episode 4, “Treehouse of Horror XXXIII,” featured a sequence titled “Simpsons World,” in which the show affectionately parodied its own history and fandom. With this segment and “Fall of the House of Monty”, The Simpsons proved that the show can use its past iconic jokes to enrich and deepen the show’s new offerings.

Source: YouTube