Treehouse of Horror II

Directed by:	Jim Reardon
Written by:	Al Jean Mike Reiss Jeff Martin George Meyer Sam Simon John Swartzwelder
Release date:	October 31, 1991
Running time:	22 minutes
Available on:	VHS DVD Apple TV Google Play Amazon Video Disney+

“	Hello everyone. Before last year's Halloween show, I warned you not to let your children watch. But you did anyway. Hmm. well, this year's episode is even worse; it's scarier and more violent and I think they snuck in some bad language, too. So, please, tuck in your children and… well, if you didn't listen to me the last time, you're not going to now. Enjoy the show.	”
— Marge, introducing the special

"Treehouse of Horror II" (billed as "The Simpsons Halloween Special II") is, as its title suggests, the second Halloween episode of The Simpsons, aired in the show's third season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on Halloween night of 1991. It was the first "Treehouse of Horror" episode to employ the "scary names" gag, in which many of the credits have unusual names (in this case, "Atrocious Al Jean", "Morbid Mike Reiss", "Jittery Jeff Martin", "Gasping George Meyer", "Slathering Sam Simon", and "Spooky John Swartzwelder", while the director was credited as "Jim Rondo Reardon"). The episode contains numerous parodies and references to horror and science fiction works, including The Twilight Zone, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Thing with Two Heads and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Synopsis

Intro

When Marge, Lisa and Bart come back from Trick-or-Treating, they get a load of candy. Marge tells them not to eat too much or they'll get nightmares. They all scoff at her, but they do have nightmares.

The Monkey's Paw

Lisa's nightmare begins with the Simpsons visit Morocco, where Homer buys a mysterious monkey's paw that grants wishes but with great misfortune. Once back home (after Homer had to pay a two American dollar fine for attempting to smuggle souvenirs onboard the plane), the family begins to wish upon the paw. Maggie wishes for a golden pacifier, and Bart wishes for the family to be rich and famous. The pacifier seems to have no negative connotations, but the money and fame cause a public backlash to grow around the Simpsons, as they appear on everything from T-shirts to billboards for mammogram tests. Lisa wishes for world peace, but when Kang and Kodos see that the Earth is vulnerable, they conquer it, enslaving humanity. Homer then wishes for a turkey sandwich without any "weird surprises," which he claims is a wish that can't backfire. The sandwich appears to be perfect… except the turkey is a little dry. This 'abnormality' causes Homer to fly into a rage, before throwing the monkey's paw away. When Ned Flanders sees Homer throwing it out, Homer offers the paw to him, assuming that wishes with misfortunes will soon plague his neighbor. However, Ned's first wish (to get rid of the aliens) frees the human race and he's considered a hero. Shortly afterward, Flanders wishes for his home to become a castle, as Homer watches, seething.

The Bart Zone

After Lisa wakes up from her nightmare, she goes into Bart's room and wakes him up to ask if she could sleep in his bed. Bart at first tells her to get lost, but he relents when she offers him a candy necklace. She climbs into his bed and thanks him. He replies,"less talk, more sleep," as he spends the last moment staring at the Krusty the Clown Jack-in-the-box on his night-table before falling back to sleep.

In Bart's dream, he is a boy who's able to bend reality with his mind, as well as read the minds of others, and he will turn anyone who thinks badly about him into a creature. The whole town lives in fear of him because of this, constantly forced to be happy and fulfill his every demand. Bart comes home from school and Homer and Lisa are watching TV. Bart demands to watch Krusty, after Homer refuses, Bart replaces the football on the TV with him and he smacks into the field post. When Homer comes back, he tries to bash Bart over the head with a chair. Bart reads his mind and turns him into a Jack-in-the-box. Upon discovering this, Marge takes them to see Dr. Marvin Monroe, who suggests that Bart and Homer spend more time together doing father/son activities. Homer takes Bart to a baseball game, fishing, shooting a BB gun, church, and to an amusement park. Bart becomes less mean as he has enjoyed the time with his father, and decides to turn Homer back to normal. Homer then gives Bart a fatherly kiss... at which point Bart wakes up, horrified.

If Only I Had a Brain

Bart and Lisa run into Homer and Marge's room and ask to sleep in their bed. Homer looks at the clock and comments that he will have to get up for work in two hours.

In Homer's dream, he is fired from his job and he becomes a grave digger. He falls asleep in an open grave. Mr. Burns and Smithers are out looking for a brain, for their experiment to create the ultimate worker. They find Homer, and thinking he's dead, take him to their lab, remove his brain and place it into a robot. The robot then acts like Homer (clumsy and lazy), to Mr. Burns disappointment. Smithers convinces him to put Homer's brain back where it came from, but after this is done the robot falls on top of Mr. Burns, crushing his body. To save his life, Mr. Burns' head is sewn onto Homer's body.

Homer wakes up from his nightmare and finds that Mr. Burns' head really is sewn onto his body. A fake "next time on The Simpsons" bit is then shown, in which the Simpsons are eating breakfast. Lisa reminds Homer that that evening, the kid's school will be having an all-you-can-eat spaghetti dinner. Homer looks forward to it, but Mr. Burns reminds him that same evening, they will be attending the reception for Queen Beatrice in the Netherlands. Homer complains that he hates having two heads.

Production

The episode was executive produced and co-written by Al Jean, who also pitched the idea of having "scary names" in the opening credits.

"Treehouse of Horror II" was written by Al Jean, Mike Reiss, Jeff Martin, George Meyer, Sam Simon, and John Swartzwelder. Jim Reardon was the director. The episode is presented in a similar format to the previous season's "Treehouse of Horror", and contains several similarities to the previous episode, such as Marge's opening warning (which uses the same animation as the first "Treehouse of Horror"), the tombstones in the opening credits, and the appearance of Kang and Kodos. The "scary names" idea came from Al Jean, who was inspired by old issues of EC Comics. Although the names quickly became more silly than scary, there have been a wide variety of special credits. For example, the director's name is given as Jim "Rondo" Reardon, a reference to his idol, Rondo Hatton. The "scary names" became such a burden to write that they were cut for "Treehouse of Horror XII" and "Treehouse of Horror XIII", but Jean brought them back after hearing complaints from fans. There was a debate about whether to include Kang and Kodos in all Halloween specials after the episode; eventually, the writers agreed to make it a tradition.

At the beginning of "The Monkey's Paw", Hank Azaria faked some Arabic. Usually, the writers get inspiration for the Halloween specials from old horror stories, but the writers would later try conceiving original stories instead of creating more parodies. Also, when the Moroccan salesman tries to warn Homer Simpson, saying "You'll be sorry", the animators forgot to move his lips. They only realized their error after the broadcast, so they decided not to change it. While writing the segment, Sam Simon, one of the writers, wanted the fingers to go down in such an order so they would eventually have the middle finger sticking up. Once the animation would have been complete, however, they could not have gone through; Fox would have refused to air the episode. They had considered the alternative of deliberately blurring the middle finger themselves, but decided that Fox would have also refused. For this episode, there were a lot of loop lines; for instance, the ending to "The Monkey's Paw" was added to the last second. As a result of the loop, they still retained Flander's old house next to his newly-created castle. In order to make the episode fill the time needed, the animators often extended the laughing time for Kang and Kodos.

The second segment is based on The Twilight Zone television series episode "It's a Good Life." That episode had also inspired the third segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie, which starred Nancy Cartwright in her debut feature film role. The segment parodies The Twilight Zone's narration, and the producers were pleased with Harry Shearer's portrayal of Rod Serling. In addition, though it took a long time, the design for the monster version of Snowball II by Rich was greatly enjoyed by the producers, who thought it looked "just hideous, just right". Bart's prank call Moe was thought of by John Swartzwelder, one of the writers; however, Hank Azaria detested the line. According to George Meyer, the animation for when Bart sits up, screaming, was extremely tough, especially to make the mouthlines natural.

In the third segment, the animators decided to make the animation of Burns and Smithers walking through the lab a bit more impressive, and decided to do the concave and convex images of Burns and Smithers. Even though it was tough and took up more time, the producers felt that it was a necessary tour-de-force. Originally, Homer's robotic voice was done post-animation in order to avoid stress on the voice actor. One of the writers who created the Davy Crockett joke thought it was so funny that he actually mimicked the actions of Mr. Burns putting on Homer's brain in the writing room; the producers thought that it was hilarious, so they decided to add it into the episode.

Trivia

• When Kang and Kodos' ship lands on the Statue of Jebediah Springfield, the statue's head falls off as the rest of the statue falls over, as a call-back to the first season's "The Telltale Head", in which Bart sawed the statue's head off.

Cultural references

In the opening sequence of the episode, the Peanuts gang scurry by as trick-or-treaters, à la It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. Marge's hair in the opening segment recalls Elsa Lanchester's character in Bride of Frankenstein. The plot of Lisa's nightmare is a reference to W. W. Jacobs's short story The Monkey's Paw, and The New Twilight Zone episode "A Small Talent for War". Near the beginning of the segment, Moroccan soldiers stop and search the Simpsons, finding souvenirs taped to Homer's body which he was attempting to smuggle out of the country. This is a reference to the opening drug-smuggling scene of the film Midnight Express. A billboard advertisement with Bart saying "Get a Mammogram, Man!" can be seen. This was a meta-reference to Bart's popular slogan "Don't have a cow, man!"

In addition to the plot of Bart's nightmare, Jasper's transformation into a dog is a reference to the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. The scene in which Homer goes out with Bart during Bart's nightmare to spend time with the boy, as well as the music accompanying the scene, parody an old anti-smoking public service announcement, while the church layout was taken from a Norman Rockwell painting.

Homer's nightmare is based on much of the film Frankenstein, and the end references The Thing with Two Heads. While Mr. Burns scoops out Homer's brain, he hums the tune of "If I Only Had a Brain" from The Wizard of Oz. Burns also calls the robot that had Homer's brain a "clinking, clattering cacophany of colligenous cogs and camshafts", similar to the Wizard's line to the Tin Man: "You clinking, clanking, clattering collection of colligenous junk!" In Homer's nightmare, The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson is broadcast on a TV. When Mr. Burns puts on Homer's brain, he says "Look at me! I'm Davy Crockett", a reference to Crockett's popular image as a frontierman who wore a hat of raccoon fur.

Reception

In its original airing on the Fox Network, the episode had a 12.1 Nielsen rating and was viewed in approximately 11.14 million homes. It finished the week ranked 39th. It was the highest rated show on Fox the week it aired, tied with In Living Color.

The authors of the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood praised the episode as "A marked improvement on the first, uneven Hallowe'en special. All three tales succeed, with Bart's nightmare of gaining awesome powers being perhaps the most successful". Bill Gibron of DVD Verdict lauded the episode for having "wonderfully wild moments", especially "the parody of The Twilight Zone's 'It's a Good Life,' with Bart in the place of Billy Mumy's omnipresent monster". He gave the episode a score of 90 out of 100 a possible score. DVD Movie Guide's Colin Jacobson critiqued the episode as "not so hot their first couple of years", though he admitted that "the 1991 incarnation does top the original from 1990". However, he thought that "None of the three stories stands out as particularly excellent, though the monkey’s paw one probably works the best. Chalk up this episode as a decent Halloween set". He thought the best quote was “Damn it Smithers, this isn’t rocket science. It’s brain surgery!"

In 2006, IGN published a list of the top ten Treehouse of Horror segments, and they placed the third segment at number eight. They wrote, "'Treehouse of Horror II' contained three quality segments, but [the third] was easily the best. Featuring a story reminiscent to Frankenstein, this episode made us laugh from beginning to end with Homer's crazy antics. [...] The humor that is derived from the multiple movie and literary parodies was enough to leave a last impression on us as an audience - and who doesn't like a robot whose primary function is to find donuts?" Writing for the Star Tribune, Neal Justin rated the episode as the one of his ten favorite episodes, writing, "The annual Halloween specials glow because all the rules are thrown out, never with more ingenuity than in this second installment." The episode's reference to Midnight Express was named the 18th greatest film reference in the history of the show by Total Film's Nathan Ditum.

The episode was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards: Outstanding Individual Achievement in Sound Mixing for a Comedy Series or a Special and Alf Clausen for Outstanding Music Composition for a Series.

Cast

Voice actor/actress	Character(s)
Dan Castellaneta	Homer Simpson Barney Gumble Krusty the Clown Groundskeeper Willie Mayor Quimby Kodos Others
Julie Kavner	Marge Simpson
Nancy Cartwright	Bart Simpson Kearney Others
Yeardley Smith	Lisa Simpson
Hank Azaria	Moe Szyslak Apu Nahasapeemapetilon Lou Others
Harry Shearer	Mr. Burns Waylon Smithers, Jr. Ned Flanders Kent Brockman Principal Skinner Otto Mann Kang Jasper Eddie Dr. Marvin Monroe Others
Maggie Roswell	Helen Lovejoy Others
Marcia Wallace	Edna Krabappel Others

External links

• "Treehouse of Horror II" at The Simpsons.com
• "Treehouse of Horror II" at the Simpsons Archive
• "Treehouse of Horror II" at the Internet Movie Database
• "Treehouse of Horror II" recap at TV Tropes