The Simpsons: 10 Best Treehouse Of Horror Episodes

The episode that started a tradition that’s still going 30 years later, and it all begins when Homer eavesdrops on Bart and Lisa telling scary stories in the treehouse.

The first ever Halloween special sandwiches a classic sci-fi Twilight Zone homage between two gothic parodies, and, unlike many of the series’ later anthologies, it all feels wonderfully Halloween-y.

Bad Dreams House opens up strong with the Simpson family moving into an evil, Amityville inspired mansion. The sequence of the family brandishing weapons and sleepwalking into a potential massacre, whilst the house intones “Die, die, everybody die” becomes genuinely chilling.

Next is the debut of Kang and Kodos (and the third alien, whose name is only pronounceable sans tongue) in Hungry are the Damned. Based on the Twilight Zone’s ‘To Serve Man’, the episode has some really memorable images, such as the shot where cloche lids are lifted as if the severed heads of the Simpsons are underneath, and the zoom-in on an open-mouthed Lisa bathed in green when the U.F.O appears. The dusty book ‘How to Cook For Forty Humans’ ranks as the series’ second best cook-book gag.

The episode ends with The Raven, a surprisingly poe-faced adaptation of the titular poem. Bart-as-raven’s constant bleating of “Nevermore” buries itself into your brain, whilst the rest of this shadowy, candlelit vignette comes off as a very classy affair. The connoisseur’s choice.