tek's rating:

The Simpsons Halloween Special IV (Season 5; Oct. 28, 1993)
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Intro: No discretion warning this time, just straight into the title card and cemetery gag, followed by a spooky couch gag. The framing device is Bart talking about paintings being portals into terror, or whatever. And he walks past several spooky paintings. (Marge tries to get in a discretion warning, in the middle of Bart's intro.)

The Devil and Homer Simpson: In a parody of The Devil and Daniel Webster, Homer sells his soul to the Devil for a doughnut. After he's finished eating it, he goes to Hell, but gets a chance to stand trial in the hopes of reclaiming his soul. There's a neat and sweet twist in the end that I really liked. And then a funny ending. The whole segment was rather amusing, actually.

Terror at 5½ Feet: In a parody of the Twilight Zone episode Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, Bart has a nightmare that the school bus crashes. The next day, he's nervous about riding the bus, and then he sees a gremlin on the side of the bus. There's a neat gag involving Hans Moleman, which I definitely remember having seen before, so I guess I must have seen this episode before. There's also a Kang and Kodos gag, which I didn't remember, but I liked. And the story has a scary ending.

Bart Simpson's Dracula: In a parody of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Mr. Burns invites the Simpsons to his country house in Pennsylvania. Lisa thinks Mr. Burns is a vampire, and of course she's right, though no one believes her. At one point there's a gay joke I didn't care for. But otherwise it was a reasonably amusing story, and I especially like the ending. (I don't want to spoil it, but it's more Christmas-y than Halloween-y. It doesn't really make any sense, but that's part of what I like about it, how totally random it is.)

Then, during the end credits, the music is sort of a mashup of the usual spookified version of the Simpsons theme music and The Addams Family theme music. So that was neat. All in all, I'd say this is my favorite Treehouse episode yet... though of course there are still a lot to come....


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