#Halloween cartoon: Guillermo del Toro’s Treehouse of Horror Couch Gag #Simpsons

The Simpsons at their ghoulish best ... worst? (image via YouTube (c) FOX)
The Simpsons at their ghoulish best … worst? (image via YouTube (c) FOX)

 

Now this is how you mark Halloween everyone!

Particularly if you’re Matt Groening and you want your then-latest Treehouse of Horror intro – this was for the 2013 special – to include everything from zombies to mummies to mutants and apocalyptic visions of a hellish future.

Hire master storyteller Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Crimson Peak), ask him to throw in pretty much everything horror-oriented he can conceive of – and remember this man not only has a prodigious imagination and vast storehouse of horror knowledge, he knows how to use it elegantly and well – and then some such as:

  • Zombies, most likely from George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (brains!)
  • Giant robots and monsters duking it out (Pacific Rim)
  • The Birds with Mrs Crabapple playing the part of a soon-to-be ornithophobic Tippi Hedren
  • Mr Burns and Smithers as the Pale Man and fairy from Pan’s Labyrinth
  • Maggie being scanned as 666 at the supermarket checkout
  • Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein’s Monster and Mummy, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, Lon Chaney Jr’s The Wolfman, Gillman from the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Claude Rains’ Invisible Man.
  • Even the robot from Lost in Space!

There’s a ton of brilliantly-clever references crammed into this short opening sequence, making it a joy to watch again and again – see Simpsons Wiki for the first list of references – while you thank your lucky stars you don’t live in an horrific Springfield.

Or do you? Shhhh – DON’T … LOOK … BACK …

 

Posted In TV

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