Inside ‘The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror XXXV Spoofs of ‘Pacific Rim’ and ‘Venom’

Emily Aslanian November 1, 2024, 11:00 am

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The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXXV — 20th Television

Do you carve pumpkins for your Halloween tradition? Here, we watch The Simpsons’ annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode. And this week’s Season 36 installment on Fox is filled with jump-scares and jests.

First, get ready for a special couch gag intro, created by The Book of Life‘s Jorge Gutierrez and composer Juan Carlos Enriquez that puts a Simpsons spin on Día de los Muertos with lucha libre visuals and punk rock sounds.

And then no matter what side of the ballot you’re on, you’ll appreciate the first story in the episode: Bickering siblings Bart and Lisa (voiced by Nancy Cartwright and Yeardley Smith, respectively) must battle giant monsters created by political rage using a Pacific Rim–style robot. “Both sides will be offended,” teases executive producer Matt Selman with a laugh. “Rather than weigh in on one side or the other, I guess [writer Rob LaZebnik, who wrote the segment and co-ran the episode] wanted to comment on the rage people feel on both sides of this. They choose anger over commonality.”

Then, Mr. Burns (Harry Shearer), as a Victorian-era factory boss, is haunted by his abused workers’ spirits in a segment originally written as a fourth segment for 2019’s “Thanksgiving of Horror.” “We really wanted to do something with a lot of jump scares in it,” says Selman of the seasonal story. “But we discovered that in animation, it’s harder to actually scare people. There’s something about real life or real film—[in] animation, jump scares are tricky. So we called attention to the fact that we were making fun of jump scares.”

Last is a gag on Marvel’s Venom where hapless Homer (Dan Castellaneta) is wrangled into a tight-knit bond with a pair of alien jeans hilariously named Denim (Kevin Michael Richardson lends his voice to the stop-motion animation). The pants help Homer woo Marge (Julie Kavner) into a relationship. “There was a lot of resistance to this idea in the beginning because it was so silly and started with a pun,” says Selman. But the pun is far from the best part about the silly gag, as you’ll see.

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To create the leggy alien with zipper teeth, the beloved series, originally created by Matt Groening, worked with Seth Green‘s Stoopid Buddy Stoodios (known for Robot Chicken, Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. and Crossing Swords), who started to work on the segment back in the Spring.

And though the animation took a long time to create, Homer’s romance with Marge is short-lived, when the latter realizes that he refuses to remove his pants…ever.

“You really care about your best jeans,” Selman says. “There was something about Homer’s relationship with his jeans, who were like a wingman that becomes a love triangle, that was a funny idea.”

Seam-splitting, even!

The Simpsons: Treehouse of Horror XXXV, Sunday, November 3, 8/7c, Fox