Everything about Treehouse Of Horror Iv totally explained
"
Treehouse of Horror IV" is the fifth episode of
The Simpsons' fifth season, first aired on
October 28,
1993. It is the final
Treehouse of Horror to have a theme and wrap-around segments.
Plot
Opening and setup
In a homage to
Rod Serling's Night Gallery,
Bart introduces the show while walking through a gallery of famous paintings that have been given Simpsons makeovers, including
Ascending and Descending and
The Scream.
Marge then interrupts him by asking Bart to babysit
Maggie. Bart then moves to a painting he calls the "Devil", and when he's about to say "The devil", Maggie shoves her pacifier in Bart's mouth. He throws it away and tells them about Flanders being the devil. Then another one is one Bart calls the 'ghoul bus', but Lisa corrects him, saying it's actually a painting of the school bus. Finally, before the last segment, Bart presents a
Dogs Playing Poker painting (which terrifies
Homer to the brink of insanity). Bart claims they wanted to do a story based on that painting, but it was deemed so scary that instead they "threw together something with vampires".
The Devil and Homer Simpson
When Homer states that he'd sell his
soul for a donut, the
Devil appears in the guise of
Ned Flanders (Ned then says "It's always the one you least suspect.") and offers Homer a contract to seal the deal. However, before Homer finishes the donut given to him, he realizes that the Devil won't be able to claim his soul if he doesn't eat the last piece, which he decides to keep in his refrigerator. Unfortunately, while half-asleep and looking for a midnight snack, he eats the fateful piece. Instantly, the Devil reappears to take possession of Homer's soul. Marge and Lisa plead with the Devil, finally getting him to agree to hold a trial the next day, but until then, Homer is sent to spend the rest of the day in Hell. At the stroke of midnight, the Devil brings Homer back to the Simpson household for his trial. The Devil chooses the jury as the following:
John Wilkes Booth,
Lizzie Borden,
John Dillinger,
Blackbeard,
Benedict Arnold, the starting lineup of the 1976
Philadelphia Flyers (although the team was wearing blue jerseys rather than the typical white and orange colors) and
Richard Nixon (who was still alive at the time). When the Simpsons' lawyer flees after ruining his case, Marge makes a final effort to save Homer by displaying a photo from their wedding day. On the back, Homer has written that he pledges his soul to Marge; therefore, it wasn't his property to sell at the time of his deal with the Devil. The "jury of the damned" rules in favor of Homer and the Grim Reaper judge dismisses the case. Furious at his loss, the Devil Flanders curses Homer to never be rid of the donut. Homer is shown at breakfast the next morning with a giant donut for a head.
Lisa tells him he shouldn't to go to work, and the Springfield Police have surrounded the house, holding cups of
coffee, with Chief Wiggum saying, "Don't worry boys, he's got to come out sometime."
Terror at 5½ Feet
After having a nighmare in which he's killed in a bus crash caused by a gremlin, Bart rides the bus to school one rainy morning, joined by
Principal Skinner and
Groundskeeper Willie, he panics when he sees a blue
gremlin on the side of the bus loosening the lug nuts on one of the bus's tires. Bart frantically tries to convince the others of the danger (even successfully convincing the bus driver
Otto to run
Hans Moleman's AMC Gremlin off the road), but Principal Skinner (assuming Bart is lying) ties Bart's hands to a seat to keep him from acting rash. Bart convinces
Üter, a chubby German exchange student with an arsenal of bizarre candies, to untie him, then climbs halfway out the window to scare off the gremlin with an emergency flare. The gremlin catches fire and falls from the bus, bouncing off
Ned Flanders's car, causing the kindly do-gooder to stop and decides to adopt the creature. When the bus finally stops, everyone sees the obvious damage and a wheel falls off as Skinner inspects it. However, Bart is still sent away to an
insane asylum for the rest of his life, relieved at finally being able to rest. He then screams as the gremlin appears in the back window of the
ambulance holding Ned's severed (but still alive) head.
Bart Simpson's Dracula
After a news story about several vampire attacks, Lisa begins to suspect that Mr. Burns is a
vampire, but the rest of the family dismisses her concerns. When the family are invited to Mr. Burns's castle in Pennsylvania (a joke to Bram Stoker's Dracula which was in
Transylvania), Lisa deliberately spills blood (served as wine) on her and Bart's clothes and leave to clean themselves up. While exploring the castle, they discover a secret staircase descending to an eerie basement filled with coffins (but they first found a secret passageway to Mr. Burns' vampire laundry room) . As they investigate, vampires emerge from the coffins and circle them. Although Lisa escapes, Mr. Burns appears and bites Bart. Despite obvious bite marks on Bart's neck and his dazed demeanor, Mr. Burns assured the Simpsons that their son is fine. That night, Bart and a group of kids attempt to attack Lisa at home, but before Bart can bite her Homer and Marge interrupt and discover Bart is a vampire. Lisa claims that the only way to restore him is to kill the head vampire, Mr. Burns. The family returns to Mr. Burns's mansion, where Homer drives a stake through Mr. Burns's heart and the vampire's body draining out, only to reform to tell Homer he's fired before draining out again. The Simpsons return home, only for Lisa to find out that everyone in the Simpson family is a vampire, and that Marge is actually the head vampire. With this revelation, the entire family swoops in on Lisa, only to stop and wish everyone a happy
Halloween. The segment immediately transitions into a parody of
A Charlie Brown Christmas, complete with
Santa's Little Helper imitating
Snoopy's dancing and Milhouse playing
Schroeder's piano.
Cultural references
