The Indie Movie ‘Simpsons’ Fans Have to Watch Before This Year’s ‘Treehouse of Horror’
The Simpsons’ annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode usually includes at least one parody of a famous genre movie, be it Stanley Kubrick’s classic The Shining…
…or Mike Nichols’ not-so-classic The Day of the Dolphin.
Last year’s “Treehouse of Horror XXXV” was no exception, it featured comedic riffs on both Pacific Rim and the Tom Hardy blockbuster Venom.
But one segment in this year’s upcoming “Treehouse of Horror” episode is taking its cues from a far smaller horror movie.
The show will include three stories, as per usual, including “Chubbo and the Stinker,” a cross between Jaws and The Blob (with a healthy dose of Smokey and the Bandit). It will seemingly find Homer and Bart once again entering the grease-trafficking business, as they did back in Season 10’s “Lard of the Dance.”
In another segment, the Simpson family will contend with a giant pile of photorealistic garbage. And there will also be a story in which Krusty the Clown “makes a deal with the devil on his live Halloween special.”
If the idea of a live Halloween talk show with demonic overtones sounds familiar, that’s probably because it was also the premise of Late Night with the Devil. The 2023 indie horror flick starred David Dastmalchian as a 1970s late-night talk show host named Jack Delroy, whose live show goes off the rails for supernatural reasons.
The fact that Krusty’s show is also presented in a retro 4x3 aspect ratio is further evidence that The Simpsons will be parodying Late Night With the Devil, which was presented in the form of a lost episode of the show
Oddly enough, some fans have already mashed-up The Simpsons and Late Night with the Devil, swapping Dastmalchian for Krusty in fan art parodies.
Paste Magazine’s interview with Simpsons co-executive producer and writer Mike Price confirmed that the segment is “Price’s homage to the recent movie, Late Night with the Devil,” but will be set in 1995 rather than 1977.
“I almost felt like this might be my last one, so I wanted to get out of it everything I could get. We wanted it to be really, really funny, but also legitimately scary so it’s fairly gory,” Price told the outlet. “There’s a lot of people exploding, especially in the Krusty one. It’s cartoonish, but you’ll see people exploding and faces being ripped off.”
Despite a controversy involving an A.I.-generated logo, Late Night With the Devil managed to gross over $15 million at the worldwide box office. Still, it clearly isn’t nearly as well-known as some of the show’s previous satirical targets.
So fans may want to catch up with the movie, or else risk feeling as confused as they did during that joke about Brazilian time travelers.
