The annual "Treehouse of Horror" episodes are a beloved staple of The Simpsons has rarely killed off characters in the show's canon. The series tends to veer away from more serious overarching plot developments, and, as such, the amount of characters killed throughout the series that affect the overall continuity of The Simpsons is pretty minimal.
However, the annual "Treehouse of Horror" specials allow The Simpsons to kill off characters with impunity, often offing even the titular family. One particularly bloody Halloween special killed Groundskeeper Willy in three out of three segments, a gruesome running gag that would never fly on a typical episode of the series. This makes it somewhat surprising that the best horror movie parody ever featured on The Simpsons, a spoof of director Martin Scorsese’s 1990 psychological thriller Cape Fear, was not part of a Halloween special.
Featuring numerous shot-for-shot homages to the Scorsese movie, The Simpsons' “Cape Feare” (season 5, episode 2) may possibly have started life as a planned "Treehouse of Horror" segment. However, the decision to tie the parody into the show’s characters and a pre-existing plotline (of Sideshow Bob wanting vengeance on Bart) made this spoof stronger than any of the show’s shorter "Treehouse of Horror" segments. Meanwhile, making the outing part of The Simpsons canon meant its darker elements were much more effective. Although the creative freedom of Halloween specials allows the show to get away with more gore, The Simpsons proved with “Cape Feare” that the show could pull off scarily hilarious horror-comedy even in the series canon.
Treehouse of Horror Episodes Didn’t Always Spoof Horror Movies
Although the series has largely forgotten this now, episodes like the Westworld-spoofing "Itchy and Scratchyland" (season 6, episode 4) mined similar comedic gold from spoofing a specific movie throughout their story. However, “Cape Feare” is one of the show’s only full-episode horror movie parodies to date even after thirty-two seasons and a movie’s worth of stories.
Cape Feare Could Have Been A Treehouse of Horror Segment
Although the show writers have never conceded that the episode was meant to be part of a Halloween special, “Cape Feare” does bear the hallmarks of a Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror" segment that was expanded to a full episode. For example, the show’s writers spoke candidly about padding numerous “Cape Feare" moments (the legendary rake sequence, Homer’s inability to his new name “Mr. Thompson”) to get the episode to full length, something that would likely occur if the story was originally only intended to last a few minutes. While the "Treehouse of Horror "episodes allow The Simpsons to avoid confusing continuity by being standalone stories, nothing that occurs in “Cape Feare” is violent or dark enough to require the episode to be part of a Halloween special. As such, it would be no surprise if the parody was originally conceived as a self-contained 7-minute segment that bloomed into something bigger when the writers realized how many absurd elements of Scorsese’s original movie (like Max Cady strapping himself to the underside of a car for a multiple-hour journey) were ripe for parody.
Why Cape Fear Is The Simpsons’ Best Horror Parody
Throughout its 32 seasons, The Simpsons has never been averse to dark humor. Episodes like the legendary The Simpsons’ most recent Christmas special, turned Sideshow Bob into a more pathetically ineffectual sort of villain.
These episodes drew most of their humor from Bob’s inability to be the cold-blooded killer he yearns to be. However, “Cape Feare” doesn’t derive many of its laughs from Bob’s homicidal tendencies, and even as Bart settles in for a performance of the HMS Pinafore, the villain is still hell-bent on actually killing the child. “Cape Feare” addressed this unusual tonal choice in the episode itself, as Bart questions how anyone could want to kill a lovable scamp like himself, and the outing’s cartoony surrealism is never enough to defang the threat that Bob represents. By being a normal Simpsons episode and not a Halloween special, "Cape Feare” is one of the only episodes wherein one of the titular family is in mortal danger and yet the plot still earns big laughs from their ordeal. While The Simpsons’ X-Files homage famously scared some younger viewers, the show has rarely gotten as dark—and as early funny—as its Cape Fear parody managed to be. As a result, the Scorsese spoof remains The Simpsons’ best horror movie parody, despite not even being a Halloween special.