By Maria Lewis
October and the months surrounding it are a glorious time for horror fans. While regular movie goers have summer blockbuster season between May to July, the equivalent of that for genre nuts is right the hell now as studios begin dropping all of their horror fare in the lead-up to Halloween season. Think about it: The Snowman, The Lighthouse Golem, IT, The Girl With All The Gifts, Jigsaw and Happy Death Day are just a handful of the titles that began releasing in September and will wrap within the first few weeks of November. Yet while all of the focus is on the big screen, it’s also an excellent time on the small as well. Halloween episodes have become a staple of the pop culture landscape, with everything from sitcoms to fantasy series attempting to do at least one each season (with varying success). With Halloween just around the corner, settle on the couch as we take a look at the best TV episodes for the spooky season.
Halloween episodes aren’t a new phenomenon, they’ve been popping up on classic American sitcoms like M*A*S*H (with their Trick Or Treatment episode), Cheers, Roseanne, Frasier and Friends, just to name a few, since forever. Teen shows like Freaks and Geeks, Veronica Mars and Pretty Little Liars each had one, along with animated series like Bob’s Burgers and South Park stepping into the territory usually dominated by [The Simpsons’] Treehouse Of Horror (with Full Bars and Pinkeye respectively). Few shows attempt the Halloween episode now, but the ones that have – and pulled it off the best – all seem to be comedies. There’s Modern Family’s – which was a gem – along with Parks and Recreation giving us two in a house party gone wild and a long running feud hitting peak drama. The Office pretty much covered every holiday and they always made for great fodder, but the Halloween episode from season five is especially wonderful as Michael agonises over his decision of who to fire. Brooklyn Nine-Nine also deserves a shout out, along with Glee, which straddles the line between a few different television genres. In a tribute episode to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the cast roll through seven classic hits including a kick-ass rendition of ‘Sweet Transvestite’ by Amber Riley’s character Mercedes.
In the teen sphere, it’s unsurprising that Dawson’s Creek had some of the most consistently great Halloween episodes. Despite being overtly soapy and OMG SO WHITE throughout its run, it was also made by Kevin Williamson. You know, the guy who gave us two of the best slashers from the nineties in Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. In the show’s six seasons they did four Halloween eps including Escape From Witch Island in season three, which was a fun riff on Blair Witch Project (the mania for that movie was at its peak). There was also Living Dead Girl, Four Scary Stories and The Scare. Buffy The Vampire Slayer naturally brought the goods, although it did have the slight disadvantage of being a show that played within the horror and genre sphere already so Halloween episodes didn’t seem like such a shake-up as, say, The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air’s Halloween episode (Hex and the Single, for those of you playing at home). It’s the same reason American Horror Story tends to avoid it, with the exception of season one’s Murder House giving us the tense Halloween: Part 1 and Part 2. Buffy season two gave us the ultimate wish fulfillment gone wrong, with a curse turning all the kids in town into whatever they were dressed as on the night. Willow – as a ghost – actually died, Xander became a soldier and Buffy – usually the stalwart badass – became a helpless damsel. It was a cool concept executed flawlessly, with storylines laid in that episode tugged at later in the season. Season four brought Fear, Itself, which was one of the best standalone episodes of the show’s later run. A haunted house manifests into a weapon of a fear demon and the Scooby Gang have to learn how to overcome their terrors. It’s also notable for giving us Xander’s delivery of “who’s a little fear demon?”.
The crown of ‘Halloween episodes’ though unquestionably belongs to The Simpsons. I mean, with 29 seasons and 28 Halloween-themed episodes, how can it not? Matt Groening’s landmark animated series has become renowned for the annual Treehouse Of Horror episodes, which usually follow smaller stories pieced together like the anthology format of Tales From The Crypt and The Twilight Zone. In fact, many of The Simpsons best installments were parodies of the latter. Retelling classic The Twilight Zone episodes like The Monkey’s Paw, Hungry Are The Damned, It’s A Good Life, The Little People, Little Girl Lost and, perhaps most memorably, Nightmare At 20,000 Feet where the spoof saw Bart spotting a gremlin chewing on the tyres of the school bus. The Treehouse Of Horror episodes have become an institution, with everything from a dedicated fashion line at Blackmilk Clothing to a specific Monopoly set. It’s hard for other TV shows to compete with what The Simpsons have established as their Halloween playing ground, but as film studios throw a legion of scary flicks at audiences this season it’s worth remembering that the television sphere has something to spook you as well.
Maria Lewis is a journalist and author previously seen on SBS Viceland’s The Feed. She’s the presenter and producer of the Eff Yeah Film & Feminism podcast. Her debut novel Who’s Afraid? was released in 2016 with the sequel – Who’s Afraid Too? – out now. Her new book It Came From The Deep is available Halloween, 2017. You can find her on Twitter @MovieMazz
