Evangelizing Disney (Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World and Disneyland's 25th Anniversary)

It was somewhat confusing for me to learn that Walt Disney was, in fact, dead.

How was this possible when the studio bearing his name was still releasing new films (The Rescuers, ['77], Pete's Dragon, ['77], Freaky Friday, ['76]) in theaters, the United States was flanked on either coast by a Disney theme park that was open, operating, and adding new rides (Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain), and the man himself occasionally showed up on my television set, albeit in a slightly old-fashioned suit, to introduce that night's episode of The Wonderful World of Disney?

It was hard for me to reconcile the fact that Disney--the company--was wielding such a huge influence on my childhood while Disney--the man--had passed on over a decade earlier, before I was even born. How exactly was Disney able to sally forth so successfully without the guiding influence of Walt? 

Unbeknownst to me, industry sentiment at the time was not that the Disney studio was having trouble staying on the path set forth by Walt, but rather was too timid to break away from it.  

"Young people's tastes were changing, and the Disney product was not changing along with it." writes Leonard Maltin of Disney's post-Walt decade (The Disney Films, 3rd Edition, 1995, p. 270)

While the Disney brand still dominated the pop culture I consumed in the 1970s, my tastes were also being informed by the irreverent humor of The Muppets (not a Disney property at that time), PG-rated (and sometimes vulgar) comedies like The Bad News Bears ('76), Meatballs ('79) and Grease ('78), and of course the mega-blockbusters of the decade, Jaws ('75), Star Wars ('77, also not yet a Disney property) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind ('77).

The Cat From Outer Space ('78) and Unidentified Flying Oddball ('79), two examples of the type of corny sci-fi Disney was still releasing in the years following Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Disney, for its part, seemed stuck in a 1960s time-loop. Some current theatrical releases hewed too closely to Walt-era hits to be appreciated entirely on their own merit. Bedknobs and Broomsticks ('71) was Mary Poppins, but witches. The Aristocats ('70) was One Hundred and One Dalmatians, but cats. Island at the Top of the World ('74) was 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, but in the air. There were also countless tepid live-action comedies featuring a familiar roster of actors that Disney had been relying on for over a decade, among them a pair of Dean Jones starring sequels no one was clamoring for, The Shaggy D.A. ('76) and Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo ('77).

With a few exceptions, (The Rescuers was both a critical success and, for a while, the highest grossing animated film of all time), it was generally "impossible to distinguish a Disney studio film of the 1970s from one made prior to Walt's death..." (Maltin).

Attempting to course correct, Disney, under the leadership of Walt's son-in-law, Ron Miller, began developing projects that could be described as experimental for a studio built on wholesome G-rated family entertainment. The films from this era, which lasts from the late 70s through the mid-1980s, included the studio's first PG-rated film, released under the Buena Vista banner to obscure its connection to Disney, Take Down ('79), as well as several attempts to tap into genres unconventional for Disney: horror (Watcher In the Woods, '80), off-world sci-fi (The Black Hole, '79), contemporary teen drama (an adaptation of S.E. Hinton's Tex, '82), a screwball scavenger hunt (Midnight Madness, '80), super heroes (Condorman, '81), and, in an unprecedented partnership with an outside studio (Paramount), medieval fantasy (Dragonslayer, '81) and a live-action adaptation of cartoon character Popeye ('80). 

But despite testing these new waters, Disney hadn't given up on the G-rated family market, they just needed to figure out how to convince Generation X to believe in that good ol' Disney magic their Boomer parents had grown up with, a challenge perfectly encapsulated in a scene from Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition (1979), in which a 30-something Dad (Richard Dreyfuss) is more excited about the prospect of revisiting all the "furry animals and magic" of a revival showing of Disney's 1940 classic Pinocchio than his disinterested 8-year old son, who dismisses the film as "some dumb cartoon rated G for kids."

It seems it was up to the adults to evangelize Disney magic to the current generation of disbelieving children. And we can see that in two theme-park focused Wonderful World of Disney television specials from that period: The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World (1977) and Disneyland's 25th Anniversary (1980).

Using the medium of television to promote the theme parks was nothing new for Disney. The original 1954 incarnation of the weekly series that would eventually become The Wonderful World of Disney was named for the still under-construction park, Disneyland, and branded its anthological content to one of the park's four themed lands. Beginning in the 1970s, Walt Disney World was the subject of several episodes, including The Magic of Walt Disney World (1974, an updated presentation of a 1972 featurette).

But by 1977, much of that "magic" was lost on today's kids... that is, if we are to believe what we see in The Mouseketeers at Walt Disney World, in which the cast of The New Mickey Mouse Club performs at a park they seem to have no interest in actually stepping foot in.

All screen caps were pulled from this YouTube upload of the program, although in an odd bit of coincidental timing, while preparing this post it suddenly became available officially on the Disney+ streaming service.

The New Mickey Mouse Club (TNMMC), premiering in January, 1977, was an attempt to reboot the hugely successful 1950s phenomenon, updating it for the modern era with a diversified cast, a disco-fied theme song, and a crayon box explosion of colorful sets and costumes. Remembered today mostly as the launching pad for Facts of Life actress Lisa Whelchel, TNMMC was yet another example of Disney playing it safe by repeating itself. But lightning didn't strike twice (Maltin called the show a "conspicuous failure"), and it limped along for two years before fading into obscurity.

The Mousketeers at Walt Disney World follows TNMMC's multi-day stay at the Orlando resort, chaperoned by a "Mr. Brown" (familiar TV actor Ronnie Schell, who had become a Disney film regular of late, appearing in The Strongest Man in the World, Gus, The Shaggy D.A. and The Cat From Outer Space.)

TNMMC cast arrives via Monorail at the Contemporary Resort, but they don't pause for a moment to marvel at the cavernous Grand Canyon Concourse and its magnificent six-story tall Mary Blair tile mural. Instead, they're excited to try out the not-so-magical tennis courts, an amenity commonly found at non-Disney resorts, sports clubs and parks across the country.

"I can't wait to get to the tennis courts." says Julie Piekarski to Kelly Parsons.

After a musical montage showcasing River Country, a themed water park that opened near Fort Wilderness Campground the year prior, TNMMC kids are seen enjoying rounds of skee-ball and pinball at the Fiesta Fun Center arcade.

While the arcade might be worth highlighting as a feature of the resort, there's little Disney "magic" to be found here that couldn't be replicated at any local mall of the day. When Mr. Brown interrupts their play to distribute park tickets, the kids' disinterest is un-mouse-stakeable.

Just look at the disappointment on the faces of "Pop" Attmore and Kelly Parsons. This is the look of a child receiving a $10 savings bond from Grandma for his birthday, not tickets to the greatest theme park in the world.

Comedienne Jo Anne Worley arrives as investigative journalist Colleen Osborn, who may as well be channeling audience skepticism (or at least, Disney's presumption of same) that this nostalgic 1950s-era Mickey Mouse Club concept will still fly in the raucous 1970s. "Level with me Mr. Brown, are the Mouseketeers really friendly towards each other?" Assuring viewers that TNMMC aren't the clean-cut and polite squares of yesteryear, but rather modern kids with modern attitudes and modern interpersonal problems, they stampede onto the scene, arguing and tearing at each other's clothes.

Anarchy in the W.D.W!

Lest there be any lingering doubt that TNMMC has changed with the times, in a later scene, Lisa Whelchel and Allison Fonte take a break from fighting over a rack of dresses to flirt with an attractive older man, or "fox" as the cool kids say.

This ain't your Dad's Disney vacation--although this "fox" looks old enough to be their Dad. Yikes!

Finally, action moves to inside The Magic Kingdom and, after riding the Tomorrowland Speedway and Space Mountain, the kids actually seem to be enjoying themselves for the first time.

But it doesn't take long for the Disney spell to be broken when the group spends a night camping at Fort Wilderness and an innocent mishap results in a tent collapsing. Blame lands on "Nita Dee" DiGiampaolo and the angry insults from her cast mates are piled on mercilessly... 

"That's really a dumb thing to do"

"Can't you do anything right, Nita?"

"What kind of scramble-brained idiot are you?'"

"Stupid!"

"You ruined our camping trip."

...leaving the poor girl in tears.

(Insert some profound comment about idealized Baby Boomer nostalgia being repackaged for a less optimistic generation that can't fully access it.)

So maybe TNMMC kids were more interested in sports, the opposite sex, and arguing with each other than in the unique pleasures afforded by a day at a Disney theme park. But child actor Adam Rich  threatens to one-up their ap-athy-doo-dah in Disneyland's 25th Anniversary (1980).

With his grandfatherly quality and a twinkle in his eye, you might assume that actor Danny Kaye is a Disney film veteran. But despite having appeared in a few non-Disney family friendly productions (Samuel Goldwyn's musical Hans Christian Andersen, ['52], television adaptations of Pinocchio and Peter Pan, both '76) this is actually his first of only two appearances with Disney (the 2nd being 1982's EPCOT Center: The Opening Celebration.) In addition to hosting duties, Kaye plays multiple character roles, including some comic-relief ethnic stereotypes that wouldn't fly today, even with the help of a magic carpet.

Different times, folks.

After an opening song explaining Disneyland's origin story, ("Once Upon a Time in Anaheim") Kaye delivers a thesis statement: "I've had people say to me, 'Disneyland? That's not for me.' You are never too old and you are never too young to enjoy the Magic Kingdom." But proving that to the audience, and Adam Rich, will take some extraordinary heavy-lifting.

Rich was known as the littlest Bradford child on hit television show Eight Is Enough (in its fifth season), and would go on to appear in exactly one Disney film, The Devil and Max Devlin ('81) Here, Rich is playing "himself", but he's also playing audience surrogate for those skeptical, modern young people Disney thinks it needs to win over.   

When Kaye, as Rich's grandfather, asks Rich what he'd like to do first in Disneyland, his one-word answer is: "Leave." He'd rather go to "Adamland", a.k.a. "home, where I live" than spend a lousy day at Disneyland.

Later, when Kaye leaves to find Grandma (also Kaye, in staggered appearances) in Frontierland, Rich grumbles, "What's so great about Frontierland?"

We are then shown exactly what's so great about Frontierland, at least according to a youth-market courting Disney, and it isn't Big Thunder Mountain, the Mark Twain, or any other attraction built by Disney Imagineers... instead it's a live stage performance by hip singing group the Osmond Brothers (intercut with their 1962 debut appearance at the park on the Wonderful World of Color episode Disneyland After Dark.)

Donny Osmond, who, along with his sister Marie, was by this time an even bigger pop sensation than the older Osmonds, joins them on stage to rock it up a bit. 

Afterword, when Grandma asks Rich to guess where they're going to go next, Rich snaps: "Back to the hotel?" Is it too late to deposit this little grouch at the future site of Disney's California Adventure so the adults can have some fun?

"Back to the hotel?" he quipped. Editors note: slapping children is wrong.

Next, we're treated to a great performance by veteran Disney stage performer Wally Boag (joined by Kaye as a black-hatted gunslinger) at the Golden Horseshoe stage, but Rich misses it all because he'd rather sit by himself on a bench, grumbling, "When are we leaving?"

In fact, the first time Rich cracks a smile at the Happiest Place On Earth is when he bumps into superstar Michael Jackson, who sings "When You Wish Upon a Star" and, referencing his recent appearance in the '78 film The Wiz, "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" and "Ease on Down the Road". Unfortunately Michael Jackson is a seasonal attraction, subject to change, with no guarantee he's going to personally serenade you on your visit. Check the park schedule and plan your trip accordingly.

Six years before Captain EO - it's Michael Jackson at Disneyland in 3-D!

Next is a park-wide sing-a-long of "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah", featuring an era-spanning chorus of celebrities that's part 'Who's Who' (Annette Funicello, Buddy Epsen, Kim Richards, Patrick Wayne, Ruth Buzzi) part 'Who's That?' (Bart Braverman, Danielle Brisebois, Quinn Cummings, Sal Viscuso.) Both Jo Anne Worley and Ronnie Schnell from the The Mouseketeers At Walt Disney World make an appearance here as well, this time as themselves.

Again, we find Rich alone and sitting on a park bench in front of Sleeping Beauty Castle (Another bench? Septuagenarian Danny Kaye has more energy than this kid!) where he falls asleep, launching a dream sequence in which Kaye appears as the "Wild Witch of Disneyland".

No, this isn't Rich's report card for Attitude (that would also have a minus symbol on it). 

The Wild Witch presents Rich with a very special "F" ticket. Back then, the park wasn't all-you-can-ride, but used a ticket book system with graduated ride categories ranging "A" though "E", "E" being the newest and biggest rides. Awareness by the general public of Disney's ticket book system was so pervasive that the term "E-ticket" entered the lexicon as a metaphor for any exciting experience. 

So while there was no actual "F" ticket, we know this must be a very special category of attraction even better than "E", and not available to non-celebrity children who actually enjoy Disneyland. 

Kaye explains that the "F" ticket "entitles the bearer to one of the most fantastic fantasies of his choice." What follows might best be described as a leveled-up private performance of the Main Street Electrical Parade (still going strong since its 1972 debut) staged entirely around our little curmudgeon and his park bench. For a finale, Rich is magically saddled onto the back of the Pete's Dragon float, where a cast member playing Pete would normally sit.

Rich's "F"-ticket vision is the kiss that breaks the curse, and like Ebenezer Scrooge on Christmas morning, he awakens reborn, a soul won to Disney magic.

"I haven't missed it! The Spirits have done it all in one night!"

So that's all it takes to entertain a kid these days: have one of the biggest recording artists of all time give him a private concert, then let him ride the tallest float of the parade. 

Give me an "F"! 

Rite of Passage: Fast Times at Ridgemont High

Back in fifth grade (1983), I had a wealthy friend I'll call "Ed." Well, I just assumed he was wealthy. See, he had multiple video game systems (both an Atari 2600 AND a Colecovision!), multiple action-figure franchise playsets (both a Star Wars Dagobah Action Playset AND a Masters of the Universe Castle Grayskull!), a waterbed, a swimming pool with hot-tub.... so, you tell me.

Do the math, people.

Further affirming his relative affluence was the strange little box that appeared one day atop his massive, wood-paneled television. A pay-TV box. Pandora's box. 

For illustrative purposes only. I can't remember what cable system Ed actually had. (image source)

Cable TV was a relatively new phenomenon in my Phoenix suburb. Who would pay for television when there were already a dozen channels you can watch for free over the air? 

Rich folks, that's who.

There was ON-TV, a scrambled signal broadcast over a UHF channel, which you could watch for free if you didn't mind that wide, vertical stripe wriggling down the middle of the picture like a stretch of bad road.  

Baseball, I think?

There were also these things called HBO and Showtime, cable channels that played movies, "uncut and unedited".  My parents explained this meant they left in all the cursing and nudity.

The bad parts. 

All the best movies (Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Rescuers, etc.) didn't have any bad parts to cut, so I still didn't quite get the appeal of this whole pay-TV thing.

But it wasn't long before I began to appreciate the forbidden fruits of Ed's little set-top genie, the first being this crazy channel called MTV, where, as Ed explained, you "watch the radio"... against often provocative imagery.

This ain't your grandparents' television! Literally.

Videos by ZZ Top ("Gimme All Your Lovin'"), Duran Duran ("Girls On Film"), and even Elton John ("I'm Still Standing") demanded our absolute prurient attention when they popped out of the video jukebox, their suggestive images so fleeting that we couldn't quite absorb what we were seeing in real-time, their perceived explicitness magnified later in our imaginations.

One morning, my wealthy friend Ed arrived breathlessly at school in his tuxedo and top hat with exciting news: Fast Times At Ridgemont High, the Amy Heckerling-directed high-school sex comedy whose trailer had caught our eye the year prior, was going to be on cable that Saturday night. 

At this point I had never seen an unedited R-rated movie, the closest thing to a "teen sex comedy" I'd ever seen was, I guess, Grease (1978), (which doesn't count at all), and the only "full-frontal" scenes I could reference were shadowy glimpses of that unfortunate "Summer girl" from the opening scene of Jaws (1975).

A sleepover at Ed's was immediately scheduled.

Complications. The cable was only wired to the living room television set, and Ed's parents were planning to watch the film. With all the bad parts we were anticipating in Fast Times... there was no chance we would be allowed to view it with them (besides, that would be kind of... erm, awkward). 

Instead, we would have to watch surreptitiously from the neighboring rec-room, two rooms adjacent.

Simulated vantage point of the family television for our Fast Times at Ridgemont High viewing adventure (recreated using a frame from Strange Brew, 1983.)

We would have to be on high alert throughout the 93-minute run time. If Ed's parents caught us sneaking a peek, we'd be banished to his room for the night. This meant ducking out of view whenever Mom or Dad went to the adjoining kitchen for a snack.

And that's how I first saw Fast Times At Ridgemont High, squinting long distance from around a corner, over two shoulders and between two heads.  Achievement unlocked.

At fifth grade, my impressions of high-school were informed entirely by pop culture (My Bodyguard [1980], mostly.) Fast Times... would end up completely recalibrating those expectations, and it became my model for what high school would be like. 

Of course, reality would later shatter a lot of these expectations, but that was years away.

Some of the life-lessons learned by Fast Times...:

1. Sex is everywhere

The kids are thinking about, talking about it, doing it, talking about doing it, trying to do it, practicing it, and decorating their living spaces with it. Even the designated "nerd" character, Mark Ratner (Brian Backer) has sex thrown at him (in an awkward scene with Jennifer Jason Leigh's Stacy Hamilton). That teenagers are openly, unapologetically preoccupied with sex should perhaps be filed under "Well, Duh", but this was quite the revelation to fifth-grade me. 

2. Parents are nowhere

Ridgemont exists in an alternate reality where the only adults are teachers and fast-food restaurant managers. Parents are nowhere to be found, and seem to have very little involvement in their children's daily lives. Even in the few scenes where parents are present, they are usually off-screen. 

For example, Jeff Spicoli's (Sean Penn) tortured younger brother Curtis shouts for his off-screen Dad, who we never actually see. Stacy (Leigh) talks briefly with Mike Damone's (Robert Romanus) Mom on the phone, also never seen. The only parent with any screen-time is Stacy's mom, briefly appearing for a few seconds to obliviously tuck her fully dressed daughter in to bed, only for Stacy to immediately sneak out the window for a rendezvous with an older man (see lesson #1). 

Even when confronting serious matters like being fired from work, getting in a car accident, or having to deal with an unplanned pregnancy, the parents are never involved.

These teenagers were managing their personal lives completely without adult influence or supervision. 

3. Work is serious

"I will serve no fries before their time."

When we are introduced to Brad Hamilton (Judge Reinhold) working at All American Burger, the first thing he does is dump a basket of fries into the garbage. He's decided they were sitting out too long and no longer acceptable to serve. No manager tells him to do this. He knows his job, takes pride in his work, and has made the assessment, entirely on his own.

This, to me, was remarkable. It's just a crappy fast-food job... and yet, he cares.

Later while training the new hire, Arnold (Scott Thomson), he asks about the secret sauce recipe at Arnold's former employer, Bronco Burger, because he's actually interested. "Ketchup and mayonnaise. Gotcha". I imagine he files that bit of captured industry intelligence away in some notebook.

This may just be a short-term, minimum wage fast-food job, but its HIS job, and he treats it with the seriousness of any other professional trying to build a career or master a craft.

Stacy (Leigh) and Linda Barrett (Phoebe Cates) work at Perry's Pizza in the mall. Unlike Brad, they don't see their job as a career and are just hanging in there season to season, but they too take their job seriously and are never seen goofing around at work or acting unprofessionally.

Business, it seems, is serious business.  

4. Bullying is apparently no longer a big deal

My previous high-school pop-culture model being 1980's My Bodyguard, I was relieved to discover that bullying was so-o-o-o two years ago. The stoners and geeks and athletes and cheerleaders and skaters of Ridgemont all seemed to be co-existing without shoving heads in toilets or extorting each other's lunch money. 

There are a few brief shots of first-day-of-school hazing (one kid gets toilet-papered like a mummy) but it feels more like a good-natured rule-breaking prank than targeted cruelty. 

And finally...

5. Phoenix is one-up on Ridgemont!

We may not have a beach, but at least we have cable!

Well, the rich* among us do, anyway.

(*Ed, it turns out, was not actually wealthy, he just had a few different toys than I did.)

The Monticello Clown Puppet Murders of 1980 (The Edge of Night)

The year I began fourth grade, I found myself unwittingly entangled in the horrific drama of the Monticello Clown Puppet Murders of 1980. This was a side-effect of two big changes happening to me that year.

The first was my parents deciding I was old enough to stop attending daycare before and after school (Mom and Dad both worked, I'd been in daycare since kindergarten). Now I would carry a house key and walk to and from school on my own, hopefully avoiding Stranger Danger on my way home to an empty house.

I had officially become a latch-key kid.

Second, my grade school switched to "double-sessions". The neighborhood was growing and there were too many kids for our one school to handle. So as a temporary measure while a new school was being built, they split the day into two sessions, with half the student body attending 7:00-11:30 and the other half 11:30-3:00.

I landed the much coveted 2nd session, which meant I got to sleep in every day, rolling into school just in time for lunch.

It also meant I was home alone for several hours each morning before school started. For the first time, I had unsupervised access to the TV, and a whole new realm of programming became available for me to explore: day-time television!

It was only a couple months into the school year when my exploratory channel flipping landed me on something I hadn't seen before: The Edge of Night. The title caught my attention, sounding vaguely suspenseful, possibly supernatural.

Looks edgy!
The reality is, The Edge of Night was just one of a dozen daily soap-operas with their doctors and lawyers and courtrooms and romances and convoluted plots that seemed to drag on forever without ever actually resolving.

But that October, 1980, I wandered into the beginning of an unusual, chilling plot-line.... the Monticello Clown Puppet Murders (Monticello is the fictional mid-western town where The Edge of Night is set).

Jody Travis (Lori Loughlin, Amityville 3D, The New Kids) is waitressing at a hip disco, The Unicorn, working for tips while avoiding the fingertips of her grabby, lecherous boss, Eliot Dorn (Lee Godart, Boardwalk Empire).

Also working at the club is Kelly Mcgrath (Allan Fawcett, Puttin' On The Hits, House of Cards), a puppeteer(!) who performs in a window near the dance floor. Kelly and Jody are friends who bond over mutual dislike for the boss.

Kelly is a nice enough guy, but there's something about his puppets that is vaguely off-putting in that Uncanny Valley-meets-Candle-Cove kind of way. This piano-player puppet isn't quite the stuff of nightmares, but it lives in the same neighborhood.

Later, after the club has closed and Jody is alone cleaning tables, a fox puppet appears in the window, seeming to watch her while she works.

Assuming Kelly is operating the puppet, Jody engages in some friendly banter, which takes a sudden lurid turn when the fox inappropriately suggests he'd like to join her in bed, and then offers to share a bottle of champagne in the office. The storybook scenario of a sinister woodland creature trying to lure a young girl into temptation lends a Grimm's fairy tale motif to the scene.

Offended by the offer, Jody tries to leave, and we discover the puppeteer is actually the loathsome Eliot Dorn, who proceeds to force himself on her.

Later that evening, Eliot is at the bar alone when a small clown doll quietly rises into the stage window, appearing to watch him.

The clown then grasps a knife between its little puppet hands, brandishing it in the light while Eliot is completely oblivious.

A few skin-crawling moments later, Eliot falls to the ground, a knife protruding from his back.

Later we'll see the bloodied clown puppet being hidden in a drawer, placed there by unknown hands.

To a kid home alone for the first time, this was terrifying stuff!

There was at least one other victim in the Clown Puppet Murders plot-line, which ran from roughly October 1980 to early January 1981. Of course Kelly, the club puppeteer who hated Eliot, was the most obvious suspect (and equally obvious, he's being framed by the real killer, although I can't recall who this was eventually revealed to be.)

The puppets were operated by Larry Engler, a professional puppeteer who still performs as Poko Puppets, and authored the kids book Making Puppets Come Alive (1973), which earned mention on the Awful Library Books site (or should that be... Awfully Cool Library Books?)

Clips from some of the Clown Puppet episodes have found their way to YouTube, and I've queued up a few choice scenes at the links below:

(The Piano Player Puppet)
(The Fox Puppet)
(Clown Puppet Murder)

The Unsettling Simpsons

My name is Brother Bill and I am a Simpsons fan.

I can spout Simpsons quotes off the top of my head the way a revival tent minister can quote the Good Book (and with comparable fervor!) Sure, the show has had its ups and downs--its salad days and dry patches--and the occasional unwatchable episode, but I just can't stay mad at The Simpsons. It gives so much and asks so little in return.

The Simpsons is one of the rare (maybe only? Roesanne is perhaps another) television series to truly embrace the concept of the Halloween special. And while there have been several Christmas-themed episodes, and the occasional story set around Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, or Valentine's Day, only Halloween gets the blood-red carpet rolled out for it every year, consistently and thoroughly.

Titled "Treehouse of Horror" (the debut Halloween episode, first broadcast Oct. 25, 1990, was framed as a trilogy of ghost stories being told in Bart's treehouse, and the name stuck) these non-canon episodes reimagine the first family of Springfield in a wide variety of fantastic scenarios, evoking horror films (I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Amityville Horror, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Nightmare on Elm Street), science fiction (Fantastic Voyage, Demon Seed, The Omega Man, The Fly) classic anthology television (The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Alfred Hitchcock Presents), fantasy fiction (Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe), and even Grimm's Fairy Tales.

Even relatively obscure horror radio drama Lights Out is referenced in one episode depicting a mist that turns people inside out.

Sometimes these episodes were actually set on Halloween, with The Simpsons telling ghost stories, throwing costume parties, or going trick-or-treating. The best "Treehouse" episodes captured the spirit of the season with macabre imagery and situations while still retaining the classic Simpsons humor.

But the series did not save all its "scary" content for the Treehouse episodes. Several non-Halloween episodes dealt with spooky subject matter (relatively speaking--it is a sit-com, after all).

"The Springfield Files" (S8,E10), an X-Files themed episode, follows Homer's nightly close encounter with a glowing, supernatural presence lurking in the woods. Contributing to the suspenseful atmosphere is the spine-tingling staccato of Bernard Herrmann-esque strings that, in a truly surreal spectacle, are coming from live symphony musicians riding together on a bus.

Bart carelessly sells his soul (symbolically represented by his autograph on church stationary) to Milhouse, and soon regrets it, in "Bart Sells His Soul" (S7,E4), a genuinely uneasy episode that manages to tap into real anxiety about loss of agency and regret. You can feel the existential desperation as Bart first begs for, then tries to take by force, a replacement soul from a frightened Ralph.

A stage hypnotist using Homer as his subject accidentally unlocks repressed childhood horrors in "The Blunder Years" (S13,E5), sending him into a days-long seizure of non-stop shrieking that manages to be both hilarious and horrifying at the same time. Peer counseling (and some "Yaqui memory tea") eventually help Homer come to terms with a long forgotten incident involving a drowned corpse in a canal.

Sometimes isolated spooky elements would creep their way into otherwise non-scary storylines. "Lisa's First Word" (S4,E10), for example, is a funny flashback episode in which a toddler-aged Bart adjusts to the arrival of his new baby sister, Lisa. But when Homer tries to entice Bart to vacate the crib by building a homemade clown bed, the results are accidentally horrifying...

...even at a distance!

It's Lisa who is afraid to go to bed in "The Girl Who Slept Too Little" (S17,E2), after a cemetery is built next to the Simpson house, casting nightmarish shadows through her bedroom window.

In "The Ziff Who Came To Dinner" (S15,E14), Homer thoughtlessly takes the kids to R-rated horror film The Redeadening when the family-friendly cartoon they hoped to see is sold out. The children cower in their theater seats as the story of murderous possessed doll 'Baby Button Eyes' unfolds.

Sometimes these moments were not scary in a traditional sense, but were funny or weird or strange in vaguely unsettling ways.

Like this uncomfortable moment when the barber, who Bart has been working for part-time, tries to pay him with an envelope of hair, grinning vacantly as a frightened Bart backs out of the store ("Lisa the Tree Hugger", S12,E4).

In "Secrets of a Successful Marriage" (S5,E22), a fight with Marge finds Homer evicted from the house and forced to live in Bart's treehouse. Lisa pays him a visit only to find her disheveled father fashioning a substitute Marge out of a shrub. "You will respect your new mother. Now kiss her!" he insists, while shoving the effigy in Lisa's face.

Homer and Mr. Burns get a severe case of cabin-fever after becoming snowed in during a team building exercise in "Mountain of Madness" (S8,E12). Hungry and freezing, they build snowmen to pass the time. But their complete disconnection from reality comes to the fore when they decide to dress the snowmen in their own clothes, a portrait of madness as they stand shivering before their creation.

In "Bart vs. Lisa vs. the Third Grade" (S14,E3), Bart becomes so addicted to their new satellite TV that he can't concentrate at school. He hallucinates a giant TV remote while his schoolmates turn into various TV characters, including a clown (not Krusty, ironically) who informs him in a matter of fact voice that will send chills down your spine, "It's finally happened, Bart. You've lost your mind."

In another example of disturbing hallucinations, Homer imagines himself becoming wealthy through pearl diving ("Saddlesore Galactica", S11,E13), waking up in a pearl-encrusted house from a pearl-encrusted bed, being served by a pearl butler who pours him a bowl of pearls for breakfast. But even in this fairy-tale fantasy, the spoonful of pearls shatters all his teeth, causing Homer to laugh like a mad man while staring at his gaping mouth in a pearl-encrusted mirror.

In "I'm Going To Praiseland" (S12,E19), Ned Flanders builds a Bible-themed amusement park to honor the memory of his recently passed wife, Maude. The tribute takes a turn for the creepy when Ned dons a souvenir Maude mask and mimics her voice.

In that same episode, we find out Ned has been preserving the indentation of Maude's body in the bed sheets.

In "Homer vs. Dignity" (S12,E5), Mr. Burns declares war on the town of Springfield, enlisting Homer in a series of cruel and disgusting pranks, which culminate in Burns posing as Santa Claus for the Christmas parade so he can throw buckets of fish guts on the unsuspecting children gathered to see him. The deliberate spoiling with liquid viscera of what should have been a beautiful moment had me flashbacking to Carrie White's prom.

Finally, this vignette from "Colonel Homer" (S3,E20) plays like a ghost story of sorts. Homer is on a long road trip and passes a restaurant sign, "Flaming Pete's; 75 Miles". The sign entices him and he clearly looks forward to arriving there.

A while later, a second road sign, "Flaming Pete's; 30 Miles". Homer is too tired from driving to react this time.

A third sign: "Flaming Pete's; Next Exit!" Homer perks up with excitement. Flaming Pete has been beckoning to him all night and they are finally going to rendezvous.

But there is no Flaming Pete's. Flaming Pete burned down years ago, on a night just like this one. Not sure who you think you saw waving to you out there on the road, but it couldn't have been Flaming Pete.

(Yea, yea yea---I understand the actual punch-line is that a restaurant with "flaming" in its name literally went up in smoke. But I tell you, there's a ghost story buried in there!)