“Treehouse of Horror V: The Shinning,” Season 6, Episode 5Įrik Adams, AV Club: I love “The Shinning,” which is more than just a spot-on parody of my favorite horror film - it’s also a cockeyed love letter to television. This is the way Halloween specials ought to be. Add to that the wonderful narration by James Earl Jones and you have a segment that is not only funny, but teeters on actual fear. “The Raven” cannily blended the show’s traditional slapstick sensibility with a respectful (if not fitfully irreverent) rendition of Edgar Allen Poe’s classic tale of terror, reimagining Homer as its protagonist, Marge as his lost Lenore, and Bart as the interloping raven, wandering from the night’s Plutonian shore. If you were a college grad, you would roar. However crass the show may have been at times (belching and familial dysfunction was not yet a common TV site in 1989), and however closely it stuck to a traditional sitcom template (especially back in the early seasons), you could always tell that The Simpsons writers were well-educated and well-read. Witney Seibold, Nerdist: Back when The Simpsons Halloween specials were something of a novelty, rather than a reliable tradition, it was something of a shock to see our familiar characters getting murdered and/or mutilated and/or enacting scenes from famous pieces of American horror poetry. Tim Surette, TV.com: Maybe it’s Bart as a mischievous raven, Homer’s slobbery voice echoing Edgar Allen Poe, or James Earl Jones’ narration, but “The Raven” is the best homage The Simpsons ever did and gave this lunkhead a more fundamental understanding of one of the great horror poems ever written. Brian Tallerico, : It broke the mold, proving that The Simpsons was more than just a wacky comedy and had actual literary pedigree.
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