Cool Horror Videos: Guillermo del Toro’s opening for The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XXIV

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

The October 6th "Treehouse of Horror XXIV" episode of "The Simpsons" has a pretty epic opening sequence that features many of the great horror characters throughout the history of the genre and it was done by none other than Guillermo del Toro! And yes, it's as awesome as it sounds! I'm not a fan of "The Simpsons" by any stretch, but what del Toro did with this opener is simply amazing. There are so many horror references that it's almost hard to keep track of them all—my favorite moment is easily the nod towards Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS. Check it out below!

“The Simpsons titles are so iconic and yet they’ve never been riffed in this vein," Del Toro tells Entertainment Weekly. “I really wanted to land the connections between the [show’s] set pieces and the titles and some of the most iconic horror movies, and intersperse them with some of my stuff in there for pure joy,” he says. “For example the idea that Ms. Krabappel could be outside the school with Alfred Hitchcock which is a reference to the sequence in The Birds that happens outside of the school in Bodega Bay. To use Chief Wiggum as the Cyclops from Harryhausen, dipping the [Lard Lad] donut in a water tank, to have the nuclear spill from Mr. Burns’ plant create zombies — all of this stuff seems to make sense to interconnect. If Homer really gets a radioactive isotope, he could turn into a reaper from Blade. Or the famous shot that is always in the titles — Maggie driving and then you pull back and there’s Marge driving, right? But in this case Maggie is driving, and she’s driving the car from the horror movie from the 70s called The Car, which is one of my favorite guilty pleasure B-movies. And what if Lisa is in the music class, but she’s in the music class with every Phantom of the Opera ever made? It was a unique opportunity.”