 In 2011 , staff writer Al Jean commented on the episode : " The idea of it to parody EC Comics was really original and kind of shocking for a cartoon on network television . [ Executive producer ] Jim Brooks said , ' We better have a disclaimer at the beginning of this Halloween show , ' so Marge came out and warned people that they were going to see something scary . And the funny thing is it 's now very tame by our Halloween standards and by network animation standards . " According to M. Keith Booker , author of Drawn to Television , the warning only made the episode more attractive to children . The entire segment was a parody of the opening of the 1931 film Frankenstein . While similar " warnings " were used to open the second and third " Treehouse " episodes , these quickly became a burden to write and there was no warning for the fourth episode . Instead , it had Marge ask Bart to warn people how frightening the show was during his introduction paying homage to Night Gallery . The tradition was revived for " Treehouse of Horror V " ; after that , they were permanently dropped and the writers did not make any attempts at reviving them . In the opening segment of the episode , and the four subsequent episodes , the camera zooms through a cemetery where tombstones with humorous epitaphs can be seen . These messages include the names of canceled shows from the previous television season and celebrities such as Walt Disney and Jim Morrison . They were last used in " Treehouse of Horror V " , which included a solitary tombstone with the words " Amusing Tombstones " to signal this . The tombstone gags were easy for the writers in the first episode , but like Marge 's warnings , they eventually got more difficult to write , so they were abandoned . Of the series , " Treehouse of Horror " was the only one that included a treehouse as a setting . " Treehouse of Horror " was the first time that an alternate version of the theme that airs over the end credits was used . Originally it was supposed to use a theremin ( an early electronic musical instrument ) , but one could not be found that could hit all the necessary notes . 
