The three-decade run of The Simpsons has included references to all kinds of cinema classics. Bart steals Homer’s change jar like he’s Indiana Jones stealing a golden idol, an imprisoned Mr. Burns is strapped to a board and muzzled like Hannibal Lecter, and Homer realizes that the titular Planet of the Apes was Earth all along in the middle of a NASA press conference.
One of the wells that the show’s writers keep coming back to is Alfred Hitchcock. The Simpsons contains nods to the plot of Rear Window, the bell tower from Vertigo, and the eerie final shot of The Birds – and more than one shot-for-shot remake of an iconic scene from Psycho.
Agnes Skinner’s House Is A Nod To Psycho
The writers of The Simpsons made one of their many references to Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller masterpiece Psycho in “Brother from the Same Planet.” In Psycho, Norman Bates looks out of the window of Bates Motel at what appears to be his mother looking down on him from the house up the path.
In The Simpsons, Principal Skinner looks up at an identical house from his office window during a meeting with Marge and Lisa: “Oh… there’s mother now.” The parody draws a hilarious parallel with the sinister Oedipal dynamic in Psycho.
Maggie’s Daycare Is As Eerie As Hitchcock’s The Birds
In “A Streetcar Named Marge,” Marge lands the lead role in a musical version of A Streetcar Named Desire, so she starts dropping Maggie off at the super-strict Ayn Rand School for Tots every morning.
When Homer picks her up on opening night, Maggie and the other babies are ominously perched around the room like the titular winged beasts in Hitchcock’s genre-defining nature thriller The Birds. To hammer home the homage, Hitchcock himself can be seen reprising his role from The Birds as a dog walker outside the daycare.
Marge Flees From A Gun-Toting Plane Like Roger Thornhill In North By Northwest
The plane attack in North by Northwest, the closest thing that Hitchcock made to a James Bond movie, is one of the most iconic images in movie history. In the Simpsons episode “Fear of Flying,” Marge finally conquers her eponymous phobia when she unlocks a repressed childhood trauma that explains her aversion to air travel (the shocking revelation that her father was a flight attendant).
Then, she suddenly remembers a bunch of other plane-related traumas – including being chased through a cornfield by a gun-toting biplane, like Roger Thornhill in Hitchcock’s action-packed classic.
Sideshow Bob Stays At The Bates Motel
As the title suggests, “Cape Feare” is primarily a spoof of Cape Fear. But there are references to a bunch of classic thrillers peppered throughout this tale of Sideshow Bob being released from prison and stalking the Simpson family. After leaving prison, Bob stays at the Bates Motel.
Sitting at his desk in his room, Bob is framed exactly like Norman Bates, from a low angle with a stuffed bird hanging in the corner of the room.
“Bart Of Darkness” Is A Parody Of Rear Window
In the season 6 premiere, “Bart of Darkness,” the Simpsons get a pool. But, just when the fun is starting, Bart breaks his leg and has to spend the summer locked away in his room.
Much like James Stewart in the Hitchcock-helmed gem Rear Window, he starts spying on his neighbors to pass the time and begins to suspect that one of them – in The Simpsons’ case, Ned Flanders – is a murderer (or, as Flanders puts it, a “mur-diddly-urdler!”). At one point, Bart spots a James Stewart lookalike who ironically begins to suspect that this “sinister-looking kid” is plotting to murder him.
Principal Skinner Climbs The Bell Tower From Vertigo
In the episode “Principal Charming,” Bart pulls off an elaborate prank that involves pouring the fictional chemical sodium tetrasulfate all over the grass on the Springfield Elementary campus to spell out “BART” in huge letters.
When Principal Skinner smells sodium tetrasulfate, he climbs a bell tower that looks identical to the bell tower from Vertigo. Naturally, he’s dismayed to discover that the smell is the result of another prank by the infamous El Barto.
“Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” Contains A Shot-For-Shot Remake Of Psycho
“Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” kicks off with a shot-for-shot remake of the iconic shower murder from Psycho. In the garage, Maggie bonks Homer on the head with a mallet. As he falls to the floor, he spills a can of red paint that drains like Marion Crane’s blood.
This is the inciting incident of the episode; it’s the infantile act of malice that sparks Marge’s concern about the influence of cartoon violence on children. On the whole, “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge” is a great meta episode about an issue that pertains to the show itself.
“Black Widower” Also Contains A Shot-For-Shot Remake Of Psycho
In “Black Widower,” Sideshow Bob marries Selma with a nefarious ulterior motive – but his murderous plot is foiled, as always, by Bart. The episode culminates in another shot-for-shot remake of a sequence from Psycho. In this case, it’s the haunting finale in the basement of the Bates household.
Bob takes the place of Lila Crane, Bart takes the place of Norma Bates’ mummified corpse, and Selma takes the place of Norman standing in the doorway.
