Haunted House (The Ren & Stimpy Show)

"Haunted House"
The Ren & Stimpy Show episode
Episode no.	Season 2 Episode 7
Directed by	Ron Hughart
Story by	John Kricfalusi Bob Camp Jim Smith Richard Pursel
Production code	RS5-6A
Original air date	November 21, 1992 (1992-11-21)
Episode chronology
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List of episodes

Haunted House is the 7th episode of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show that originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on 21 November 1992.

Plot

Ren and Stimpy arrive at a mansion not knowing it is haunted and decide it is the perfect place to "kill twelve minutes". While they are outside, a Droopy-like ghost plans to scare them.

First, he tried to scare them with his most hideous grimace, but got knocked down by the door. In his second attempt, Stimpy went to standing up knight armor, thinking it is a wood burning stove. The ghost tries to slice him in half, but the ghost goes to the bottom, Stimpy puts the wood in his mouth, and burns the ghost to a crisp.

Later the ghost hides in a stack of bread attracting the duo for the plan, but he gets covered in peanut butter, marmalade, fish eggs, and a fish. And then he gets beaten by Shaven Yak. Later on the ghost tries to attack Stimpy while he is showering, but instead he gets used like a rag. Later on the ghost tries one last thing.

Inside a treasure chest, he hops out wearing a witch doctor mask, and wielding a chainsaw, as lightning begins flashing. He later approaches the bed waking up the two for a scare Ren and Stimpy then mistake him for a trick-or-treater and give him candy. Exasperated, he quits and takes off the mask and admits to them that he has been trying to scare them all night, to little avail, and calls himself a failure.

Later, Stimpy tries to cheer him up, but the ghost tries commit suicide by hammering a nail in his head. Stimpy gives him a bottle of poison to use instead. The ghost drinks it then comes back to life as a naked African-American man named "Rudolph the Jazzman." He then leaves in a big red car, with the episode ending with Ren & Stimpy waving goodbye to him in bewilderment.

Cast

• Ren-voice of John Kricfalusi
• Stimpy-voice of Billy West
• The fat, naked black guy-Rudolph Porter
• The Ghost-voice of Billy West

Production

The story that became Haunted House was written for the Tiny Toon Adventures in 1990 under the title "Hi-Spirits". ^[1] The story had featured Hamton Pig and Gogo Dodo visiting a haunted house where a ghost tries to scare them. ^[1] The story had entered the storyboard phrase and the actor Don Messick had recorded the dialogue for the ghost. ^[1] The producers of Tiny Toon Adventures rejected the story and the Spümcø studio still owned the rights to the story. ^[1] John Kricfalusi, the owner of the Spümcø studio decided to turn the story into an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show for the second season.. ^[1] The drawing done in 1990 were used for the story, and the animator Richard Pursel simply inserted Ren and Stimpy in place of Hamton Pig and Gogo Dodo. ^[1] Haunted House was scheduled to premiere in October 1992 close to Halloween as fitting its ghost theme, but production was so far behind that in July 1992 Kricfalusi hired Ron Hughart to take over production of Haunted House and move the story forward to meet the October deadline. ^[1] Hughart stated that he took the job of directing Haunted House "to help Krcfalusi out of a spot more than anything else". ^[1] Production on Haunted House picked up speed after Hughart took over, and by August 1992 the episode was shipped out the Color Key studio in Taiwan to be illustrated. ^[2] After the Spümcø studio lost the contract for The Ren & Stimpy Show on 21 September 1992, the Games Animation studio added in a new scene of the ghost trying to kill Stimpy in the shower that was a homage to the shower murder in the 1960 film Psycho. ^[3]

Reception

The episode has been heavily criticized by the critic Bill Gibron for the amount of censorship imposed, mostly notably the removal of the scene where the ghost places a bloody severed human head on Ren's bed. ^[4] Other critics such as Stephen Wilds criticized the episode for the amount of violence involved such as the scene where the ghost uses an ax to try to behead himself. ^[5]

Books

• Klickstein, Matthew; Summers, Marc (2013). Slimed! An Oral History of Nickelodeon's Golden Age. London: Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN   9781101614099.
• Komorowski, Thad (2017). Sick Little Monkeys: The Unauthorized Ren & Stimpy Story. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media. ISBN   978-1629331836.

References

1. Komorowski 2017, p. 169.
2. Komorowski 2017, p. 170.
3. Komorowski 2017, p. 223.
4. Gibron, Bill (12 October 2004). "The Ren and Stimpy Show Uncut - The First and Second Season". DVD Talk. Retrieved 28 March 2024.
5. Wilds, Stephen. "Things Only Adults Notice In Ren & Stimpy". Looper. Retrieved 28 March 2024.