When Ren and Stimpy stop at his creepy house for the night, a ghost tries his hardest to scare the oblivious duo to death.
Late one night, Ren and Stimpy approach a mansion and decide to stay for a while, ignoring the bats fluttering out and broken windows.
Inside, a small, deadpan ghost decides to scare them with his "most hideous grimace," but the two bust the door down, crushing him as they make their way inside. After fixing himself up, the ghost decides on the direct approach, possessing a suit of armor and chopping at Stimpy with a halberd. Stimpy, who assumed the armor was a wood-burning stove, was holding a log, which is the only thing the halberd chops, and he puts it in the armor, shoving the ghost. He warms himself after tossing in a match as well, and the irritated ghost floats away, now in the shape of a grilled hot dog. He later finds Ren and Stimpy in the kitchen contemplating making a sandwich, and loudly declares his intent to hide in a loaf of bread. Ren quickly fishes the ghost out, and they decide to prepare him as a sandwich with peanut butter, marmalade, fish eggs, and the fish they got the eggs from. Stimpy takes a massive bite, but Ren orders him to stop, calling him selfish for not sharing with any of the starving yaks out there. One happens to be nearby, so Stimpy hands the ghost over, and the yak pummels it against the fridge, with Ren explaining a yak always tenderizes his food. The two head upstairs later to sleep, but Ren orders Stimpy to take a shower first, with the ghost following. As he gets ready for a scare, Stimpy grabs him, thinking he's a towel, and scrubs his nasty self. As his plans continue to fail, the ghost soon loses his patience and gets fed up, leading to a new plan of action.
It's been a long time since I watched this, and somehow I'd forgotten how strange the humor was in this show, but it shows why my personality is the way it is.
So many of the jokes in this are based around how little sense they really make, though always with the consistency of being a sort of running joke in the series. The two moments you can see this are ones I didn't realize as a kid: when Stimpy pulls out the log to burn and when they give the sandwich to a yak. Getting older I saw more episodes of the show, and at this point I realize you just can't have this show without the iconic log. There's a whole song from this series dedicated to logs, and here the joke is sort of downplayed to a simple wink/nod with how Stimpy simply says "log." This moment leads to one of my favorite visuals in the episode, with the ghost exiting the suit of armor looking like a roasted hot dog. With the yaks, for whatever reason, yaks seem to be another staple of the series, and this time around is a way to just punish the ghost even more for his attempt. Watching it this time around, I was actually confused what the ghost was going for in hiding in the bread. ...What even was his plan? First he tries to startle them with a face, then chop Stimpy with an ax, and then he...hides in a loaf of bread. Is your goal to give them indigestion? Despite following conventions like the log and yak, the episode also has a difference in that the focus and comedy of the episode mostly comes from the ghost's reactions to Ren and Stimpy's wackiness, rather than just them dealing with each other. Ren is often the straight man in the series, but this time both he and Stimpy are being crazy, and the ghost is having to deal with their antics. With my new formatting style I've been using for the latest posts, expect spoilers after this point as I go into later parts of the episode I enjoy.
One of the scenes I always enjoyed as a kid but hadn't fully seen the origin of is when Stimpy encounters the ghost in the shower.
Seconds after we enter the bathroom and see the cat in the tub, the episodes colors drain, replaced with a rough black and white. This whole scene is a reference to Alfred Hitchock's Psycho, with the famous scene in which Norman Bates stabs (Anthony Perkins) stabs Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) to death in the shower. With the episode pretty short and the rapid fire pace of the jokes, there aren't many references to the movie other than the visual itself. Unlike Psycho, where Norman pulls the curtain aside and stabs Marion, here Stimpy pulls the ghost into the shower, with the color rushing back in. The lack of color is of course to make it more obvious what is being referenced, since Psycho was filmed in black and white. After this comes a scene I was surprised to discover recently is actually a deleted one now, as Stimpy rejoins Ren in bed. After the two fall asleep, the ghost enters with a "bloody head gag," putting a bloody head on Ren before hiding in the shadows. To his and our surprise, the "bloody head fairy" enters through the window and takes the head, leaving some dimes in Ren's ear before leaving. At this point, Ren wakes and is horrified to realize he's got a gift. Stimpy calms him and gets the dimes out, and the two are happy about the exchange, causing the ghost, in his frustration at failing again, to start punching himself. Evidently, this scene was something Nickelodeon wanted to add that the original creator didn't like, so he removed it after getting the rights back. I don't really understand this, because it didn't feel out of place to me, anymore than a similar scene, in which Ren gets a visit from the Nerve Ending Fairy. Of course in the end the artist should have the final say in his work, but I'm glad I got to see this as a kid, enjoying the strangeness of the situation.
Another part I always found rather strange but hilarious, even now, comes at the end, as the ghost, pushed to the breaking point, chugs poison.
Originally, he wants to end it all with a hammer and spike, but Stimpy says he can't do so and offers the poison, which the ghost gratefully swallows. As he's already dead, the ghost finds an unexpected consequence: he returns to life, revealed to be a large black man. I don't feel this was done in any kind of racist caricature like normally happened in old cartoons, and is rather meat to contrast with his original appearance. Throughout the episode, the ghost is small and apathetic, similar to classic character Droopy, but is revealed as an overweight and boisterous black man. I feel like you'd be hard-pressed in trying to get a scene like this past today despite it not seeming racist, because of it being suicide-based. It's all completely ridiculous, especially since it's a ghost performing the action, but all the characters being so gung-ho would definitely raise eyebrows now. This is really pretty typical humor for Ren & Stimpy, though, and adefinite reason for me having a pretty warped sense of humor.
It has been quite some time since I watched this last, and it was strange to see it again after getting used to other kinds of humor.
I still found the episode hilarious, however, both from the references and running jokes and for the other random absurd humor involved. The sandwich scene was probably what I found the strangest, and actually had a disgusted reaction to, because of how the two get the fish eggs. Rather than just have them in a container, the two pick up a fish and squeeze it, popping the eggs right out of its body, a gross-out humor joke I'm no longer used to. The absurdity of the whole situation still makes me laugh, and the episode is overall pretty meta, with both the ghost and our lovable duo referencing being in a show. At the start upon seeing the house, Stimpy says it looks like a great place to "kill 12 minutes," referencing the length of an episode, and at the end after giving up, the ghost admits he's been trying to scare them "all through this picture." If you're a fan of some more shocking themes and jokes, and especially if you liked this series when you were younger, give the episode a watch this Halloween.
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AuthorI love the entertainment side of things. Video games, tv shows, superheroes and movies are my passion and I'd love to get the news out for things I enjoy. My contact page has links to my social media, so if you enjoy what I have to say, likes, shares, comments, and follows are always greatly appreciated! Archives
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