Haunted House (The Ren & Stimpy Show)
A ghost tries to haunt Ren and Stimpy.
"Haunted House" is the seventh episode of the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. It originally aired on Nickelodeon in the United States on November 21, 1992.
Quick Facts
- Series
- The Ren & Stimpy Show
- Season
- 2
- Episode
- 6a
- Air date
- 21 November 1992
- Production
- RS5-6A
- Writer
- John Kricfalusi
- Bob Camp
- Jim Smith
- Richard Pursel
- Director
- Ron Hughart
Facts from the source article.
Plot
Ren and Stimpy show up at a big house and decide to hang out there, not realizing it's full of ghosts. A sad and murderous ghost wants to ruin their time. He tries to scare them by making a scary face, but the duo kick down a door and hurt him by accident. The pair start feeling creeped out by the place.
Stimpy thinks a suit of armor is a stove; the ghost tries to chop him with an axe but only splits some firewood. Stimpy thanks him, throws the wood into the armor, and lights a fire, which actually makes the armor work like a stove and roasts the ghost into a sausage shape. The ghost then hides inside a slice of bread, and a hungry Ren and Stimpy decide to make a sandwich. Stimpy adds peanut butter, marmalade, fish eggs, and the whole fish.
He goes to eat it, but Ren stops him and gives it to a yak that appears out of nowhere. The yak punches the sandwich before eating it, and the ghost escapes offscreen, tortured by the ordeal. Ren and Stimpy go to sleep upstairs. Ren loves how comfy the bed is but is grossed out by Stimpy's dirty back, so he makes him take a shower.
The ghost tries to attack him in the shower but gets used as a towel by mistake. Later, the ghost puts a bloody severed head on Ren's head, but the Bloody Head Fairy shows up, takes it like the tooth fairy, and gives Ren some dimes. Ren is confused but happy, and the ghost punches himself in frustration. Finally, the ghost loses it and tries to kill them with a chainsaw while wearing a mask, but they think he's just a trick-or-treater.
He reveals himself and tries to kill himself by hammering a nail into his head. Stimpy talks him into drinking poison instead, which does kill him but brings him back as a naked African-American musician named Rudolph the Jazzman. Now with a purpose, he drives off in a red car, leaving Ren and Stimpy totally confused.
Production
The episode "Haunted House" began life in 1990 as a proposed segment for Tiny Toon Adventures called "Hi-Spirits." That version featured Hamton Pig and Gogo Dodo encountering a ghost in a haunted house. The story reached the storyboard stage at Warner Bros. Animation, and voice actor Don Messick had already recorded the ghost's lines. Despite being relatively mild compared to The Ren & Stimpy Show, the concept was rejected by Tiny Toon creator Tom Ruegger and the Amblin Television producers, including Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy.
The idea was then brought to many of the same animators and swapped out for a segment made by the original Spümcø team. The studio kept the rights, and John Kricfalusi decided to adapt it for the second season of The Ren & Stimpy Show. The 1990 drawings were reused, and writer Richard Pursel simply replaced Hamton and Gogo with Ren and Stimpy, leaving the plot largely unchanged.
"Haunted House" was originally set to air in October 1992 as a Halloween-themed special, but production fell far behind schedule. In July 1992, Kricfalusi brought in Ron Hughart to take over directing, marking Hughart's first directorial role on the series. Hughart later said he accepted the job mainly to help Kricfalusi out of a tight spot. After Hughart took charge, production accelerated, and by August 1992 the episode was sent to Color Key Studios in Taipei for animation.
When Spümcø lost the contract for the show on September 21, 1992, Games Animation handled post-production. They added a new scene where the ghost tries to kill Stimpy in the shower, a nod to the 1960 film Psycho. The Bloody Head Fairy, originally meant to be George Liquor in a tutu, was swapped for a parody of Doug Funnie from the show Doug, a change that displeased Kricfalusi. As a result, the episode was delayed to a mid-November airdate.
On home video releases of the first two seasons, the scene where the ghost places a severed human head on Ren's bed was removed.
More in The Ren & Stimpy Show Episodes
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced