page_title: Homer the Vigilante
section_title: Cultural references
hierarchical_section_title: Homer the Vigilante / Cultural references
caption_attribution_description: Cropped screenshot of David Niven from the trailer for the film The Toast of New Orleans. Cropped further from Image:David Niven in The Toast of New Orleans trailer.jpg
context_page_description: "Homer the Vigilante" is the eleventh episode of The Simpsons' fifth season. It originally aired on the Fox network in the United States on January 6, 1994. In the episode, a crime wave caused by an elusive cat burglar plagues Springfield. Lisa is distraught when her saxophone is stolen, and Homer promises to get it back. The police are ineffective, so Homer takes charge of a neighborhood watch. Under his leadership it becomes a vigilante group which fails to catch the burglar. With the help of Grampa, Homer discovers that the burglar is a charming senior named Molloy. Molloy is arrested, but he outwits the citizens of Springfield and escapes.
  The episode was written by John Swartzwelder and directed by Jim Reardon. Sam Neill guest starred in the episode as Molloy. "Homer the Vigilante" was selected for release in a 1997 video collection of selected episodes titled: The Simpsons: Crime and Punishment. It features cultural references to films such as It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and Dr. Strangelove.
  Since airing, the episode has received positive reviews from television critics.
context_section_description: The Molloy character is based on actor David Niven's performance as the character A. J. Raffles, a gentleman thief, in the 1939 film Raffles. The music heard at the beginning of the episode during the burglaries is taken from the film The Pink Panther, in which Niven played The Phantom, a similar character. Flanders tells Homer that his Shroud of Turin beach towels were stolen during one of the burglaries. Apu protects the Kwik-E mart with a rifle in a way similar to many of the images of Korean grocery store owners during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Homer's dream of riding a nuclear bomb into oblivion is a reference to the famous scene from the film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Homer's line "So I said, Look buddy, your car was upside-down when I got here. And as for your grandma, she shouldn't have mouthed off like that!" is a reference to Flannery O'Connor's short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find". The scene of Homer and Principal Skinner talking in front of the museum is a reference to a scene from the television series Dragnet. In a reference to the plot of the 1963 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Molloy sends the residents of Springfield on a hunt for a treasure that is buried under a big letter. The ending sequence of the episode also references the film by using the same music and camera angles. In another scene that references It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Bart tricks American actor Phil Silvers into driving his car into a river, just like Silvers's character did in the film.
caption: David Niven (1950)
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