A-Z GUIDE TO MOVIES AND TV SHOWS PARODIED BY MAD, CRACKED, CRAZY, ETC. UP TO 1996. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. SPOILERS AND OTHER NON-SEQUITURS, TOO. SOMETIMES THESE THINGS HAVE WORDS OR SITUATIONS WE DON'T USE ANYMORE. YOU KNOW, 'CAUSE THEY'RE OLD.
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Monday, October 12, 2020
ARFUL
ALF (1986-1990) NBC
ALF stood for Alien Life Form, a sitcom about an alien that crashed into the home of the Tanners, father Willie (Max Wright), Kate (Anne Schedeen), Lynn (Andrea Elson), and Brian (Benji Gregory), hiding from the government until he can have his spacecraft fixed and return to his home planet of Melmac.
In this parody, Alf is sick, so they've called experts to see what to do about it. The first is Richard Dreyfuss reprising his role from Close Encounters of the Third Kind parodying the scenes there where he tries to recreate the mountain he keeps seeing with mud.
The alien experts they call are all characters from other science fiction movies. There's also Ripley from the Alien series as well as McCoy and Scotty from Star Trek.
Then comes E.T., as well as Cliff Robertson, known then for doing AT&T commercials
Then in comes Chewbacca.
They call in Dr. Ruth, who reveals ALF's problem is he's a person in a costume. That person in a costume is Simon McKay, a character played by actor David Rapopport in a concurrent show called The Wizard.
In the last panel, puppets and characters from other science-fiction programs who hadn't appeared previously make appearances, including the lead character from Eat and Run, which probably had a smaller audience than this article, but was used here because it was co-written by MAD writer Stan Hart and directed by his son Chris Hart, also a MAD writer.
The German edition of MAD often did their own covers when they translated American articles.
One of ALF's main traits was that he was always trying to eat the family cat. In MAD #282 (October 1988), they published an article about this motif, ALF's Celebrity Cat Cookbook written by John Prete (John Ficarra) and illustrated by Sam Viviano.
Which I guess was the cover story for their Swedish edition.
R. A. L. F.: REAL ALIEN LIFE FORM
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: Joe Catalano
a: Walter Brogan
They also included Star Trek characters and used the same punchline of ALF really being a famous little person in a costume.
These were two pages of a longer article called The Final Episodes of Fantasy Shows from # 246 in August 1989, drawn by Rick Altergott.
ALF was a long-running comics series that was drawn by Dave Manak, artist for MAD as well as Crazy and Sick.
UPDATE:
From the Mexican version of MAD.
And the Australian version. Even though there was cover art for the U.S. Edition, they probably wanted the art to be consistent with their original covers, or to tie in with their original articles.
In the splash panel of the Mad parody, there's a trash can that contains the script for Up the Academy, a teen comedy that Mad had lent its name to in a doomed attempt at National Lampoon-style branding. Tom Patchett, whose name is partially visible on the script, wrote that movie and created ALF.
In the splash panel of the Mad parody, there's a trash can that contains the script for Up the Academy, a teen comedy that Mad had lent its name to in a doomed attempt at National Lampoon-style branding. Tom Patchett, whose name is partially visible on the script, wrote that movie and created ALF.
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