HACKDRAFT

BACKDRAFT (1991)
dir: Ron Howard

HACKDRAFT
MAD #307, December 1991
w:Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

backdraft [băk-drăft] an explosive surge in a fire produced by the sudden mixing of air with other combustible gases

By this time, MAD was opening practically every movie parody with a splash panel of the main characters introducing themselves.

(The cartoon fireman is Smokey Stover, a comic strip character whose catchphrases 'Foo' and 'Notary Sojac' were always written somewhere near him and his cat Spooky. DeNiro's pad refers to his movie Raging Bull)

On his first day, Brian McCaffrey (William Baldwin) sees his cohorts break through a car to get the hose through as punishment for parking in front of a hydrant. He's hazed by his fellow firemen when the body he pulls out of a fire turns out to be a mannequin they put there.

Brian's brother Steven (Kurt Russell) is also on the force and is very violent and competitive, which is why he doesn't get along with his estranged wife (Rebecca DeMornay).

Brian transfers to the arson unit of the fire department led by Donald Rimgale (Robert DeNiro). There was a fire in a theater where they suspect something happened.

They pay a visit to notorious arsonist Ronald Burwell (Donald Sutherland) in prison, hoping to get clues.

The prisoner in the background is Hannibal Lecter, a character from Silence of the Lambs, another concurrent movie about a lifer giving tips to police on how a crime was being committed.

During research, Brian gets back together with his ex-girlfriend Jennifer (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and they have sex on top of a firetruck, which interrupts them when it has to go on a run. Everybody thinks the coitus interruptus is really funny.

Jennifer also works for the alderman. He knows there's a connection between the mysterious fires and the alderman closing station, so he asks for her help

(The actress was also in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which is why the diploma is on the wall.)

They rescue the alderman from a fire at his house when they go to inquire about the fires. Brian realizes his supervisor was in on the conspiracy, and when another fire is set, his brother dies in the line of duty.


also HACKDRAFT
Cracked #267, November 1991
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: John Severin

The movie opens twenty years earlier with Brian as a child showing how he was destined to become a fireman.

A Silence of the Lambs reference is made in this parody as well.

There was also a parody of the film ala Airplane. I never saw it, but if it's like most others in the spoof movie genre, it broke two rules:
   1) play it straight
   2) you don't parody one specific film, you do a type of film.