BALMY AND CLOD

BONNIE AND CLYDE (1967)
dir: Arthur Penn

BALMY AND CLOD
MAD #119, June 1968
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Bonnie and Clyde was considered too controversial when it came out, glorifying violence. It's one of the films that led to the MPAA rating system. Shirley MacLaine was the better known of the two siblings back then. The film mentioned here is Woman Times Seven, an Italian comedy with seven vignettes.

Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) was a small-time gangster, he and Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) decided to become partners in crime a few minutes after meeting.

In their travels they meet C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) at a gas station and he becomes their driver. They hide in a movie theater (comedian John Mulaney does a bit about how it must have been so easy to get away with bank robberies in the thirties.)

Clyde's brother Chuck (Gene Hackman) and sister-in-law Blanche (Estelle Parsons) join the gang and pose for pictures. Much is made in the parody about how they're all charming when they rob banks.

Left out is Gene Wilder's screen debut as one of their hostages in a robbery.


Bonnie's always wanting to make love with Clyde but he never can because he's impotent (something they only hint at in the movie and completely avoid in the parody).

They're surrounded by the law and Bonnie reads one of the poems she's written about them before they're taken out.

MAD often invoked Godwin's Law, the law that states any internet argument will eventually devolve in comparing someone to Nazis, and here they used the same punchline long before there was an internet. An All In the Family parody ended with Archie Bunker's old friend being Hitler and they had a back cover about Watergate equating Nixon with Hitler. I usually try to steer clear of politics on this blog but it's time I drew the line right now, and I don't care who I alienate, but I need to say I think Hitler was a very bad person.

BONNIE AND CLYDE!
Cracked #73, November 1968
a: John Severin

Cracked's parody was more about what if...

From If Hit Movies Were Combined in Cracked #131, March 1976. All these movies will also were parodied individually and will be posted further on down the line, Bonnie and Clyde just happened to come first in the alphabet.

The Warner Brothers animation studio, during its final days, had an entirely new set of creators and characters which weren't memorable or very good or anything like the Looney Tunes we're familiar with. Among their characters were Bunny and Claude, with their variation on the tagline “We rob banks”.

UPDATE:
BONEY AND CLAUDE
Not Brand Ecch #9, August 1968
w: Gary Freidrich
a: John Verpoorten

The New York Times film critic was Bosley Crowther.

When this was done, only people who read Marvel comics would get the references comic characters. However,the best-selling comic then had the same circulation as the average TV show does now.

The motorcycle rider is a caricature of Marlon Brando in The Wild One.

In the Heat of the Night also came out that year and Rod Steiger did win an Oscar.

UPDATE 2:

BONNIE AND CLYDE: MOVIE SPOOF
Sick #61, June 1968
w: Bill Majeski

The plot of the movie is pretty much summed up by the other parodies.