GASPER

CASPER (1995)
dir: Brad Silberling

GASPER
MAD #340, October 1995
w: Stan Hart
a: Paul Coker, Jr.

Casper started out as a children's book (co-written by early-60s MAD writer Sy Reit) then it became an animated series...

...then it was solely a comic for years. It along with other Harvey Comics characters such as Richie Rich and Hot Stuff existed as licensing properties so it was inevitable it would become a movie, which is what is being parodied here.

The parody is narrated by Elvis Presley since he was a ghost too.

Carrigan, a rich widow (Cathy Moriarty) has inherited a dilapidated mansion, discovers it is haunted by ghosts, and hires a doctor who's an expert on ghosts (Bill Pullman) who comes with his thirteen-year-old daughter Kat (Christina Ricci). Once the doctor is settled in, he finds the mansion is also haunted by three other ghosts, the Ghostly Trio of Stinky, Stretch, and Fatso, who torment him.

The teenage daughter meets Casper and realizes he isn't as scary. He just wants a friend. She admits she doesn't really have too many friends either since they're always moving around.

He watches her go to sleep. The doctor and his daughter wake up to a big breakfast which is immediately taken over by the Ghostly Trio, who are sort of like Cinderella's wicked stepsisters.

At the daughter's first day of school, she tells everybody she lives at the old mansion. The class is planning a Halloween dance, so they decide it should be held there.

That night when she's home Casper reveals that he was once a little boy.

Casper could become a real boy but needs the help of Kat to find an elixir that can change him back, but it must be done carefully because there is only one dose. Carrigan overhears this and with her lawyer (Eric Idle) plans to steal the elixir to make herself immortal.

The scientist father goes out drinking with the ghosts and while the Halloween party's going on, the Trio turns him into one of them. When he sobers up, he regrets what he's done. Casper selflessly gives up changing back so the father can be changed back.

< For this act of selflessness the wife of the scientist (Amy Brenneman) returns as an angel and gives Casper his wish, and makes him a real boy temporarily.

KASPAR THE DEAD BABY
Crazy #8, December 1974
w: Marv Wolfman
a: Marie Severin

Crazy parodied Casper back in the seventies when it was still just a comic book, showing the origin where he was killed by an alcoholic father. Probably something that needs a trigger warning to introduce. It seems everybody who read these magazines remembers this article because it was reprinted at least twice.

Rumor has it that it was originally pitched to National Lampoon and turned down. Maybe they would have taken it in the late 80s when they had less strict editorial standards.

UPDATE:
MAD's Casper wasn't on the cover for the U.S. Edition, but it was in Mexico.

UPDATE 2:
CORPSER
Cracked Monster Party #29, Fall 1993
w: Andy Simmons
a: Don Orehek

KAYSEE, KRIME PHOTOGRAPHER

CASEY, CRIME PHOTOGRAPHER
CBS 1934-1955

RADIO ↑ MOVIES ↓

KAYSEE, KRIME PHOTOGRAPHER
From Here to Insanity (Eh!) #8, February 1955
a: Fred Ottenheimer

Radio, TV, movie, and pulp series. Like most shows from the dawn of television, tapes of the show no longer exist.

Not much else to say about it, and the parody is only loosely based on it.

Also existed as its own comics series.

CASABONKERS

CASABLANCA (1941)
dir: Michael Curtiz

MAD #300, January 1991
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

Part of their 300th anniversary issue, where instead of parodying current movies, they did several of what were considered the most famous movies of all time.

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) owns a casino and bar in Casablanca during the beginning of World War II. People from all sides come into his club and he turns and blind eye when people commit questionable activities there, such as Signor Ferreari (Sydney Greenstreet).

Ugarte (Peter Lorre) has come into the club with passports that he has stolen and plans to sell. They would allow anyone who owned them to travel freely throughout Europe. He has asked Rick to hold on to them before his contract comes, but is arrested before that can happen.

Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) enters Rick's place with her husband Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid), a Czech resistance fighter. They were the ones to have gotten the passports so he can continue his work in America. She notices Sam (Dooley Wilson), a person for her past, is there and asks him to play “As Time Goes By” for her. Rick hears this, and having asked before that it never be played again, sees she is in the bar now.

After the bar closes and everyone leaves, Rick drowns his sorrows and requests the song (with the most famous and most misquoted lines in all moviedom) and we find out why it was so special. Flashback to better times. Rick and Ilsa were lovers in the past and once lived in Paris.

When news hits that the Germans are invading Paris, they decide to meet at the train station that night. When they do, he gets a note from her saying she can't come with him and can't explain exactly why.

Strasse (Conrad Veidt), who was sent by Germany to make sure Lazlo doesn't get the tickets, starts singing the German anthem in the bar. It is drowned out by the French, using the house band to play La Marsellaise. Renault (Claude Rains), a corrupt police officer, closes the bar on the pretense that there is illegal gambling in the club.

After the place is evacuated, Ilsa confronts Rick about the tickets. He still refuses to hand them over until she pulls out a gun. She can't go through with shooting him because she's still in love with him. Back when they were in Paris, she was still married to Victor but thought he was dead. At the last minute, she found out he was still alive.

Knowing this he has a change of heart, deciding to help Lazlo with his work for the Resistance, and making her think she will stay with him and they will continue their life together.

Rick arranges to have Lazlo released with the aid of Renault in exchange for setting him up with possession of the tickets. At the last minute, Rick does a switcheroo on all of them in one of the all-time most famous movie endings.
It then ends open-endedly, with Renault suggesting the two of them leave Casablanca and join the Resistance themselves.

from MAD #285, March 1989 Recasting Old Movies With Today's Famous Wrestlers by J. Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano.

CARTUH COUNTRY

CARTER COUNTRY
1977-1979 ABC

CAHTUH COUNTRY
Sick #120, February 1978
a: Jack Sparling

People younger than me seem to think everyone born before 1980 was racist, and I always say they only see the worst examples. Seeing this show again, maybe we were.

Sitcom about Sergeant Baker (Kene Holiday) joining the police force in the town of Clinton Corners, Georgia and having to deal with a racist police force and town board which included the chief Roy Mobley (Victor French)

Also on the force were Cloris (Barbara Cason) and Harley (Guich Koock), and officer Jasper DeWitt (Harvey Vernon). There was also Mayor Burnside (Richard Paul)

And Lucille (Vernee Watson)

The show was called that because it was supposed to take place where then-President Jimmy Carter was from.

Convoluted co-incidence: This parody was introduced by Archie Bunker, who was played by Carroll O'Connor, who later starred in the In the Heat of the Night TV series, the movie of which had the same premise as this series.
UPDATE:
from The Final Segments of Popular TV Series by Paul Laikin and John Reiner in Crazy #47, February 1979.

THE CARPETSWEEPERS

THE CARPETBAGGERS (1964)
dir: Edward Dymytryk

THE CARPETSWEEPERS
MAD #92, January 1965
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

The genre known as a “potboiler”. Later a staple of made-for-TV movies, these were long soap operas about ruthless rich businessmen and their families, usually based on books by Harold Robbins or Sidney Sheldon, in this case the former.

We open with Jonas Cord (George Peppard), carefree playboy son of a millionaire tycoon, taking the wheel of a plane flying over his father's factory. Hud was a character played by Paul Newman in another movie that was also about the ruthless heir to a business.

Jonas has been called into to the office because he has disgraced the family. His father yells at him and in doing so has a heart attack and dies (here he's already dead when Jonas comes in and he's informed of it by their boss McAllister [Lew Ayres]). Now that his father has died he owns the company, buys out the other stockholders, and buys everything else he can get his hands on.

He goes home to his stepmother, Rina (Carroll Baker), and comes on to her before telling her his father's dead. She is revealed to have been his girlfriend before meeting his father and marrying him.

She still has a crush on Jonas and fools around with him. Jonas dumps her, caring only about business, so she moves to Europe and becomes a party girl.

He marries Monica (Elizabeth Ashley), the daughter of his rival, who he's bought out, and he does nothing but buy companies and live in hotel rooms. She never sees him and his bored with their life. He has affairs that she keeps walking in on, and soon divorces him, but not before finding he has impregnated her.

(The hand-biting was used in the poster. I have no idea if the cut of the film I saw was the “dirty” one or not. What was considered too far in the early 1960s is nothing compared to the genitals in your face you see every day in the 2020s.)


He buys a movie company, fires everybody, and decides to do it all himself. Rina has returned to the country and is gofer for the movie company. Since he's fired everyone, he needs a new female lead, and chooses Rina despite her lack of experience. She becomes the biggest star the studio has right away.

This being a five-page parody of a two and a half hour movie, naturally scenes are not used. I couldn't find any clips so you'll have to imagine what they look like.

Missing is a production assistant sent to Rina to give her a script she has refuses to read, and by doing so, he's unknowingly a gift to get her to do the part, a variation on the casting couch.

Bernard (Martin Balsam), who owns half of the motion picture company, sells his remaining shares. He did this to teach Jonas a lesson for taking over his company. The stock he sold is now worthless because what he didn't tell Jonas was that Rina has just died in a drunk-driving accident. Jonas knows his assistant Bob (Bob Cummings) knew all along and punches him.

Missing: Jonas, grief-stricken by the death of Rina, goes on a drunken bender and wakes up in the room of a hooker.

Also missing: A new actress is groomed. Jennie Denton (Martha Hyer) was the girlfriend of his friend and assistant Bob and becomes the new star and gets engaged to Jonah. His ex-wife comes by so their daughter can meet him, but they walk in on Jennie trying on clothes. They walk out on him again.

Bob, jealous of the engagement, blackmails Jennie by threatening to show a stag reel she had done. She breaks down and confesses everything to Jonas. He says he knew about all this already. He knew about her loose morals and also knew she was barren, and this is exactly why he wanted to marry her. No commitment and no children.

I guess I can understand why MAD skipped that part.

Best friend of the family Nevada (Alan Ladd), who also had a thing for Rina, blames her death on Jonas and fights him. MAD has made fun of violence in other movies for being cartoony but this is even cartoonier. Let me show you.

During the fight Nevada reveals that Jonas's megalomania has to do with his taking over the identity of his twin brother. He decides to give everything up and start life over again with his ex-wife.

CAROLWHINE SITTING PRETTY

CAROLINE IN THE CITY
1995-1999 NBC

CAROLWHINE SITTING PRETTY
MAD #345, May 1996
w: Josh Gordon (Arnie Kogen)
a: Paul Coker, Jr.

Drawn in the style of the main character Caroline Duffy (Lea Thompson) a syndicated cartoonist loosely based on Cathy Guisewite.

This begins as a parody of The McLaughlin Group, a political talk show. The moderator, John McLaughlin, is discussing the show with panelists Morton Kondrake, Eleanor Clift, Jack Germond, and Fred Barnes. They mention that the show is popular because it's in between Seinfeld and E/R.

The show had the usual stock sitcom characters such as Richie (Malcolm Gets), the assistant with the unrequited crush and Annie (Amy Peitz), the sexually free neighbor who drops in when she feels like it.

Another stock sitcom character is the on-and-off boyfriend Del (Eric Lutes), who is also the supervisor of the Caroline greeting card line.

CARNIVAL KNOWLEDGE

CARNAL KNOWLEDGE (1971)
dir: Mike Nichols

CARNIVAL KNOWLEDGE
MAD #151, June 1972
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

The title is based on the phrase “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”, supposedly what was written on stocks when people were publicly punished centuries ago for the crime of pre-marital sex, said to be an acronym for the f-word. The story chronicles two men over the span of thirty years and the women in their life.

The picture opens with the two friends at a dance in college in the 40s. Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) encourages Sandy (Art Garfunkel) to ask Susan (Candice Bergen) out.

(The extra in the crowd that looks like a dummy is meant to resemble Mortimer Snerd, one of the characters of Edgar Bergen, who was the father of Candice Bergen. “Foodly Acky-Sacky...” is a quote from a 40s pop song called 'Hold Tight'.)


Back at the dorms, they talk “guy stuff” and Jonathan gives pointers. She likes that Sandy's sensitive and intellectual, but starts seeing Jonathan on the side because he'll go all the way.

Sandy has no clue that she's seeing both of them.

Cut to a decade later, Jonathan has started dating Bobbie (Ann-Margret), a stewardess in TV commercials. Their relationship is entirely superficial, with him only liking her for her body.

They can't get by on physical love alone, she's bored, and they're always arguing.

(In a scene they don't use, Sandy comes over with his wife and Jonathan suggests to him they swap partners. Sandy is reluctant, and his wife overhears the plan and walks out.)

Now in current times, Jonathan is showing a slide show of all the women in his life to Sandy and his new girlfriend (Carol Kane).

In a part they added for the parody, Jonathan confesses that he was also seeing Susan back in college and they have a fight. It doesn't even come up in the actual scene of them going out and having a talk about how they got to where they are today. In the movie, Sandy suspects something when she's accidentally skimmed over in the slideshow, and never says anything about it.

Jonathan seeks solace in a hooker (Rita Moreno). Having been a jerk all his life, we see the only way he can be satisfied anymore is if she acts out a script he wrote telling him how great he is. MAD's standards being what they were then, they couldn't mention her profession.

This movie has always reminded me of another long-running project of screenwriter Jules Feiffer, his comics series Bernard and Huey, which is also about a misogynistic cad and his nice(r) shy friend as they go through middle age as single men.

The imitations were notorious for swiping directly from Mort Drucker. I've heard inside stories. Take for example this page from The Incredible Hunk in Crazy in 1979 (I'll post the entire thing once I get to the Is) which uses the same Candace Bergen caricature from the splash page of this Carnal Knowledge parody, the same drawing four times on this page alone. (The Bixby caricature is taken from Drucker's Burt Ward) Not just this page, but throughout. I understand the need to swipe. Not everyone can do a good likeness on their own, and an editor may be the one to instruct the artist to draw like another artist. No need to make it so obvious with the same pose, hair, and clothes, though. Keep on Druckin'.