CLOD ENCOUNTERS OF THE ABSURD KIND

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (1977)
dir: Steven Spielberg

MAD #200, July 1978
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

World War II planes mysteriously appear in the desert in Mexico and locals have said they've seen something, so a group of scientists headed by Dr. LaCombe (Francois Truffaut), who doesn't speak English and must be interpreted by Mr. Laughlin (Bob Balaban), comes down to investigate it.

At an airport in Indiana, a UFO is discovered on the radar at the control tower. In town Barry (Cary Guffey)'s electronic toys all go off by themselves and he's attracted by the bright lights he sees much to the dismay of his mother Jillian (Melinda Dillon).

Roy (Richard Dreyfuss) is called in at night to work at the power plant because of some outages. On his way there he encounters the UFOs and they burn half his face. The flying saucers that everyone's been seeing are following the road and being chased by police. Roy rushes home and wakes up his wife Ronnie (Teri Garr) and kids so they can go out and see what he saw.

The scientists are in India now because a crowd keeps chanting a five-note song they heard in the sky. At their lab they keep getting a readout of numbers on their computer and figure out that they're longitudinal co-ordinates. They steal a globe to find out where those coordinates are.

At the home of Jillian and her son, he is playing those same notes on his toy xylophone. The lights come and take over the house, and a spaceship takes him away.

At a town meeting, the government assures them there is nothing to worry about. Later, they conspire to keep the public away from Devil's Tower in Wyoming, where the longitudinal coordinates are, by telling them the area's contaminated.

Roy's obsession with the mound continues during the family's mashed potatoes dinner.(The “butter” joke is a reference to an ad campaign for Parkay margarine)
They've paid homage to this scene on The Simpsons.

His fascination with UFOs and the mysterious mound is taking its toll on his family, so he's decided to give it all up. But when he tears down the clay model of the mound he keeps building he sees it with the point off his obsession starts all over again. He digs up all the dirt on his lawn and throws it into his house, creating a scene on his block. This is the last straw for his wife, who walks out on him.

He sees what's he keeps having a vision of on the news. Jillian sees the same thing at home, and has been doing drawings of Devil's Tower this whole time. Both are drawn to Wyoming and run into each other there, going to it as everybody is evacuating. He's convinced they're being lied to and are taken away and separated before they can reach their destination.

Roy, Jillian, and a dozen others from around the country attracted to this location are to be flown back home by helicopter, but Roy and Jillian decide to make a break for it. (There's a third that comes with them and doesn't make it all the way. He's not used in this parody). They want to see what's going on despite the government's attempt to fly over them with crop dusters and knock them unconscious with poison gas.

From their vantage point, they see the UFO's mother ship land and communicate, and return everyone, including the missing WWII troop, and Barry, now reunited with his mother.

Roy Neary decides to go back with the aliens and finds out that life on other planets is no different from the suburban middle-class life he abandoned on Earth.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE WORST KIND
Cracked #150, May 1978
a: Michael Severin (John Severin)

It's not used in the MAD parody that Barry when sees lights and hears sounds, he runs out of the house and Roy almost hits him while driving on his late-night power emergency.

It's also not mentioned that the UFOs break through toll booths on the thruway. There is also a gathering at night of townspeople who are meeting in hopes of seeing the UFO again and where Roy and Jillian reunite.

The other scientists just for the parody are Charles Bronson and Dustin Hoffman. But like in the film a bird is used to test whether or not there really is a gas leak.

Cracked would often parody movies and TV shows over and over, or sometimes combine them with other movies and TV shows that they also parodied over and over, like they did here.

(Co-incidentally, I did a book called Humor Can Be Funny in 1996. I hadn't seen these magazines since they came out, so if I plagiarized the title, I did so subliminally)

A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH THE STAR WARZ GANG
Cracked #152, August 1978
a: Howard Nostrand (really John Severin)

This continues where Close Encounters left off, with Roy boarding the Mothership and finding the Star Wars characters on it.

Also caricatured are Ricardo Montalban and Herve Villechaise from Fantasy Island, Roy Scheider in Jaws, the Fonz, and David Carradine in Kung Fu. Ricardo Montalban used to also do Chrysler commercials and his catchprase was that the seats were “real Corinthian leather”

And they cashed in on the movie a third time.

THE HAPPY DAZES' CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE THIRD KIND
Cracked #153, September 1978
a: John Severin

This time combining it with Happy Days

It begins with Ralph, Potsie, and Richie hanging out at the malt shop.

They meet the Fonz at Inspiration Point.

Then they see a flying saucer and run away.

CLEARLY ENCOUNTERED FOR THE THIRTIETH TIME
Crazy #38, May 1978
w & a: Murad Gumen

The movie has the locations of each scene on the screen, which was not used in either of the other parodies.

They also did a piece giving several other examples of close encounters.

MOROSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND
Sick #121, June 1978
w & a: Dave Manak

Funny how Cracked's version also ended with McDonald's being aboard the UFO.

UPDATE:
GROSS ENCOUNTERS OF THE WORST KIND
Trash #2, June 1978
w: Don Wigal
a: unknown, or maybe just too embarrassed

I was looking for this for quite a while. Be careful what you wish for.

Star Wars and Star Trek are at least the same genre, I'm not sure what Oh God has to do with anything except it came out around the same time.

Jimmy Carter's brother had many business ventures and used the Carter name to cash in on them, and the beer label was the one they focused on, just like the fact hat Jimmy Carter once owned a peanut farm was the thing they associated with him. They were like Monty Python's Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson bit in that respect.

Leonard Nimoy hosted the show In Search Of...

UPDATE 2:

cover for Pancada, Brazilian edition of Cracked
(“Pancada” is Portuguese for “knock” or “blow”, as in to the head)
This says the tagline “Se are not alone”

UPDATE 3:

A short they were showing all the time in the early days of Showtime and HBO, Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind