KOOKOON

COCOON (1985)
dir: Ron Howard

KOOKOON
MAD #260, January 1986
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
At a rest home in St. Petersburg, FL, three residents are constantly sneaking into a nearby abandoned mansion to use their swimming pool. Meanwhile, Jack (Steve Guttenberg) rents a fishing boat to tourists in town and some rich strangers (Brian Dennehy, Tahnee Welch) pay him to use it so they can fish some rocks out of the ocean.

They've also rented the house with the pool and are using it to store the stones. The old folks go to the pool and see the stones and just go about their business swimming. The pool makes them feel more alive than they have been in a long time. They all get horny. Meanwhile, back at the boat, Jack is fixing something and watches the woman strip through a hole (?).

While Jack is spying on the woman he sees her peel her skin off. The aliens admit to him that they're from the planet Antarea and the pods they've been taking from the ocean are their people that they've come to return them to their planet.

The three men (Hume Cronyn, Don Ameche, Wilford Brimley), who trespass, let a fourth friend Bernie (Jack Gilford) in on their secret. He's hesitant to actually go into the pool and sees the Antareans coming with more pods. Since the residents can't hide and the Antareans can't keep secret what they're doing, they let the residents use the pool on the condition they continue not to tell anyone else about the pool and don't touch the rocks.

Jack, and Kitty from the boat get romantically involved. She shows him how Antareans make love. The male residents, with their new found youth, have a night on the town with their wives.

Word gets out about the pool and everybody at the rest home breaks in and uses it. Some of them pick up one of the pods, killing the life form inside, and therefore the whole race. The entire mission is now all for naught.

From the movie not in the parody: Bernie's wife dies and he goes to the pool to try to revive her. It's too late. The three home residents feel bad about what they did and see what they can do to save the mission. If they put all the pods back into the ocean, they can save all the unhatched beings which can be rescued another time. The Antareans are thankful for this and invite thirty of the residents to come back with them.

Ben tells his grandson what will happen who spills the beans to his mother. She's concerned and calls the police who call the coast guard. The Antareans and senior citizens escape into the spaceship before anything can be done and Jack is compensated amply for use of his boat.

This movie wasn't worthy of the cover in the United States but they decided to use it for the Mexican edition.

They did in Great Britain too.

Stray thoughts: Wilford Brimley was only 50 when he did this. I'm the same age. Last year I had a zit on the back of my neck. He was 44 when he did China Syndrome. He must have been one of those guys that was born old.

In the parody, Steve Guttenberg makes a joke about the female passenger being “built like Raquel Welch”. Not sure if the joke was referring to the actress being Raquel Welch's daughter or if it was just a coincidence.

Am I the only one that thought it was weird that Steve Guttenberg was peeping on Tahnee Welch? I'm not virtue signaling or anything, things in fiction don't offend me, but it just seems weird that a guy in his twenties or thirties spying on women taking their clothes off is passed off as something normal that anyone would do. Maybe it was the only thing they could think of to advance the plot?


I've said before that artists in other magazines copy from Mort Drucker caricatures instead of using their own photo reference. But I think even Drucker sometimes got his caricatures from other caricatures too. His portrayal of Hume Cronyn looks more like Al Hirschfeld's style than his own. Since Cronyn was primarily a theater actor it's possible he didn't have any photo reference at all.