A-Z GUIDE TO MOVIES AND TV SHOWS PARODIED BY MAD, CRACKED, CRAZY, ETC. UP TO 1996. THEY HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THIS. SPOILERS AND OTHER NON-SEQUITURS, TOO. SOMETIMES THESE THINGS HAVE WORDS OR SITUATIONS WE DON'T USE ANYMORE. YOU KNOW, 'CAUSE THEY'RE OLD.
Updated daily. There's posts besides this one archived in the sidebar on the right, you clods!
if you're at a laptop or desktop, right-click and open link on pages and they'll be clearer and legible in a new window.
THE DAVE GARROWUNWAY SHOW
MAD #26, November 1955
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Jack Davis
The first incarnation of The Today Show hosted by Dave Garroway, previously a news anchor on radio. Television was mostly a new luxury few people had and shows like this were mostly watched from the street in windows of stores that sold television sets. Sometimes the streets were shown on TV, similar to how they are on the program today.
Also like now, the show was a combination of news and entertainment, with Garroway often upstaged by a chimpanzee named J. Fred Muggs.
A few years later, MAD had J. Fred Muggs do the cover, with a behind-the-scenes explanation of how it was done.
Unlike the humans both involved and portrayed, J. Fred Muggs is known to still be alive as of this writing.
Dave Kovick (Kevin Kline) runs a temp agency and is is drafted one day to be a body double for president Bill Mitchell because of his uncanny likeness.
He's needed to make public exits while the real president goes to his extramarital affairs, an open secret among his staff. During a rendezvous with his secretary (Laura Linney) the president has a stroke and he has to stay on life support indefinitely. Chief of Staff Bob Alexander (Frank Langella) and the Secret Service detail are the only ones who know about this, and conspire to make the public think nothing serious happened and pretend Dave is Mitchell in the meantime. Instead of appointing the Vice President to take over, Alexander, who's really running things, has sent the VP on a tour of Africa and plans to frame him, so that he will be appointed Vice President instead. (Secession doesn't work that way, but whatever).
People named Dave are featured throughout. Included are MLB player Dave Winfield, Clinton and Reagan advisor David Gergen, comedian David Brenner, reporter David Brinkley, SCOTUS judge David Souter, David Alan Grier, David Letterman, NYC mayor David Dinkins, and David Bowie.
Sam Donaldson is the reporter at the press conference.
Real politicians, newscasters, and celebrities made appearances as themselves in the movie.
Bill has been in a loveless marriage for years but Bill/Dave and his wife Ellen (Sigourney Weaver) keep up the charade when they make a public appearance at a childrens' homeless shelter. Bob Alexander forges Bill Mitchell's signature to veto a document that would fund the shelter (remember the good old days when the federal budget was only counted in millions?) Ellen confronts Bill/Dave in the shower angry that “he” vetoed the funding,so he has his accountant Murray (Charles Grodin, who died the very day I'm writing this. This happens a lot, must be a curse) come over to help set things right.
Ellen realizes it hasn't really been Bill all this time and lets him know. Vice President Nance (Ben Kingsley) comes back and finds out he's been set up in a savings and loan scandal by recently fired Bob Alexander. The real Bill Mitchell actually was involved and Dave as him comes clean and absolves Nance, then feigns a stroke (which they don't show in the parody) and disappears, ceding the presidency to Nance. Dave goes back to his life and runs for town council, and Ellen has fallen in love with him and comes to him. Back then middle aged people could still be romantic leads in film.
In the parody, the new president is Joey Buttafuoco, a fifteen-minute celebrity whose wife was shot by his teenage girlfriend.
One of the volunteers in the next-to-last panel is Phoebe Cates, real-life wife of Kevin Kline.
THE BAITING GAME
Something Else #3, June 1971
a: Jack Sparling
Game show that has gone through several incarnations since the initial one and been imitated a lot.
The basic premise was that a single woman asked a bunch of questions (often innuendo-laden) to three men behind a wall which she couldn't see (sometimes one was a plant like in the video clips I have) and she would pick one with the prize being a date somewhere.
It is Bob Eubanks being parodied in name here, though he never hosted the show. The host was Jim Lange.
Something Else only lasted three issues. It was a mix between humor and teen magazines, and had holes so you could ostensibly put it in your binder.
DARLING SILLI
Sick #81, February 1971
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jack Sparling
Loosely based on Mata Hari, story of Lili Smith (Julie Andrews), an English singer during World War I that's also a German spy, and her affair with American officer Larrabee (Rock Hudson). She's initially set up to spy on him but falls for him and gets jealous of his feelings for French entertainer Crepe Suzette (Gloria Paul).
DORKMAN
MAD #302, April 1992
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
From an article called Video Reviews parodying Siskel & Ebert at the Movies, showing clips of current movies. Here were scenes from Darkman, a movie where a scientist gets his face disfigured by gangsters and he takes revenge on the people who tried to kill him with the facial duplication technology he was working on. (More detailed information below)
The girlfriend was played by Frances McDormand, and Drucker's drawing doesn't look anything like her because it was only for that one panel, and it wasn't thought that she'd go on to be anybody at the time.
Cracked did a full parody of the movie and also made a Joker joke. Their title was slightly different. It had a comma and an exclamation point.
DORK, MAN!
Cracked #260, January 1991
a: Walter Brogan
The scientist, Peyton Westlake (Liam Neeson) is developing something that can grow skin grafts onto people but so far it only lasts for 100 minutes. His girlfriend Julie (McDormand) is a lawyer representing a real estate firm which it turns out has been bribing the city to do create their project, getting their money from the crime boss Durant (Larry Drake). This is detailed in a memo that Julie has left at Peyton's apartment. When Julie tells developer Louis Strack (Colin Friels) she left the incriminating memo there, Durant and his henchmen come to get it.
This is when they disfigure Peyton and kill his assistant Yakky (Nelson Mashita). Peyt on is thought to be dead, but his body is found and resuscitated. (It isn't made to look like them, but the nurse and doctor are played by Jenny Agutter and John Landis, an in-joke referencing An American Werewolf in London).
Peyton escapes, and since his lab has been destroyed, moves it to an abandoned warehouse. Now he has to take revenge on the people who ruined his life. He tortures to man who killed Yakky, then uses the facial technology he was developing to impersonate Paul (Nicholas Worth), the man who picks up drug money for Durant's syndicate. They come to collect from the real Paul who wasn't there.
Julie comes to visit the grave of Peyton, and he shows up with a skin graft and tells her he's not really dead. (Plothole: So he was mistaken for dead. It still means they buried a body). He impersonates Durant and runs into the real one and the hitmen don't know which one to kill. Peyton's identity theft can only last a limited amount of time, which is up, so he runs away. Later, he has a date with Julie at an amusement park and when the carnies refuse to give him the prize he won, he hulks out.
Julie figures something is going on and follows Peyton to his lab where he confesses what he has been doing, She has been seeing Louis thinking Peyton was dead and now breaks it off. Since Louis now knows Peyton is alive, he has Durant kill him.
This leads to Peyton chasing Durant on Durant's helicopter and killing him. Meanwhile Louis has kidnapped Julie and taken her to a construction site where she's rescued by Peyton and pushes him off. Peyton then disappears into a crowd with the assumption that he will never see her again and could now be anyone.
DARN SHADOWS
Spoof #1, October 1970
w: Roy Thomas
a: Marie Severin
Daily afternoon soap opera about the Collins family of Collinsport took place in the nineteenth century. It became particularly popular when family member Barnabas (Jonathan Frid), a vampire came in, making the series a horror show.
Barnabas' young cousins were David (David Henesy) and Maggie (Kathryn Leigh Scott)
The show started being like Wuthering Heights, but the monsters soon came to the forefront, such as cousin Quentin (David Selby)
There was cousin Elizabeth (Joan Bennett)
The show started waning in popularity as more realistic soaps in the same time-slot such as As the World Turns and Guiding Light were beating it in the ratings but monsters were becoming teen idols so they went the latter route.
But nothing could be scarier than the news (at that time the most famous anchor was Walter Cronkite).
THE DARK CRYSTAL (1982)
dirs: Jim Henson, Frank Oz
DON MARTIN LOOKS AT THE DARK CRYSTAL
MAD #240, July 1983
w & a: Don Martin
Not a straight parody, but a series of gags about the movie, used so there would be more than one movie parody in that issue, and to fill their Don Martin quota at the same time, and no actors meant no caricatures were necessary.
DUNCES WITH WOLVES
MAD #305, September 1991
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
By this time, their parodies were getting shorter to include more in the issue, which meant they couldn't cover most of the film. Most of the movies they chose to do were usually two hours or more, this one being three made it harder to condense into four pages. It also means not having to rewatch things. They got the gist of it.
During the Civil War, Lt. Dunbar (Kevin Costner) is wounded in battle. He is rewarded for his bravery and given a post. When he gets there he finds it abandoned, And adopts the only being he sees, a wolf he names Two Socks.
Field of Dreams was Kevin Costner's previous movie.
Costner was also in The Untouchables. Signs with the names of various Costner vehicles are spread throughout.
The Oscar refers to how Jeremy Irons won it that year for Best Actor in Reversal of Fortune against Kevin Costner for this movie)
Dunbar comes across a Sioux tribe who's initially hostile to him and he meets Stands With a Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman adopted by the tribe, and begins a romantic relationship with her. Since he's virtually the only character that speaks English in the movie, much of it is told through voice-over as diary entries, or in the language of the Lakota Indian tribe.
The tribe begins to respect Dunbar, inviting him to a ceremony. He is accepted as one of them when he informs them of a herd of buffalo.
He's accepted as one of them and gets the name... well, you know.
He eventually marries Stands with a Fist, and is found by the U. S. Army and initially arrested as a deserter, and they're followed by Two Socks. The Sioux tribe insists he is one of them and free him, taking him back. That part is missing from the parody, and they only include the scene of him leaving them voluntarily for their sake.
Also missing from the parody is a piece of text telling us the fate of the Sioux tribe.
In #307, they did an article called Reel vs. Real by Russ Cooper and Sam Viviano
That issue was a special issue for the Iraqi troops so the spoof wasn't on the cover. Since the war wasn't happening in Australia, they were able to put it on the cover of their edition.
DANCES WITH COYOTES
Cracked #263, July 1991
a: Frank Borth
Cracked did their one-page parody with the usual misogynist joke ending.
DULLUS
MAD #223, June 1981
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Mort Drucker
Prime-time TV soap opera about the Ewing Oil family.
What made it a hit was its third season, when minor character J. R. (Larry Hagman) was shot . The season ended with a “Who Shot J. R ?” cliffhanger and was not revealed until the middle of the next season. It was the highest rated TV show of all time up until then and there were about twenty versions filmed to keep it a secret from everyone, including the cast.
The Ewing clan included J. R., Gary Ewing (David Ackroyd), Lucy (Charlene Tilton), J. R.'s wife Sue Ellen (Linda Gray), Bobby and Pamela (Patrick Duffy and Victoria Principal), and the patriarch and matriach Ellie and Jock Ewing (Barbara Bel Geddes, Jim Davis)
Being a soap opera, there were too many characters to keep track of, something they make reference to. J. R. mentions Ray Krebbs and Donna Culver, who was married to Sam Culver, and Gary's wife Valene, and subplots that have long been forgotten.
Leland (Dennis Patrick) was the family's banker.
Dr. Ellby (Jeff Cooper) was J. R. and Sue Ellen's psychiatrist.
Gary later left the town of Southfork for Knots Landing, which became its own show.
The next to last panel refers to how Larry Hagman previously starred in the show I Dream of Jeannie.
The punchline is that J. R. is so corrupt he should run for president. Encouraging him are Bella Abzug, Gerald Ford, Henry Kissinger, Billy Carter, and Richard Nixon.
For some reason, the German version always had a different cover even when it used the same article.
THE JR FAMILY PHOTO ALBUM
Cracked #181, October 1981
a: John Severin
From If TV Shows Were Combined in Cracked #205, August 1984
DULL AS
Crazy #74, May 1981
w: Murad Gumen
a: Kent Gamble
Crazy's parody was all about the “Who Shot J. R.” phenomenon.
Lucy's boyfriend is Louie from Taxi. Because they were both small.
Characters they didn't use in MAD included Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval).
And J. R.'s son John Ross.
The next to last episode of the season of Saturday Night Live they pretend never existed happened the same year as this season of Dallas and had star Charlene Tilton as guest host, and they featured a sketch called “Who Shot C. R.?” about star Charles Rocket. Urban legend has it that he was fired for saying the f-word on live TV but everyone was about to be fired anyway.
The Simpsons did a 2-part cliffhanger with “Who Shot Mr. Burns?”
UPDATE:
from the Mexican edition. Perhaps a reference to Larry Hagman's previous role on I Dream of Jeannie.
UPDATE 2:
DULLEST, TEXAS
Bananas #40, c. 1980
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
This was also done after “Who shot J. R ?”-mania.
from TV Moments We'll Never See in Bananas #60, c. 1983
UPDATE 3:
DALLAS
cover for Kaputt, German version of Cracked
covers for Panic, another German edition of Cracked. I believe the guy with the blonde hair is comedian Otto Walkes.
