BLUE-EYED KOOK

COOL HAND LUKE (1967)
dir: Stuart Rosenberg

MAD #120, July 1968
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

Luke Jackson (Paul Newman) is arrested and sent to prison camp for busting parking meters (it isn't clear whether it's to steal money or if he's just cutting them up for pleasure. In the parody they're gumball machines.) We're introduced to the camp, where the owner (Strother Martin) introduces himself, and the prisoners all introduce themselves. Luke mouths off, and brushes off the time he'll spend there as just another couple years in his life. There are references to Vietnam in this article even though the movie takes place in the forties or fifties.

When they are all in their bunks at night the floorwalker (Clifton James) tells them the rules and what punishments will put them in “the box”, a wooden hut that is basically solitary confinement. The next morning, they work on a road crew, clearing the roads. Their boss (Morgan Woodward) is a guy that wears sunglasses and carries a shotgun. We meet Dragline (George Kennedy) and Society Red (J. D. Cannon). A prisoner goes in the box as exposition.

Hud, Harper, Hombre, and The Hustler were other movies that starred Paul Newman.


While working on the road, the prisoner are turned on seeing a woman nearby washing her car.

The prisoners all think Luke's out of line and Dragline, their leader, challenges him to a fight, for which he keeps getting up. That and a card game (For which he earns the nickname “Cool Hand” Luke) earn him their respect.

Luke's mother (Jo Van Fleet) comes on visiting day and it's the last he'll see of her. Dragline makes a bet with the other prisoners that Luke can eat fifty hard-boiled eggs in an hour, which he does. Him lying on the table afterwards as if crucified is one of the many examples of Christian symbolism they allude to in the parody which they imply makes it arty but more than fifty years later is fairly secular.

Not in parody: A rainstorm forces the prisoners all back in the truck. Luke refuses to go. When they're back that night. Luke finds his mother has died, and he's forced to go into the box because they don't trust him not to escape after the funeral's over. At work on the crew, Luke works his way up to king of the gang when he leads them in paving the tar on a road quicker than expected.

Now back to the parody.

A party they have to celebrate the Fourth of July also doubles as making noise to saw an escape hatch into the floor. Luke and another prisoner break out through the floorboards. The other prisoner is caught climbing the fence, but Luke makes it into town, until he gets caught, but not before exhausting one of the bloodhounds to death. When he's brought back to work, he's put in chains. Then the tagline of the movie is used.

Also not featured: His next escape. He cuts the chains with an axe and uses chili powder to get bloodhounds off the scent of his trail. When he's gone Drag gets a magazine in the mail that has a picture of Luke with two women and everyone cheers him on. When he's caught and brought back a second time, he's forced to dig a ditch and fill it back up again as punishment, breaking him down, but like the fight earlier, he gets back up again.

Back on road crew duty, Luke is told to fetch things from the truck. A guard shoots a turtle and Luke has to put it in the truck. When he does he drives away and Dragline jumps in with him, and he's taken the keys to the other trucks so he can't be chased. They abandon the truck when they get into town and agree to split. Luke sees an abandoned church and prays to God.

Dragline runs having turned Luke in, but Luke is shot. As he is, he goes off smiling, and dies in the hands of authorities. In the movie, they all reminisce about what a legend Luke was back at the camp.