COMA-TOAST

This has nothing to do with the parody itself, but this was the cover for the issue this was in. For most people my age, this cover has a big significance. It's one of the first things we all saw that's etched on our brains. Making fun of public figures and institutions was enough of a standard in other media by this point, so they had to find other ways to be shocking. Looking at it now, a bare butt on the cover of a magazine is pretty harmless for a third-grader and even would have been then, but from the point of view of a kid the magazine seemed like forbidden contraband. For some kids it actually was. The suggestion of sex was enough for disapproval in some households and classrooms. I remember kids in school saying there were issues of Mad in the past that were really dirty that showed bodily functions and full frontal nudity and had actual profanity beyond “@*!$#!”. Someone said there was an issue showing Alfred E. Neuman shitting in someone's mouth on the cover, though nobody ever found that one.

Anyway, onto their parody of Coma. I don't remember the movie having an impact like Close Encounters and Saturday Night Fever in the previous issues, or Star Wars, Jaws 2 and Grease in the next few issues. They did plenty of adult movie parodies and ones that weren't huge blockbusters, but at the age I was then your memory only goes back eight months.

COMA (1978)
dir: Michael Crichton

MAD #202, October 1978
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Mark Bellows (Michael Douglas) and Susan Wheeler (Genevieve Bujold) are doctors who live together, she's independent to his dismay. Susan's friend Nancy (Lois Chiles) is in the hospital for a simple procedure.

Nancy is killed as is another patient (Tom Selleck, not used in the parody) and she's led to believe they're just unfortunate circumstances. Dr. Harris (Richard Widmark) comforts her and tells her they did all they could do. Susan suspects she's not being told something, and investigates in the hospital on her own.

Also not shown: Rip Torn as the doctor with the records, who looks at her sideways for asking about them.

I tried to find YouTube clips of these missing scenes, but if there are any, they're buried under several pages, since the word “coma” could apply to so much more than this movie.

A janitor offers to help her out, but is electrocuted before he can dish any dirt, and it's made to look like an accident. She crawls through closed rooms and vents and notices conspiracies before being caught and chased. She fends of the guard chasing her with a fire extinguisher and discovers a bunch of bodies. While taking a tour of the nearby Jefferson Institute later, she's shown by director Mrs. Emerson (Elizabeth Ashley) what they say is a new way of keeping comatose bodies alive.

While secretly looking around, she finds it is an organ harvesting front. She's spotted and escapes on the roof of an ambulance. Back at the hospital, she tells Dr. Harris of the whole thing. He congratulates her for her exposing the ring, but since he's in on it, he offers her a drink with a Mickey. Since she knows everything, she's now going to be one of the patients who's operated on and made part of the “institute”.

As she's wheeled into the operating room where all these special operations are done, she runs into Mark, the only one she can trust to believe what she tells, and needs him to turn off the controls before it's too late. The anesthetic they use is really carbon monoxide, connected to some controls on hoses in the boiler room that he has to run to and turn off in time to save her. And Dr. Harris is arrested for being behind all this.

Oh, and before I forget...

CALMA
Sick #123, October 1978
w & a: Dave Manak

The patient in the first panel is supposed to be Tom Selleck.

This movie, having a strong female protagonist before such a thing was ever discussed, also has scenes that would definitely make it pass the Bechdel test.