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.
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F*I*N*K
Crazy #43, October 1978
w: Murad Gumen
a: Walter Brogan
F.I.S.T. is an acronym for Federation of Interstate Truckers, the union the Stallone character headed, and supposedly the title was emphasized in ads to cash in on the success of Rocky, even though the movie would still be called that and the name of the union would be just as prominent no matter who the star was.
It begins when Johnny Kovak (Sylvester Stallone), a dock worker, and his friend Abe (David Huffman) see a fellow worker mocked for his Polish heritage and fired for dropping crates.
Johnny fights back about the issue of dropping crates by doubling down and dropping more crates, for which he's fired. The owner of the company agrees he was treated unfairly and hires him back, then backs out and fires him the next day. His friend Vince (Kevin Conway) offers him a job in organized crime, which he turns down because it's organized crime. Mike Monahan (Richard Herd), who saw him when he was leading the workers' rebellion wants him to be a union organizer. He does this with the assistance of Abe even though they're only paid per worker they sign up instead of a salary.
While he's heading up the local union, he's courting Anna (Melinda Dillon). We'd call it stalking now but 80 years ago in working class Cleveland, it was how they did things. He gets beat up by truckers who refuse to sign up (Abe is also beat up by hitmen, which they leave out for brevity). National union head Graham (Peter Boyle) isn't tough enough when he meets with the companies, so Johnny Kovak takes the initiative. Meanwhile, he's still trying to land Anna, who lectures him about how he has to behave like a gentleman and impress her mother if he wants to go out with her.
Johnny leads a strike against one trucking company and they fight back with their goons. Mike Monahan decides to plow the goons down with a truck but they shoot him. At his funeral, Johnny approaches Vince and decides he needs mob connections after all, so incidents like this won't happen again, Babe (Tony LoBianco), another gangster, gets in on it, making a deal that trucks won't deliver to bars unless they also carry jukeboxes from his company.
Johnny and Anna marry. Abe doesn't leave F.I.S.T., he just heads another branch. Cut to 20 years later, Johnny visits the national headquarters in Washington and finds out how corrupt President Graham is, and blackmails him into stepping down so that he can take over. Now he has to testify in front of a Senate Subcommittee led by Sen. Madison (Rod Steiger) about the union's mob ties.
In some of these panels, Stallone doesn't look like Stallone at all. In one, he looks more like Christopher Walken. These panels were obviously swiped from somewhere... but where?
Abe Belkin was supposed to testify but was killed the day before. They think Kovak did it which only makes him angry and he walks out of his testimony. He goes home to find his wife gone and he's shot down by the mob. The person in the last panel is supposed to be Jimmy Hoffa, whose story may have inspired this one.
THE F.I.B.
MAD #144, July 1971
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
This would be the cast during the sixth season. The main characters on this show are Lewis Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist, Jr.) and Tom Colby (William Reynolds), and there would be a guest star to play a special agent on each show.
The housewife in the second panel is Flo Capp.
From Truly "Relevant" TV Shows in MAD #149, March 1972, by Tom Koch and Angelo Torres.
MAD #206,April 1979
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres
There is a premiere party for the newest book by Laura Mars (Faye Dunaway), fashion photographer. It is there that she first meets John Neville (Tommy Lee Jones), who is approaches her to tell her he doesn't understand how she can glorify crime and violence.
Henry Fonda used to do commercials for View-Master
The next morning, Laura does her next photo shoot, involving models fighting among riots amid New York City. She sees visions of a murder about to happen and has her manager Ronald (Rene Auberjonois) call off the shoot. Laura knows someone has just killed Elaine Cassell (Rose Gregorio), who hosted the gallery where she had her party the night before, and rushes to the scene.
Laura gets there too late and is brought to the station as a witness. Somebody is committing a series of killings to get to her. She meets Neville again, who is the head detective. Her ex-husband Michael (Raul Julia) comes back in need of protection because he might be a suspect. Her driver Tommy (Brad Dourif) may also be a suspect because he reveals having a past criminal record.
Laura sees another vision through the eyes of the killer of two of her models as the next victims. At their funeral, Neville is investigating the case and while offering her police protection during the ride afterwards, they fall in love.
There's a party for Donald that Laura attends. She has to meet Michael, who's in some kind of trouble. Michael can't meet her there and the police are tailing her, so Donald acts as a decoy while she leaves separately, but Donald is killed before it's too late.
The parody removes how the audience is made to believe Tommy is the actual killer, when he is questioned, bolts, and gets shot down. Laura and Neville go away on vacation with her thinking the suspect has been caught and it is all over, yet someone comes after her through a hotel door. Neville breaks through a window in time. It is at their hotel that this happens, not her apartment as depicted here.
Neville turns out to have been the killer along, being the offended viewer at the beginning. He reveals he has a split personality and if Laura really loves him she'll do the right thing and shoot him.
MAD #170, October 1974
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
Early on, the MAD logo had ghosts cavorting around it. This parodied that.
Father Merrin (Max Von Sydow) is leading an archaeological dig in Iraq and comes upon holy symbols there, a foreshadowing of what's to come.
In Washington, DC, we meet Chris McNeil (Ellen Burstyn) an actress and her assistants Sharon (Kitty Wynn) and Karl (Rudolf Schundler)...
...and daughter Regan (Linda Blair). The first sign something is wrong is thumping they hear upstairs, which Chris thinks must be rats in the attic. The next day she goes to work for the director Burke Demings (Jack McGowran) in a scene involving a campus protest. She takes the same route every day when she goes home, passing the local church, where she always sees a depressed Father Karras (Jason Miller).
Chris McNeil goes home to her daughter, who is playing with a Ouija board and says she talks to 'Captain Howdy' through it. Later that night, Chris throws a party for all her celebrity friends and Father Dyer (William O'Malley) entertaining on piano. In this, the celebrities are all caricatures of politicians of the time. Regan comes down to the party in her pajamas cursing and pees on the floor. When she's asleep later the bed starts shaking.
The man in drag is comedian Flip Wilson, whose character Geraldine, was known for the catchphrase "The devil made me do it", which is referenced in most of these parodies.
Chris has doctors examine Regan to find out what's wrong with her and they find nothing. A cat-scan reveals possible lesions on her frontal lobe.
Dr. Klein (Barton Heyman) examines Regan and also concluded little can be done. While Chris was gone, Sharon had Burke look after Regan for a few minutes and when Chris comes back she finds Regan is asleep but all the windows are open. Burke was found dead in the street as if he had jumped out, and his head has been found on backwards. Lt. Kinderman (Lee J. Cobb) is investigating the case and looks for Father Karras because he thinks Burke's death may have been from a demonic force.
Chris, concerned about Regan is asking for the doctors to do anything to help (They're drawn as various TV doctors here). Klein suggest one thing that as a last resort what might possibly work is an exorcism. She finds Karras, who is also a trained doctor, for help. He is not equipped to perform an exorcism, but is willing to examine Regan, believing that whatever problem it is can first be explained by science.
Karras is finally convinced an exorcism is the only solution, and gets permission from the church to perform one, with the assistance of Father Merrin.
Next is the blasphemy, profanity, and horror that caused a sensation when the movie came out before the devil is freed, but is not portrayed portrayed here.
Cracked didn't do a full parody but had a few short pieces. This is from an article called Pell-Mell with Mel in #125. I think the priest is supposed to be Mel Brooks.
This is from If Hit Movies Were Combined in #131, March 1976.
THE ECCHORCIST
Crazy #6, August 1974
w: Marv Wolfman
a: Vance Rodewalt
William Peter Blatty, writer of this, had been a screenwriter for years, mostly for comedies.
Regan did not have the sass-mouth this early on in the movie.
The storyline of Damien Karras' mother dying (and later portrayed by a possessed Regan) was left out of the MAD parody. An attendee at Chris' party is director William Friedkin.
Ozzie's Girls was an a short-lived attempt at Ozzie Nelson having his own sitcom without his children.
In that same issue, they had a fumetti parodying the movie. Bill Skurski was part of a group called Cloud Studio that were the first art directors of National Lampoon, fired for giving the magazine an underground/art deco look when the editors wanted to go in a different direction.
About a year later, in Crazy #17, an article called Combining Hollywood Movies for Fun and Profit, by Mark Steven and Bob Smith, did a mash-up of The Exorcist and The Sting.
Sick #99, August 1974
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Tony Tallarico
The Sick parody doesn't have the prologue with the archaeological dig, which didn't need to be in the movie in the first place.
Many of the scenes and characters are conflated here.
A scene in the movie not used in the other parodies is that Karras records Regan's ramblings and tries to decipher and translate them, and finds out they are English backwards.
Also, Father Merrin is killed while performing the exorcism. Max Von Sydow, the actor who played him, was the most famous movie actor in Sweden.
There have been many parodies in television and film, such as this sketch during the first season of Saturday Night Live.
And this scene from Scary Movie 2.
There was a law passed in the early 90s stating every spoof movie must have Leslie Nielsen. Re-Possessed also starred Linda Blair, who has worked steadily since The Exorcist, but only in exploitation and low-budget movies.
A sequel to The Exorcist was made that was universally panned.
