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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A FISH CALLED WANDA (1989)
dir: Charles Crichton
MAD #289, September 1989
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano
Excerpt from MAD's Video Reviews.
Comedy starring, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and John Cleese, about a diamond heist. Like the encapsulation says., the plot is kind of convoluted. The movie's not difficult to understand at all, just hard to explain in a few sentences.
UPDATE:
Cover to German edition. The American version only had the reference above, leading me to wonder if there was another parody done overseas.
DISH
Crazy #34, August 1978
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Walter Brogan
Spinoff of the sitcom Barney Miller about the life of police detective Phil Fish (Abe Vigoda) and his home life. It was different from other spinoffs since he still appeared on Barney Miller at the same time.
Fish and his wife Bernice (Florence Stanley) were foster parents to five children, some of which were previously juvenile delinquents from Barney Miller.
Victor was played by John Cassisi. The two teenage girls, Jilly and Diane, were played by Denise Miller and Sarah Natoli. Todd Bridges played Loomis.
A running gag was that Fish always had to go to the bathroom and it was always occupied.
-Charlie (Barry Gordon) was a social worker that came by to assist Fish and his wife with care for the children.
-In the 70s they were constantly using Richard Nixon as the punchline.
FISSH
Sick #121, February 1978
w: George Kashdan
a: Jack Sparling
There was a fifth child, Mike (Len Bari), not featured in the previous parody.
Crazy and Sick were always what you settled for when you couldn't find MAD or Cracked at the newsstand. It's almost like MAD had first pick of the movies and TV shows to parody and the others got stuck with ones nobody remembers 45 years later. Oh well. This blog covers the good, the bad, and the ugly. Speaking of which, tune in tomorrow.
FIRST DUMB DAY IN OCTOBER
MAD #231, June 1982
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
From MAD's Academy Awards Show, the category of "Aging Bulls", older actors who feel they can still go the distance.
Walter Matthau plays a Supreme Court justice who has to deal with a woman on the bench. Younger readers might not know this was considered an outrageous idea at one time.
FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)
dir: Phil Alden Robinson
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano
From MAD's Video Reviews in #293, March 1990.
Kevin Costner plays a man who builds a baseball field in his yard and attracts the ghosts of famous baseball legends to live his fantasy games. He's not caricatured here, but Shoeless Joe Jackson is played by Ray Liotta.
MAD # 156, January 1973
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
Musical performed by just about every high school and summer stock acting group, made into a big-budget movie in 1971 when musicals were still the major big-budget movie genre.
The premise here is that Fiddler on the Roof took place around the turn of the 20th century and ended with the family leaving for a better life in America, but this is about the life of the descendants of that family. It's a portrayal of Jewish suburban life of the sixties and seventies that has been portrayed in the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man, Allan Sherman records, and...well... MAD magazine.
The movie, like this, opens with the song Tradition, a monologue from Tevye, a milkman, explaining how the Jewish religion is practiced in their town. MAD doesn't have a "Sung to the tune of" footnote since the song is more spoken than sung.
The main plot is Tevye looking for husbands for his three daughters. They go off and marry on their own,signifying how the ritual of marriage is changing.
Zero Mostel Was the lead for years in the Broadway musical and here plays Tevye's great-grandson, in the movie Tevye is played by Topol who is seen here at the end.
FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, 1972, MAD, FRANK JACOBS, MORT DRUCKER, NORMAN MINGO
A FEW GOOFY MEN
MAD #320, July 1993
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Legal drama about lawyers in military court. Private Santiago has been abuses by other members of the marines for being a weak link, causing internal bleeding resulting in his death. The Marines that killed him are on trial for his death.
The cast of characters includes the defending team of Lieutenants Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise), Galloway (Demi Moore), and Weinberg (Kevin Pollak). On the prosecuting side is Kaffee's friend Capt. Jack Ross (Kevin Bacon). Col. Jessup (Jack Nicholson) is commanding officer at Gitmo, where the trial is taking place. Working for him are Lt. Col. Markinson (J. T. Walsh) and 1st Lt. Kendrick (Kiefer Sutherland). The defendants are Cpl. Dawson (Wolfgang Bodison) and PFC Downey (James Marshall.
Dawson and Downey say they were just obeying the Chain of Command and following orders under "Code Red" requiring them to haze Pvt. Santiago. They would rather face the consequences than get get off with a dishonorable discharge. Galloway approaches Kaffee while he's playing baseball and lectures him about his casual approach to this case and relative inexperience, and coasting on the legacy of his father.
It is revealed how in the past that Santiago cannot handle the harassment of his fellow officers and has written Jessup requesting a transfer. Kaffee and his team have gone down to Guatanamo Bay a/k/a Gitmo to talk to Col. Jessup and investigate the murder. They question why Santiago was to be sent to another base several hours after the murder, when it could have been prevented if it happened earlier. They visit his barracks to investigate further.
Reference is made to how Nicholson had previously played the Joker in Batman.
Kaffee, Galloway, and Weinberg hunker down and look into the case at his apartment. Kaffee thinks pursuing it is futile but they go through with it anyway.
-MAD lied when they said Weinberg would not appear anywhere but the splash panel, so I assume heads rolled over this.
-Drucker didn't bother with a likeness for the witness doctor, who was played by Christopher Guest, whose Nigel Tufnel in This is Spinal Tap is more famous than this movie.
Markinson shows up in Kaffee's car as an expert witness, but after committing suicide in a motel room the defense isn't sure they can win. They call Jessup to the stand during the trial and get him to confess that ultimately he was the one to order the Code Red. In his testimony he also goes into a monologue about how he deserves respect, because as a commanding officer in the marines, he did it and many of the other unorthodox things he does to keep the country safe. Not only does it give Nicholson a vehicle for his acting, it also provide the opportunity for screenwriter Aaron Sorkin to write such dialogue.
A FEW ODD MEN
Cracked #334, July 1993
w: Lou Silverstone
a: John Severin
This version using the opening credit sequence of marines' rifle formation and the beginning with the incident that was the basis for this movie.
Tailhook was a military party involving sexual abuse around the time of this parody. The issue of inequality in the military has been taken a bit more seriously since then. Emphasis on "a bit".
In the movie, Kaffee didn't like Dawson and Downey constantly treating him as an officer.
The next to last panel is Sgt. Schulz of Hogan's Heroes.
FEARLESS BULLER'S DAY OFF
MAD # 268, January 1987
w: Dennis Snee
a: Mort Drucker
I could go on all day with what I find wrong with this movie, but I'm not here to editorialize. I'll just try to present the parody objectively.
The movie is about Ferris Bueller (Matthew Broderick), a high school senior, playing hooky for class again. Tagging along are his best friend Cameron (Alan Ruck) and girlfriend Sloane (Mia Sara). His sister Jeanie (Jennifer Grey) is upset that he gets so much attention. Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones), the dean of students, is on to him, and vows to prove by the end of the day that Ferris is faking his sickness. Ed's secretary Grace (Edie McClurg) is neutral in all this but remains at his side.
Ferris talks to the audience a lot and at the beginning explains how he feigns sickness. In this, the other students at the school know he's sick, but in the movie they think he really is, as do people outside the school, raising funds and ads for him, in gags without closure. Ed Rooney calls Ferris' mother telling her if he's absent again he'll be left back. Cameron is sick and Ferris convinces him to come along and he impersonates Sloane's father to get her out of school, telling them her grandmother's dead. They drive into Chicago in Cameron's father's Ferrari.
The Twist and Shout poster on the wall refers to how this song features prominently in both this and the Rodney Dangerfield vehicle Back to School. More on that film later.
The three of them look at the city from the Sears Tower and catch a ball game at Wrigley Field. They get into a fancy restaurant by Ferris posing as a wealthy businessman. At the school, Mr. Rooney decides he's going to the Buellers' house to expose Ferris' charade. Ferris is one step ahead, as he's rigged the doorbell to set off a tape recording of him and set up the door to his bedroom to set off ropes and pulleys that move a mannequin under his sheets (they don't show how his mother also checks on him as well).
Ferris goes with Cameron and Sloane to the Chicago Museum of Art and crashes a parade lip-synching Danke Schoen and Twist and Shout. There's a musical number where everybody breaks out dancing and his father sees the parade from his office window. (He doesn't actually see Ferris like here).
Traveling back home, they see the odometer of the car they stole from Cameron's father has more miles than it should, because the parking attendant took it for a joyride. They try to set the odometer back in the garage by running the car in reverse jacked up, so Cameron's father won't know they took it. When their plan doesn't work, Cameron gets angry and kicks the car, causing it to fall off the jack, out the garage window, and into the woods. He decides to take responsibility and stand up to his father.
In another scene they don't show, Jeanie also plans to expose Ferris' stunt, and when she gets home, runs into Mr. Rooney, and not knowing who he is and thinking he might be a masher, kicks him, runs to a safe place, and calls the police. Mr. Rooney also gets scared and runs away, and when the police get there, they see no sign of him and arrest her for making a false claim (There's Hughes bringing in a bit of his Lampoon misogyny). Mrs. Bueller now must pick Jeanie up at the police station. She gets there to find she's hit it off with a juvenile delinquent there (Charlie Sheen). Ferris rushes home to get back before the rest of his family so he can get back in bed and continue to pretend being sick. He gets home and to find Rooney waiting for him and is about to bust him but is saved at the last minute by Jeanie, who still hates Ferris, but hates Rooney even more.
The college Ferris Bueller plans to attend is Grand Lakes University from the far superior Back to School which also came out that summer, and coincidentally had one of the same writers as this parody. It was about Thornton Mellon (Rodney Dangerfield), a rich businessman who never went to college, so he goes with his son Jason (Keith Gordon). His bodyguard is Lou (Burt Young). He starts dating his English professor Diane Turner (Sally Kellerman). The dean at the college is played by Ned Beatty. Edie McClurg is in this too as Thornton's secretary. History teacher Turgeson (Sam Kinison) is the same character as his stand-up persona.
AROUND THE WORLD WITH U. S. TELEVISION
MAD #54, July 1960
w: Larry Siegel
a: Wallace Wood
Remember that at one time, it was okay to make fun of ethnic groups.
Actually, this isn't that bad. It's basically first-world stereotypes anyway. But what do I know? Being a 52-year-old-white guy means I'm not as hip to the twitter wokeverse as a lot of people. Maybe I'm making too big a deal.
We begin with a parody of the long-running sitcom Father Knows Best, its premise was just a family with three kids. It all took place at the home. The husband, Jim (Robert Young) would come home to his wife Margaret (Jane Wyatt). His oldest daughter was Betty (Elinor Donahue), The son, Bud, here modeled after Marlon Brando in The Wild One was played by Billy Gray. The youngest daughter is Cathy (Lauren Chapin). Here, the wife leave him for Riley (William Bendix) of Life of Riley.
The picture in the third panel is of Prime Minister Harold McMillan. The wife leaves Jim for a British version of Kookie from 77 Sunset Strip.
3
The oldest daughter in this doesn't look like her, but is modeled after Brigitte Bardot, French actress known for appearing scantily clad in films. The picture on the wall is of Charles DeGaulle and if you look closely you will notice Toulouse-Lautrec out the window.
I don't know the reason for the picture of Gen. MacArthur in the last panel. Maybe they didn't know who the leader of Japan was. The man in the last panel is a Japanese version of Paladin from Have Gun, Will Travel
FATHER JOWLY MISERIES
MAD #305, September 1991
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
As mentioned in the show's title, Father Dowling (Tom Bosley) was a Catholic piest who solved mysteries. He was aided by Sister Steve (Tracy Nelson), who grew up in the projects. The housekeeeper is Marie (Mary Wickes). Father Prestwick (James Stephens) was the Archbishop equivalent to the "annoying neighbor" motif. The last person in the splash panel is Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote, that has nothing to do with any of this.
In the last panel is Michael Landon, a guardian angel in the TV series Highway to Heaven.
FEEBLE ATTRACTION
MAD #279, June 1988
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Thriller about Dan (Michael Douglas), a lawyer for a publishing company, who has an affair one weekend with Alex (Glenn Close) and makes her pregnant, and she becomes obsessed with him, threatening to kill him and herself, and taking his ignoring her out on his family. He also has a dog.
At the beginning, you see his happy home life in New York City with his wife Beth (Anne Archer) and daughter. She goes away for the weekend to see the home upstate they'll be moving to. When she's away, Dan goes in to work and runs into Alex at a meeting, having previously met her at a work party. After they share lunch they hit it off, go to her loft, and their affair begins.
The labels on things are all titles or puns on titles of movies Michael Douglas or his father previously appeared in.
Dan tries to leave after sex but she won't let him. She gets upset and slashes her wrists and he stays to take care of her and make sure she doesn't do anything more drastic. He returns home as does his wife who doesn't suspect a thing. Back at work, Alex keeps calling him and he keeps trying to avoid her. She accosts him coming home on the subway to tell him she's pregnant and he's the father.
Not shown here: Alex befriends Dan's wife and buys their apartment.
Dan and his family have moved into their house. He got his daughter a pet rabbit like he promised, and one day Beth comes home to find a pot of boiling water with the rabbit in it. Dan reveals that he had an affair with Alex and they separate. Beth goes to school to pick up their daughter who's missing. She drives through town looking for her. The daughter was picked up by Alex who takes her to an amusement park. Beth is distraught being unable to find the daughter and gets into an accident.
Dan and Beth have reconciled, and while Beth is showering, Alex breaks in and tries to kill her. There is now a three-way fight, Dan drowns Alex in the bathtub, she comes back to life, and Beth shoots her. Now Dan and Beth return back to domestic life.
