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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CORONATION STREET
MAD UK #212, December 1979
w: Les Lilley
a: Harry North
Long-running daily British soap opera which is now the world's longest running program. It all takes place in a working-class neighborhood in the fictional Weatherfield, a town in Northern England. The cover focuses on Albert Tatlock (Jack Howarth) and his friends at the local pub.
The story has the show being pitched by a Prince Charles lookalike.
I'm afraid a lot of the references go over the head of an Ugly American like myself, though a Brit or Anglophile is welcome to help. No need to go through the extra trouble of googling just for li'l ol' me.
MOVIE REVIEW: THE LONGEST DAY (1962)
dir: Ken Annikin
Sick #21, June 1963
The “review” pretty much sums up the plot of the movie, so I don't have to.
Fabian was more known as a pop singer than an actor. As were Paul Anka and Tommy Sands, which seems to be why this is parodied as if it were a musical. After Sinatra hit it big as a movie star, producers figured this would be a trend, which is still done today. Sometimes works sometimes doesn't. This was dramatized by the Frank Fontaine scene in The Godfather, though showbiz isn't riun by the mob anymore.I Left My Heart in a Can of Crisco is a play on I Left My Heart in San Francisco.
Red Buttons was more of a comedian than a dramatic actor. He never had a dinner.
CHILD'S PLAGUE 2¾
Cracked Monster Party #14, October 1991
a: Harry North
The Chucky horror franchise kept going on and on like others such as Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street, and also like them strayed from the original premise and evolved into self-parodies. They were all rated R but really for kids. The title of this parody shows there was a sequel, anticipated the forthcoming third installment, and knew there'd be more down the road. In the first one, Andy Barclay (Alex Vincent) gets a Good Guy doll for his birthday, sort of a Cabbage Patch Kid in their universe. The doll (Brad Dourif) is possessed by the body of Charles Lee Ray, or “Chucky”, a criminal killed during a toy store shootout. Chucky keeps trying to find Andy so he can transfer bodies through the prior voodoo experience that allowed him transferred in the first place, and kills people along the way. Nobody believes Andy as he's pursued through institutions, foster care, and boarding school. He keeps coming back to life in each increasingly ridiculous sequel.
Harry North seems to be another MAD expatriate who was either fired or stopped getting work from them, though this is the only thing I know of that he did for them.
THE OLD GRAY LINE
MAD #223, June 1981
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Angelo Torres
This very loosely borrows from The Long Grey Line, with Marty Maher (Tyrone Power) telling his story to President Eisenhower. How he started as an Irish immigrant, and rose through the ranks at West Point Military Academy over the years, raising future generations of cadets with his wife Mary (Maureen O'Hara). The premise of this parody is something MAD did often, showing an example of a movie genre from the past and updating it as if it were modern.
THE NEW GRAY LINE
The military academy movie is updated to reflect the standards of 1981 and how military academies have changed over the years and in real life have cheating and sex scandals, and become more accepting of their diversity. This version has caricatures of Jack Nicholson, James Caan, and Cybill Shepherd (or is it Candace Bergen?). James Stewart and Lee Marvin would have been cadets in an old military movie, here they are the commanding officers. Dustin Hoffman also makes a cameo as one of the cadets in the splash.
In some panels, it seems like Angelo Torres never even saw a movie with Nicholson and only knows of him from photographs.
CAPTAIN O. U. KIDD
Wild #1, February 1954
w: Stan Lee
a: Al Hartley
Tale told several times about English pirate and his men, from which almost all pirate stories are evolved. This parody relies on every pirate and riverboat gambling joke possible.
Chris-Craft was and still is a boat company.
Natchez was and still is a city in Mississippi.
Copacabana was and still is a nightclub in New York City.
LOIS AND CLARK: THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN
ABC 1993-1997
LOTUS AND CLUCK: THE NEW MISDVENTURES OF STUPORMAN
MAD #336, June 1995
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Angelo Torres
Series about Superman with he as Clark Kent (Dean Cain) and Lois Lane (Teri Hatcher) dating, while working together at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. She has no idea the two of them are the same person. The photographer is Jimmy Olsen (Justin Whalin) and the editor is Perry White (Lane Smith).
Note the splash panel has Dave Berg's alter ego Roger Kaputnik and doctor at the nursing home.
Superman's frenemy Lex Luthor (John Shea) has hair on the show, despite being bald in the comics. Gene Hackman played Lex Luthor in the Superman movie and also had hair. Lois' shirt in the second panel refers to an episode of Seinfeld where Hatcher played his girlfriend and he thought her breasts were fake. One of the women in the office is David Letterman's mother, who appeared in some of his sketches on his show. William Gaines and his wife Annie, who was the real publisher at that point, collected Statue of Liberty memorabilia.
The Jack Nicholson Joker saying “Hold the chicken” is a reference to a scene in a diner with Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces.
Superman/Clark often visited his parents (Eddie Jones, K.Callan) in Smallville. When Newt Gingrich took over Congress the big issue was the military's “don't ask, don't tell” policy regarding homosexuality in the military. Many people pointed out how Gingrich divorced his first wife while she was bedridden with cancer.
From the Mexican version of MAD.
LOSER AND CLUCK
Cracked #300, August 1995
w: Andrew Osborne
a: Walter Brogan
Right before this series, the comic had a “Death of Superman” storyline that resulted in over-inflated sales.
Superman's apartment has posters of gay icons Judy Garland, Village People, and Barbara Streisand.
Saturday Night Live had a similar gag where at a superhero party it is the Hulk's girl friend that is in a body cast from sex. The co-worker is reporter Cat Grant (Tracy Scoggins).
The idea of Lois Lane and Clark Kent being lovers was used most often in the title Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, which there were 137 issues of.
THE CANDIDATE
Cracked #107, March 1973
a: John Severin
A team for the Democratic party, led by Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) must have someone to run for Senator against the current Republican incumbent, and choose Bill McKay (Robert Redford), current lawyer and son of a former governor. They expect to lose anyway, but let him speak his mind to help get the message of the party across.
McKay begins his campaign making a speech in front of a brush fire in Los Angeles, and presses flesh throughout the town.
Harold Stassen ran for President and other major political offices several times over several decades but never won
The parody has McKay trailing far behind, but he never was by that much.
McKay agrees to a publicized debate with challenger Sen. Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter). In the debate he brings up that some issues weren't mentioned.
The nude centerfold in Cosmopolitan is a reference to Burt Reynolds posing nude for them in an article parodying Playboy's spreads. The panel with the bubble gum wasn't actually in the movie but taken from the poster.
The movie ends with Bill McKay winning and saying “Now what?”
LOGUN'S RUIN
Crazy #25, May 1977
w: Tom DeFalco
a: Walter Brogan
There's a city underground in the twenty-third century and apparently people come into the world fully formed, and once they live to be thirty, they are destroyed. Some resist this, and they are referred to as “runners”, and it's up to police, the “Sandmen” to find them and kill them. There's a daily ceremony called Carousel, where citizens turning thirty are publicly “renewed”. Logan (Michael York) and Francis (Richard Jordan) are two Sandmen who are best friends and enjoy their job.
The public renewals involve the citizens whose time is up to float into space and explode in the air. Most of them voluntarily do this.
At the apartment of Logan and Francis, they have some kind of service where they can summon up women to pleasure them , sort of a Grub Hub for prostitution. (Begging the question, does everybody have this or only Sandmen? Do they have to pay for it? Do the women have it too?). The woman Logan summons, Jessica (Jenny Agutter), happens to be part of the resistance that plans to escape to this sanctuary. She, like the runners, is wearing a ☥ symbol around her neck. At work, Logan's assignment is to go undercover and find the 1000 fugitives that are unaccounted for and the Sanctuary.
Logan finds Jessica to help him get past the Runners and into the Sanctuary. Her allies don't trust him initially. The first thing he needs to do to get through is to have his face altered so they think he's one of them. The doctor doesn't trust them either and is about to kill Logan on the laser surgery table but Logan pins him down.
Surprisingly, they didn't use Farrah Fawcett in this parody considering she was one of the biggest sex symbols of the seventies, part of the biggest power couple, and mainly, they would have sold more magazines.
The Sanctuary doesn't actually exist, but there's another barricade run by a robot named Box (Roscoe Lee Brown) who freezes all the Runners before they can escape. Logan and Jessica escape the city and find themselves in the outside world.
The outside world is the city of Washington, DC, which is now overrun with vines. There is an old man who lives in a building surrounded by cats. Logan and Jessica never knew someone older than them existed and want to bring him back to the world to show everyone. The citizens don't believe any of this and Logan tells his supervisor computer he has nothing to report. His lying short-circuits it making the city explode. Everbody runs out of the city and sees the old man. The old man is played by Peter Ustinov in the movie, here it's Jimmy Carter, who was always being associated with peanuts.
THE UNSTABLE GUY
Cracked #311, October 1996
w: Andy Simmons & Rob Weske
a: Frank Cummings
The premise of this was that Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick) moves into a new apartment after breaking up with his girlfriend, and after slipping his cable guy Chip Douglas (Jim Carrey) extra money to get pay channels, Chip decides Steven is now his friend for life. This spoof also parodies three other movies from that year that would eventually have been on cable, Eraser, Striptease, and Twister.
Eraser was an action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Chip takes Steven to a satellite dish out in the country that's apparently the master dish to all the cable of the world. Here it is a literal food dish, and they use it to make fat jokes about Louie Anderson. Striptease was a movie with Demi Moore about just that.
LaToya Jackson did infomercials for a psychic hotline.
Chip takes Steven to the Medieval Times chain restaurant where they end up jousting and Chip later shows up when Steven and his friends are playing basketball, inviting himself into the game and taking it too seriously, being violent and embarrassing Steven.
Chip tries to make things right as Steven tries to reconcile with his girlfriend Robin (Leslie Mann), hooking him up with a cable channel showing Sleepless in Seattle. Here it's Twister, a disaster movie about a tornado starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.
The cause of the tornado in Twister turns out to be The Mask, another Jim Carrey movie. In The Cable Guy, Chip has become friends with Robin separately, and when Steven and Robin go to see his parents, Robin has invited Chip along, and he hits it off with Steven's family, who all ignore Steven's claims that Chip is a psycho.
There's a suplot they don't use here where you see on TV throughout the movie—a trial of child star Sam Sweet (Ben Stiller) that mirrors the Menendez brothers trial that was going on then. Similar to a sketch Stiller would have done on his sketch comedy show a few years earlier. (His whole cast has bit parts in other scenes). Chip has kidnaped Robin and brought her to the master satellite and Steven goes to save her. At the same time, the world is fixated on their TVs watching the Sweet trials and at the exact moment everyone is about to hear the verdict, Chip plummets down and knocks the cable out everywhere.
