CRACKED TO THE FUTURE III

BACK TO THE FUTURE, PART III (1990)
dir: Robert Zemeckis

CRACKED TO THE FUTURE, PART III
Cracked #258, November 1990
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: John Severin

Missed this one the first time around. Cracked did a parody of the third installment of the Back to the Future trilogy a few months after it had done the second and somehow I skipped over it while going through the indexes when I started this blog. Better late than never I guess. The previous two parodies are here and here.

Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) of 1985 returns to Doctor Emmett Brown (Christopher Lloyd)'s home in 1955. To let him know of a letter he received from the Doc Brown of 1885. Doc travelled back there and now his time-travelling Delorean is broken, meaning the events of 1985 cannot happen. Right before Marty heads back to the past, they discover Doc was killed by Buford “Mad Dog” Tannen, great-grandfather of Biff (Tom Wilson). Biff was the school bully Marty's father stood up to in the first film and who Marty had to chase down in the second one when he altered the future by betting on sports games.

The man in the second panel is Spike Lee as Mars Blackmon from She's Gotta Have It

Marty gets to the past through a time traveling Delorean, and the only wide open space in Hill Valley is a vacant drive in. Marty is about to drive into a painting of Indians but when he ends up seventy years in the past he almost runs into a stampede of real Indians being chased by the cavalry. He hides in a cave and is chased out by a bear. He trips and wakes up in the bed of his great-great-grandparents Maggie (Lea Thompson) and Seamus McFly (also Fox), Irish immigrants with a newborn baby who would be Marty's great-grandfather. Doc Brown lives in the town posing as a blacksmith so they don't know he's a scientist from the future.

Marty is at a saloon dressed like a TV cowboy and to conceal his identity calls himself “Clint Eastwood”. He runs into “Mad Dog” Tanner who immediately calls him a sissy and challenges him to a fight. He steps on a floorboard doing the moonwalk and immediately hits Tanner with an airborne spittoon. Tanner is about to hang Marty from the clocktower they're about to build, but Doc Brown saves him just in time.

”Go Johnny Go” is a reference to most famous scene in the first movie, where Marty finds himself playing the yet-to-be invented song at the school dance in the fifties.

Their plan for getting back to the future is to get the broken Delorean onto the railroad track, so an oncoming train will bump it the next morning getting it to move at the 90 mph speed it needs to get there. It's established earlier that Doc Brown is killed over the honor of Clara (Mary Steenburgen). He has no idea who that is and furthermore his science experiments don't give him time for women. He sees someone about to fall off a cliff and rescues her in time and it happens to be Clara. They fall in love at first site and at the town dance bond over their admiration for Jules Verne.

Tannen crashes the dance and tries to steal Clara but Marty saves her by throwing a pie plate at him. Tannen is humiliated and challenges Marty, instead of Doc, to a duel at 8AM, the time they were meant to get back to the future. When the duel happens, Marty wants to fight hand to hand but Tannen will have none of it and shoots him. He thinks he killed Marty, but Marty gets up and punches him, knocking him into a truck full of manure, repeating a gag from the first two movies.

In a part they don't use in this parody, Doc tells Clara he's from the future and has to go, and she won't believe him, thinking he was just too cowardly to break up. She realizes he was right, finds him and goes after him to go into the 1980s with him and Marty.

Part of the plan to get back to where they belong involves switching tracks so the train will bump the DeLorean that's on an unfinished railroad bridge. The train here is conducted by Mister Rogers. They hijack the front car and unconnect the other cars so they don't end up killing the other passengers or taking them with them. Clara goes after Doc so they can be together.

The Vice President is almost always treated by the public like a buffoon, even by people of their own party, but Dan Quayle almost more so than any Vice President.

There is an epilogue tying up all the loose ends where Marty is back in modern times in Hilldale (formerly Hill Valley) with his girlfriend, bullies try to pick on him, and Doc and Clara have married and ended up somewhere in the twenty-first century.