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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ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE (1969)
dir: Peter Hunt
ON HIS MAJESTY'S SECRET SHAMUS
MAD #165, March 1974
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
From 8 “James Bomb” Bomb Movies.
This was the only James Bond movie to have George Lazenby before Sean Connery came back to the franchise one more time (the official one, at least), and just about the only thing Lazenby was ever known for besides That's Armageddon (see below). Diana Rigg is mentioned as “soon to have her own TV series” though The Avengers had been around for years and was already in some American markets, so I'm not sure what that's about
.
From A Cracked Look at 007 by Mort Todd and John Severin in Cracked #216, November 1985.
ON OLDEN POND
MAD #234, October 1982
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
From A Special Edition of 20/30 Starring Barbara Waltzers.
Norman (Henry Fonda) and Ethel (Katherine Hepburn) are an elderly couple that rent a summer home on Golden Pond and agree to take care of their teenage grandson for a month. He is starting to get dementia and she's more free-spirited. Their visited by daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda) who reconnects with them.
During this time, Jane Fonda was married to activist Tom Hayden.
Barbara Walters was known for asking interviewees “What kind of ___ would you like to be?”
ON SHAKY GROUND
Cracked #291, August 1994
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
Made in the time when Steven Seagal was just as bankable as Stallone and Schwarzenegger. Not that they are anymore, just that they were taken seriously longer than he was.
Aegis Oil owns properties in Alaska, and bought the rights to land from a tribe 20 years earlier. The rights revert back unless their system is up and running. To make the deadline, CEO Michael Jennings (Michael Caine) forces his workers to use substandard parts. The rig suffers a blowout due to the faulty parts, and firefighter Forrest Taft (Seagal) extinguishes the blaze. Taft hacks into the company’s files and learn of the faulty parts.
Jennings arranges for Taft to be eliminated by his Chief Security Officer, MacGruder (John C. McGinkey) and his assistant Otto (Sven-Ole Thorsen). Taft narrowly survives the ensuing explosion and is rescued by Masu (Joan Chen) from the Inuit tribe. Taft undergoes a vision quest and sees the full truth, for which he vows to make amends for his part in Aegis's crimes. Before giving a speech about his new environmental conscience, he kick ass.
ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER (1970)
dir: Vincente Minelli
FUNNY GIRL (1968)
dir: William Wyler
HELLO,DOLLY (1969)
dir: Gene Kelly
ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE A FUNNY GIRL SINGING “HELLO DOLLY” FOREVER
MAD #143, June 1971
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
Parody not of one particular movie but a compilation of the three movies Barbara Streiand had done to date.
In On a Clear Day..., Marc Chabot (Yves Montand) is a psychiatrist that uses hypnosis on his clients. He gets Daisy Gamble (Barbara Steisand) to quit smoking and in doing so.reveals she was a noblewoman in a past life. In this, her past lives are characters from her previous movies. The first one was Funny Girl, a biopic about Fanny Brice.
Fanny Brice is a vaudeville performer who falls for gangster Nicky Arnstein (Omar Sharif). He eventually takes her to meet Flo Ziegfield (Walter Pidgeon) who makes her a part of his troupe.
They separate after Nicky becomes involved in a bonds scheme.
Sharif had been in Lawrence of Arabia. Streisand was married to Elliott Gould at the time.
Hello, Dolly was a musical that took place in 1890 and was about matchmaker Dolly Levi (also Streisand) who, while trying to find a wife for Horace Vandergelder(Walter Matthau) ends up falling for him.
The big number in the movie is Louis Armstrong singing the title song.
Directors Vincente Minelli, William Wyler, and Gene Kelly are feature in the next to last panel.
Come Back to Me was actually sung by Montand's character but whatever.
From MAD's Celebrity Feature Merchandising Gimmicks by Phil Hahn and Jack Rickard in MAD #90, October 1964. The guy with the nose slightly resembles Saturday Night Live cast member James Austin Johnson, though he wouldn't be born until almost 35 years later.
THE OMENOUS
MAD #189, March 1977
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Harry North, Esq.
Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) is an Ambassador to Great Britain. He and his wife Kathy (Lee Remick) have a baby. She doesn't know that it has died shoertly after its birth, and he adopts a new baby, Damien (Harvey Spencer Stephens). A few years pass and Damien is having a party, the nanny hangs herself and Keith Jennings (David Warner), the photographer of the event, takes notice of this. Later, at work, Father Brennan (Patrick Troughton), warns Robert about Damien and is shooed away.
Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw) shows up without being hired and announces she is the new governess. The Thorns go to a wedding at a church which scares Damien, and he hits his parents. Kathy slowly starts to worry about Damien and insists on seeing and psychiatrist, Robert just sees him as a little boy. A Rottwelier that was in the woods at the birthday party is adopted by Mrs. Baylock, which Robert insists she give up. Robert finally relents and sees what the priest wants.
Father Brennan warns again about Damien, Robert ignores him, and during a storm the Father runs to the church, and impaled by a pole before he gets there (not in front of Robert). Kathy is doing tasks around the house and falls from the balcony while Damien is playing and he does nothing about it. Keith contacts Robert about omens he sees in his photos.
Robert looks for clues at the hospital where Damien was born but the monestary where birth records were stored burned down. A surviving monk from that monestary, Father Spiletto (Martin Benson) has answers but is paralyzed from the fire. Robert and the photographer go to the remains of the monestary and find the graves of the real baby and Damien's biological mother, which was a wolf. Before they can investigate further, Rottweilers come out.
Robert warns Kathy of the omen and how they must leave at once, but before she can, Mrs, Baylock shows up at the hospital and throws her from a window.He gets an exorcist, Father Bugenhagen (Leo McKern) who says that if Damien is the antichrist he will have the birthmark of '666', and if the child does, Robert will have to kill him.
The names mentioned in the middle panel were all bodybuilders and physical fitness experts. I think they meant Bonnie Prudden.
Damien has '666' on his scalp (not shown). Robert refuses to kill him, but Keith will. Before he can, he is decapitated by a pane of glass on a runaway truck. Robert finally has to but at hat moment he is shot by police. At his funeral, Damien looks into the camera, foetelling the omen of a sequel, of which there were two.
Parallels were made between this movie and the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, and they printed a few letters about it.
Cover for the British edition.
A scene that wasn't used in this parody, another sign that the child was possessed, was an attack by baboons while touring a zoo.
THE O, MAN!
Crazy #23,March 1977
w: Tom DeFalco
a: Kent Gamble
Years earlier, Gregory Peck had been in Moby Dick. Linda Blair was also a possessed child in The Exorcist.
O'MEAGRE MAN
Cracked #100, May 1972
a: John Severin
Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is an army colonel who's the last man on Earth, having given himself a life-saving serum during a plague. He walks the streets of Los Angeles and during nighttime has to fend off a group of plague victims known as “The Family”
In the bottom two panels are references to Heston's films The Agony and the Ecstacy and Planet of the Apes
While patroling the streets he sees Lisa (Rosalind Cash), another human who hasn't succumbed to the plague, disguised as a department store mannequin, and she runs away whwn he discovers her. The Family finds Robert and captures him.
As Robert is about to be executed by The Family, he is rescued by Dutch (Paul Koslo) and Lisa who kidnap him and take them to their compound.
Robert meets the last remaining survivors of Earth, who are not long for the world unless there is a cure. Lisa's brother Richie (Eric Laneuville) is already dying, and Robert promises to invent more serum and start using it to save Richie's life. As this happens, a love affair between Robert and Lisa begins.
One day Lisa succumbs to the plague and joins The Family, and they try kill Robert, impaling him with a spear. (Not shown: Dutch comes to town and gets the remainder of the serum).
If there's anything anyone remembers about Old Yeller, it's the ending, where a beloved dog has to be killed by the family because it was rabid. The ending has been parodied a few times.
THE CHICKEN KILLER
Cracked #30, July 1963
w: Jay Lynch
a: Bill Ward
Lynch will be remembered for his legacy as one of the undergrond pioneers, a contemporary of Crumb and Spiegelman, but as a teenager he started with Cracked and Sick. He theorized that they had nothing but the camera-ready page which they had worn out by taking the glued page on and off boards so many times from reprinting it again and again, they had no choice but to redraw it. Here it is again as the back cover for Cracked #168, May 1980, redrawn by Howard Nostrand.
Humbug did their version as well.
OLD YALLER
Humbug #10, June 1958
w: Larry Siegel
a: Will Elder
Kids in the Hall did more than one version of just the ending.
AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN (1982)
dir: Taylor Hackford
MAD #238, April 1983
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Drama about a man who joins the navy to prove he's a man and marry the woman he loves.
Zach Mayo (Richard Gere) is orphaned and raised by his father (Robert Loggia), a navy veteran in the Phillipines who neglects him all his life and spends the whole time with prostitutes.
Zach leaves home to join the navy in Fort Rainier, Washington, never looks back, and covers his tattoo. Sgt. Emil Foley (Louis Gossett Jr.) is the drill sargeant during the first few weeks. Paula (Debra Winger and Lynette (Lisa Blount) are two girls that work in the local factory and date naval candidates with the goal of eventually entrapping them with pregnancy if they're promoted to officers.
Back then, it was acceptable to gay-bait cadets during training.
Zach and his friend, fellow cadet Sid (David Keith), meet Paula and Lynette and start dating them. They're harrassed by townies and Zach fights them, Paula tries to probe Zach's human side.
Bunkmate Lionel Perryman (Harold Sylvester) needs a shiny belt buckle for inspection and asks Zach for one, knowing he sells equipment on the side. Zach's caught by Sgt. Foley and asked to resign, but refuses to and is forced to go through a tough regiment to break his spirit until he quits, but he won't. That weekend he has dinner with Paula's family.
Paula reveals he's not her real father, her father was also a naval soldier who left them. Her mother did the same thing she was planning to do but she loves Zach and wants to break the cycle. Sid quits the navy because he couldn't pass a breathing exercise, asks Lynette to marry him, but she won't because he's out of uniform. She was going to get pregnant to entrap him, but she was never pregnant after all.
Sid has nowhere to go, and checks into a hotel and hangs himself. Paula was in on the entrapment scheme all along. Zach goes back to the base, feels Sgt. Foley is responsible for Sid's suicide, and fights him. It's a draw and later they all graduate. Having been promoted to officer, Zach now goes back to the factory where Paula works and takes her away.
During the fight, references are made to Rocky III and Howard Cosell.
The movie was on the cover of the Mexican edition.
