PLOT FRICTION

PULP FICTION (1994)
dir: Quentin Tarantino

PLOT FRICTION
MAD #335, May 1995
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Sam Viviano

Several seperate stories that are all inter-connected and told out of chronological order.

It begins eith a couple (Tim Roth, Amanda Plummer) holding up a diner before the credits begin. Then we see two mob hitmen, Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson), on their way to a job, talking about the differnces between Europe and the United States.

Sam Viviano often draws himself and his family in the background of his work, like here in the splash panel. Reference is made to the Tarantino-penned Natural Born Killers, which starred Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis.

Vinnie and Jules go to retrieve a briefcase and shoot the people in possession of it. Mob boss Marsellus (Ving Rhames) orders boxer Butch (Bruce Willis) to throw a fight, and while he's out of town Vinnie has to take out Marsellus's wife Mia (Uma Thurman). He takes her to Jackrabbit Slim's, a fifties-themed restaurant.

The Ed Sullivan caricature is based on Bill Elder's caricature of him. James Dean, Buddy Holly, and Marilyn Monroe all suffered tragic deaths at a young age so even though it wasn't intended, “everything was great” could exist as a joke by itself.

After winning a dance contest and bringing her back home, Vinnie excuses himself to go to the bathroom. While there, Mia sees Vinnie's bag of heroin and ODs. Vinnie panics and brings her to the home of Lance (Eric Stoltz), the guy he bought the heroin from earlier. He and Lance and his wife (Rosanna Arquette) all struggle to revive her with an adrenaline needle, after which they vow never to speak of the incident.

The next chapter of the film starts with Butch as a kid being visited by Captain Koons (Christopher Walken), a friend of his dead father from a POW camp in Vietnam, who gives a long story of how he was given a watch that was passed by Butch's family through generations, and how Captain Koons kept it safely in his ass for two years. It's all a flashback Butch has before the fight he promised to throw but didn't, so now must run from Marsellus.

While on the lam, Butch finds out his girlfriend (Maria deMedeiros) forgot to bring the keistered legacy watch with them and he has to go back to his apartment to get it, risking gangsters that may be waiting for him, but luckily Vinnie was on the john when Butch came home and left his gun on the counter. Butch drives back, sees Marsellus, hits him, then tries to avoid Marsellus as he's chased into a pawnshop, and they're both brought into the back room bound and gagged about to be sodomized ala Deliverance. Butch and Marsellus escape the gags and vow never to speak of the incident.


Going back to the earlier scene of Vinnie and Jules at the home of the guy they're retrieving the briefcase from, they kidnap the one guy they didn't kill and end up shooting him by mistake in the car and fill it with blood and guts. They try to hide it at their friend Jimmy (Quentin Tarantino)'s house, but he doesn't want to be involved, especially with his wife about to come home, so they call in Winston Wolfe (Harvey Keitel), a “fixer”.

In the middle panel is Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior, a movie about a male scientist who becomes pregnant.


Wolfe has the car cleaned up and taken to a chop shop. Jules missed being shot at the job they were just on and takes this as a divine intervention, deciding this job is his last, and is done with crime after finishing the job and returning the briefcase. They decide to get something to eat, and it's at the diner that gets robbed at the beginning, bringing us back around.

Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee, Alfred Hitchcock, and Woody Allen are all directors who appear in their own films, though Hitchcock only ever appeared for less than a second in a crowd scene or a guy waiting on a line. There was a controversy in the nineties where Denny's was shown to have a bias against black people. Even thirty years ago Woody Allen had a reputation for liking them young.

MOVIE SPOOF: PSYCH-OUT

/PSYCH-OUT (1968)
dir: Richard Rush

MOVIE SPOOF: PSYCH-OUT
Sick #63, November 1968
w: Bill Majeski

Movie made to cash in on the counterculture, about a deaf runaway (Susan Strasberg) who goes to San Francisco to find her missing brother and discovers the Haight-Ashbury scene.

Here's the whole movie on YouTube if you want to see it. I don't know why it would be age-restricted. Unless it's the poster's choice.

PSYCHO, TOO

PSYCHO II (1983)
dir: Richard Franklin

MAD #244, January 1984
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

Twenty-two years later, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) is allowed to go back into the world having spent time in a mental institution.He's been deemed cured of the split personality he had believing he was his dead mother and going on a killing spree dressed up as her. His psychiatrist Dr. Raymond (Robert Loggia) has promised to keep a watchful eye on him despite protests from Lila Loomis (Vera Miles), sister of one of his victims. The Bates motel is now under the management of Warren Toomet (Dennis Franz), who has turned the place into a “no-tell motel”

The stenographer is Martin Balsam, another victim from the first movie. “Mack the Knife” was a popular song when the first movie came out

Norman returns to the mansion where he lived and takes a job at a local diner, and keeps getting threating notes from his “mother”. He takes in Mary (Meg Tilly), a waitress at the diner, after she has been kicked out of her house. He won't let her stay in his mother's old room, as he wants to keep it as it was and it brings up so many bad memories. There is a peephole in the bathroom with his mother's room on the other side, which doesn't seem unusual to her.

Norman keeps getting threatening notes, which he dismisses as a practical joke. The basement to the mansion above the motel, which had been abandoned all these years, has become a hangout for teenagers to make out and smoke pot, and one of the teenagers is killed while Norman is locked in the attic (not shown). The sheriff gets a report on the missing body, goes to investigate, and Mary covers for him. He feels he must have blacked out and done it, as it's the only explanation. It's revealed that Mary is really Lila's daughter, they'd planned on pretending to be Norman's mother and doing the killings themselves in order to drive Norman insane and have him recommitted, but Mary now wants no part of it. He thinks his mother is still alive. Someone is making calls, and Mary insists it's Lila. Dr. Raymond visits him bings him to the graveyard to have the body exhumed to prove she's still dead.

Lila continues the ruse and sneaks into Norman's basement to get the mother costume that's under a stone there, but gets murdered by someone else pretending to be the mother. Inside the mansion, Norman is getting calls, which Mary insists is Lila carrying on the charade, and dresses as his mother to possibly talk him down. She accidentally kills a visiting Dr, Raymond, then gets shot by a sheriff who visits and shoots Mary. The case is dismissed as Lila and Mary messing with Norman's head and he continues with his life. After life returns to normal, he's visited by Mrs. Spool (Claudia Bryar), who was his real mother, left him when he was a baby, and has been doing the killings all along. Norman Bates kills her with a shovel, brings the corpse upstairs, and starts all over again where the first movie began.

When the British edition reprinted the parody, they put it on the cover.

So did the Mexican edition.

REJECT UFOS

PROJECT UFO
1978-1979 NBC

REJECT UFO'S
MAD #207, June 1979
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

The program began with Jack Webb describing the UFOs that have been see by the public. Like other shows he produced, this was based on “actual case histories”

As an aside, funny how the “out of gas” ploy would be considered politically incorrect by today's standards as an act of coercion, though treated as consensual here.

In the second season, the cases were investigated by Air Force soldiers Capt. Ben Ryan (Edward Winter) and Sgt. Harry Fitz (Caskey Swaim).

The supporting characters in MAD TV parodies were usually caricatures of other celebrities or characters from other shows. Must have been a tight deadline this time.

Libby (Aldine King) was their secretary.

Another show cancaled before the magazine was published. Mark VII was Jack Webb's production company.

From The Final Segments of Popular TV Series in Crazy #47, February 1979, by Paul Laikin and John Reiner.

PROJECT GOOFO
Sick #125, February 1979
a: Jack Sparling

In addition to producing the show, Jack Webb was also narrator. The first season had Maj. Jake Gaitlin (William Jordan) instead of Capt. Ben Ryan.

The men who instigated the Watergate break-in were known as the “plumbers”.

THE AMATEURS

THE PROFESSIONALS (1966)
dir: Richard Brooks

THE AMATEURS
MAD #112, June 1967
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Western about four mercenaries who are experts in their fields—Rico Fardan (Lee Marvin), Bill Dolworth (Burt Lancaster), Hans Ehrengard (Robert Ryan), and Jake Sharp (Woody Strode)—who have been hired to rescue the wife of Joe Grant(Ralph Bellamy), an American rancher.

Joe's wife Maria (Claudia Cardinale) has been kidnapped by the Mexican bandit Jesus Raza (Jack Palance). In Mexico, they witness soldiers on a train that has been captured by Raza's army.

Maria has acquired Stockholm sydrome for Raza when she is found by the men, but they do their job. As they return her, Dolworth fights Raza.

Maria feels Raza and not her husband is her true love. They fail to finish the job of bringing her back, but deliver a wounded Raza.

THE NOT-SO-PROFESSIONALS

THE PROFESSIONALS
1977-1983 ITV

THE NOT-SO-PROFESSIONALS
MAD UK #232, August 1981
w: Neil Bailey
a: David Stoten

There was also an American movie in the 60s of the same name, completely different, also parodied by MAD

Crime series about agents William Bodie (Lewis Collins) and Ray Doyle (Martin Shaw) that worked for an agency called “Criminal Intelligence 5”, or CI5, under the supervision of George Cowley (Gordon Jackson). Sort of a British version of Starsky and Hutch.

There are many refernces to British personalities and events that this ugly American doesn't get. It was made by London Weekend Television.

Brian Clemens, the show's creator, is the victim in the next to last panel and the people at the end are The Avengers, his previous series.

THE PRODIGIOUS

THE PRODIGAL (1955)
dir: Richard Thorpe

THE PRODIGIOUS
MAD #26, November 1955
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood

A young Hebrew named Micah (Edmund Purdom), unsatisfied with his father's rural life, demands his inheritance so he can try his luck in the city. Once in the city he falls under the spell of a beautiful pagan priestess named Samarra (Lana Turner) who induces him to squander his money and betray his faith, and he is cheated by the High Priest (Louis Calhern). Only after many trials and tribulations does Micah recover his senses and return home to his forgiving father.

PRIMATES ON PARADE

PRIVATE LESSONS (1981)
dir: Alan Myerson

PRIVATE SCHOOL a/k/a PRIVATE SCHOOL...FOR GIRLS (1983)
dir: Noel Black

I get these 'Private' movies mixed up all the time. They both came out around the same time and have the same screenwriter so maybe that's why. The parodies of them are only one panel each so I've put them under one post.

PRIMATE LESSONS
MAD #231, June 1982
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

This one stars Sylvia Kristel as a maid who seduces a teenager. From The MAD Academy Awards Show.

PRIMATE SCHOOL
MAD #258, October 1985
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

This one is about an all girls' school and boys trying to score with the students who go there and the boys trying to sneak into the school. From the category Peeking at Naked Girls in Academy Awards for Teenage Films.

PRIVATE BENJURMIND

PRIVATE BENJAMIN
1981-1983 CBS

MAD #238, April 1983
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres

Not the movie, but the TV series based on it, about Judy Benjamin (Lorna Patterson) who sought more out of life and joined the army.

It took place at Fort Bradley, led by Col. Fielding (Robert Mandan). The other soldiers were Pvt. Jackie Sims (Damita Jo Freeman), Pvt. Maria Gianelli (Lisa Raggio), and Pvt. Stacy Kouchalakas (Wendie Jo Sperber). Other officers were Sgt. Ted Ross (Hal Williams) and Capt. Doreen Lewis (Eileen Brennan). The latter two were carried over from the movie.

Something happens that inevitably happens with a lot of TV satires. The series is cancelled before or just as the magazine goes to print.

PRIVATE BEENINJAM
Crazy #86, May 1982
w: Murad Gumen
a: Kent Gamble

Today we say “the spectrum” when referring to biology, “stupidity” if it's a dumb decision, but it was 1982. What did we know?

I don't know if we say JAP anymore, though.

Joe Flynn as Captain Binghamton from McHale's Navy is caricatured. As is Ernest Borgnine in the panel below, also from that show (and possibly swiped from the MAD cover I use in the blog heading), and Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle.

Bill Murray in Stripes is drawn in the second panel.