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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RETCHIE RETCH
Cracked #298, May 1995
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Don Orehek
A comic book adaptation when movies of comics characters were still adaptations and comics weren't advertisements for the movies. This starred Macaulay Culkin, then Hollywood's “it” boy, as Richie Rich, the world's richest kid. In the beginning it's established how rich he is. Reggie Jackson is his baseball coach and Claudia Schiffer is his aerobics instructor.
His father, Richard Rich (Edward Hermann) is a benevolent executive who has reopened the United Tool company and can't make it to their re-opening ceremony so he sends Richie instead. Richie is distracted by local kids playing sandlot baseball and discouraged from playing with them by his butler Cadbury (Jonathan Hyde).
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Orehek obviously used the comics rather than the actors for reference. He was probably assigned this instead of one of their usual caricaturists specifically so he would do that, though one of the kids here is Reggie Van Dough, Richie's rival in the comics, who was made into an adult in this movie, as we shall soon see.
Richie later invites the local kids to his house and they're impressed he has his own McDonald's. Leonard Van Dough (John Larroquette), who works on the board of Rich Industries, schemes to have the Riches killed while they're overseas so he can take over the company. His father and mother (Christine Ebersole) leave him behind because he has friends, and they're deemed missing after their plane is bombed.
The Rich family has a replica of themselves as Mt. Rushmore on their property. Mt. Rushmore was used for the climactic chase scene in Hitchock's North By Northwest and on the replica in the final chase scene in this movie as well, most likely as an homage. Cracked probably wrote this parody off a script with Leonard Van Dough's name being something different, since he's called “Coolaide” here
Richie Rich runs the company in his parents' abscene with Cadbury acting in loco parentis, and Leonard Van Dough frames Cadbury for the murder of Richard and Regina Rich. Cadbury escapes from prison, and he and Richie, now on the lam, and go to Richie's friend Gloria (Stephi Lineburgh)'s house to track them on her computer. Before he can locate them, Van Dough and his men find him and kidnap him and all his friends.
The vault is actually inside the Mini-Rushmore, not the factory. It's what Lawrence Van Dough had been trying to get to all throughout the movie thinking it was full of money and bonds, only to find it was worthless to him, as it only contained Rich family treasures they kept for sentimental reasons.
The punchline, that Richie's friends are only using him for the money, is disproven by the movie itself, where they show they were using him at the beginning but decided they actually liked him.
ONE DAY AT RICHIE RICH'S HOUSE
Cracked #298, May 1995
w: Rob Weske
a: Don Orehek
Macaulay Culkin was already a has-been at this point.
RITCHE RETCH
Crazy #69, December 1980
w: Jim Owsley
a: Howard Bender & Marie Severin
Crazy had done a parody of Harvey's other big title Casper years earlier, which became its most famous article and was reprinted several times, so they figured they'd duplicate the success with this. Besides portraying what the life of a rich kid would really be like, they tied it in with news about the Symbionese Liberation Army, a criminal group that held an heiress for ransom and she ended up joining them. Marvel always looked down on Harvey Comics even though they would eventually start their own line imitating them.
Spun off from The Mary Tyler-Moore Show, Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) was Mary's upstairs neighbor. This series had her returning to her Jewish roots in New York and married to Joe Gerard (David Groh). Her sister Brenda (Julie Kavner) filled the void of the “man crazy” archetype.
Carlton (Lorenzo Music) was the doorman of the building. Rhoda's mother Ida (Nancy Walker) was another frequent cast member.
Nancy Walker was better known as the spokesperson for Bounty paper towels.
Rhoda's father Martin (Harold Gould) was billed as a regular, though rarely used. Nancy Walker also had a role on McMillan and Wife.
Joe ran a wrecking company.
From TV Disclaimers We'd Like to See in MAD #180, January 1976, by Lou Silverstone and Jack Davis. The mother shown at the end is Israeli prime minister Golda Meir.
From TV Spinoffs Yet to Come in MAD #206, April 1979, by Tom Koch and Harry North, Esq.
There actually was a spinoff. Rather, a special. Lorenzo Music, a writer and creator of Rhoda (and later the voice of Garfield) reprised the character that you previously never saw.
RHODENT
Crazy #12, August 1975
w: Steve Skeates & Mary Skrenes
a: Vance Rodewalt
From The Final Segments of Popular TV Series in Crazy #47, February 1979, by Paul Laikin and John Reiner
RHODANT
Sick #105, August 1975
w: Len Herman
a: Jerry Grandenetti
ROADER
Sick #119, February 1978
w: George Kashdan
a: Jack Sparling
Mary Tyler-Moore's other neighbor (who also later had her own TV show) was Phyllis (Cloris Leachman). The cast of The Mary Tyler-Moore Show is at Rhoda's wedding.
In the later seasons after Rhoda and Joe divorced, they added neighbor Gary Levy (Ron Silver). Nancy Walker left to do a show called Blansky's Beauties.
REVENGE OF THE PINK PANTHER (1978)
dir: Blake Edwards
REVENGE OF THE PUNK PANTHER
Sick #125, February 1979
w & a: Dave Manak
Sixth in the series. Begins with Phillippe Douvier (Robert Webber), head of the French Connection, a heroin smuggling ring, trying to get in good with his bosses in New York by assassinating Inspector Jacques Clouseau (Peter Sellers). Douvier has been having an affair with his secretary Simone (Dyan Cannon) and has to break it off before his wife finds out.
The first assassination attempt is at a disguise shop run by Prof. Balls, which they try to bomb while Clouseau is trying on a Toulouse-Lautrec costume. Then they try with a hezvy named Mr. Chong (Ed Parker), which fails when Clouseau mistakes him for his houseboy Cato (Burt Kwouk) whose duties include attacking him when he comes home to keep him alert. Clouseau is later driving and picks up a hitchiker that turns out to be female impersonator criminal Claude Rousseau (Sue Lloyd) that hijacks is car and is bombed by Douvier's men who think it's Clouseau.
Clouseau is mistaken for dead, and his supervisor Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), who had been trying to kill Clouseau himself is being released and sent back to work. Clouseau, who was forced by the side of the road to wear Rousseau's clothes, protests his identity and is institutionalized himself. He escapes and only Dreyfus knows this, thinking he must be going mad again. Clouseau goes back home and finds Cato has turned the apartment into a Chinese brothel. After breaking up with Simone, Douvier tries to assassinate her so she doesn't tell all and she seeks the aid of Clouseau.
Clouseau, Simone, and Cato attempt to infiltrate the French Connection in Hong Kong by blending in, then Clouseau disguises himself as the Godfather to get in with Douvier and the gangsters.Dreyfus, convinced Clouseau is still alive, and also attempting to expose the drug ring, also travels to Hong Kong.
All this culminates in a chase at a fireworks factory, and Inspector Clouseau is found to be alive, where he's honorably decorated again by the police in France. This results in a further bungled ceremony.
REVENGE OF THE NERDBALLS
MAD #258, October 1985
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
From Academy Awards for Teenage Movies.
Like most films of the genre, it doesn't age well. But of the dozens of films then where the nerds would be just like the jocks if they had the chance, install cameras in girls' dorms to spy on them, and trade up women like property as if exchanging a car for a better model, this is one of the more innocuous ones.
It involves Lewis and Gilbert (Robert Carradine, Anthony Edwards) enrolling in college and being picked on by the jocks and their girlfriends.
Its heart is in the right place defending nerds. We're all nerds. I'm a nerd. If you're reading this, you're the biggest nerd of all. But we're not 1984 nerds. Through modern eyes the non-consensual voyeurism is creepy, as is the rape scene mentioned ad infinitum everywhere else on the internet. In case you just got a computer, writers and bloggers have recalled there's a scene where a character gets back at a jock's girlfriend by pretending to be him wearing a mask and screwing her, then after impressing her with his technique takes off his mask and—surprise! It's really been a nerd all along!
Nobody thought anything of it then, but it wouldn't fly today and the people involved have renounced it, as they should. My take is that I don't like it either but it doesn't surprise me. If you watched 15 minutes of TV in the 80s (or flipped through an average issue of MAD) there'd be something unacceptable somewhere. This whole blog is dated taboos. What's weird to me is that wearing a mask means he isn't able to use his mouth, so his torso alone makes him this amazing sex machine.
RETURN OF THE PINK PANTHER (1975)
dir: Blake Edwards
THE RETURN OF THE FINK PANTHER
Sick #108, February 1976
a: Jerry Grandenetti
The fourth in the long-running Inspector Clouseau series and Blake Edwards' return to comedy.
In the Arab city of Lugash, the world's most valuable diamond, the Pink Panther, is in a museum, and the tour guide is showing the security it's kept under. A thief manages to seize it and leaves his calling card, a glove with the letter P. The Shah of Lugash wants the French police on the case.
In France, we see the incompetent Inspector Clouseau (Peter Sellers) failing to stop a bank robbery because he's spending time harassing a beggar who's actually the lookout man for the robbery. He's fired from his position by his supervisor Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) who hates him with a passion but Clouseau is reinstated when they need him for the Pink Panther case. The film has gags with Dreyfus having a gun shaped like a cigarette lighter and getting it confused with a real gun.
Clouseau is sent to Switzerland to find suspected diamond thief Charles Litton a/k/a “The Phantom” (Christopher Plummer) and tails his wife Claudine (Catherine Schell) to find his whereabouts.
Claudine seduces Inspector Clouseau to get rid of him and slips him a mickey and Charles shows up. Charles was never the diamond thief in the first place, it had been Claudine all along and did it to add excitement to their marriage.
There are scenes throughout, though not here, where Clouseau's manservant Cato (Burt Kwouk) ambushes him, attacking him with martial arts to keep him on his toes. It's a recurring slapstick bit they do in all the Pink Panther movies where they fight, break through other peoples' homes, and smash things.
Dreyfus hates Clouseau so much he's been trying to assassinate him all this time and keeps on missing, and sent to an asylum. This is all wrapped up in an explanation at the end where they also let us know Clouseau has been promoted to Dreyfus' position as they all eat at a Japanese restaurant. A waitress turns out to really be Cato in disguise.
