RAVING BULLY

RAGING BULL (1980)
dir: Martin Scorsese

RAVING BULLY
MAD #224, July 1981
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

Biography of Jake LaMotta (Robert DeNiro), begins with him losing a fight to Jimmy Reeves (Floyd Anderson). His brother/manager Joey (Joe Pesci) tries to arrange for the middleweight title with mob connection Salvatore Batts (Frank Vincent). Jake has problems at home with his second wife (Theresa Saldana) in his Bronx tenement and his brother lives upstairs.

References are made in the splash to Kirk Douglas in The Champion and Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront. Although MAD graduated from cursing symbols to the word “friggin'”, they still couldn't use full-on curse words

Jake pursues a relationship with local girl Vickie (Cathy Moriarty) at the local pool despite already being married.

As Jake courts Vickie, he shows her around his house (in the movie, his wife's gone by this point, inexplicably never heard from again). After being married to Vickie, he withholds having sex before fights, including a big one he has with Sugar Ray Robinson (Johnny Barnes).

Events here are portrayed different chronologically than they are in the film. At the Copacabana, Jake discusses his defeat with the press but notices Vickie socializing out of the corner of his eye and suspects she might be fooling around.

There's a scene at the Copacabana we don't see here where Joey, keeping an eye out for Vickie, suspects her of fooling around as well, and beats Salvatore, suspecting him. They're ordered to make up. A year later, Jake still suspects Vickie of fooling around behind his back, and starts beating her, and says she did because she knows he won't believe her anyway. He asks Joey about it, Joey feels it isn't worth dignifying with a response, and gets attacked by Jake in his own home. Joey won't speak to Jake again and his career declines.

The use of home movies to connote the passage of time happens earlier in the movie, but is put here. Years pass, though, and Jake has now retired from boxing and owns a nightclub in Florida. He's convicted of serving alcohol to minors (not shown), and his wife divorces him. In this, she leaves him for Sylvester Stallone as Rocky.

There was a sequel to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. The movie's been used as punchline for “bad movie” which doesn't work because it was intentionally funny and it set out to be "bad".