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.
Updated daily. There's posts besides this one archived in the sidebar on the right, you clods!
if you're at a laptop or desktop, right-click and open link on pages and they'll be clearer and legible in a new window.
Sunday, September 3, 2023
SPACED 1999
SPACE: 1999
1975-1977, ITC (UK), SYNDICATED (US)
SPACED 1999
MAD UK #185, c. 1977
w: Hitch Hitchings
a: Alf Saporito
Here's another look at the future of the past. This was a series about Moonbase Alpha, a nuclear waste storage site stationed there in 1999. An explosion sends the moon out of Earth's orbit and the series centers on situations involving worlds the station encounters.
The base was led by Helena Russell (Barbara Bain) and John Koenig (Martin Landau), with Victor Bergman (Barry Morse), their science advisor.
The next to last panel has various British 70's TV personalities such as the casts of Are You Being Served? and the UK version of General Hospital. Barry Morse had also been on US's The Fugitive.
The other versions of Russell and Koenig that they see are Landau and Bain's characters from Mission:Impossible, their previous series. The “planet” is Lew Grade, producer. And the punchline is the characters are the Thunderbirds, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's show before this. The Andersons had done many sciene fiction shows before this, but this was the first to be done with live actors.
SPACE: 1998
Cracked #133, July 1976
a: Sururi Gumen
Allen Carter (Nick Tate) was the chief pilot of Moonbase Alpha.
The “instruments” gag was later used in Airplane!. An obvious joke anyone could come up with but funnier in the latter because it was in and out quicker.
Star Trek may have been considered a fly-by-night series in the seventies but sure came back with a vengeance. In a while we'll be devoting two entire weeks to the franchise.
SPACE $9.99 MARKED DOWN FROM $22.68
Crazy #20, October 1976
w: Len Herman
a: Ernie Colon
On the first page of the British Mad parody, the Minister with the big eyebrows is Denis Healey, who was then Chancellor of the UK.
At the bottom of page 4, the guy with his fingers crossed is game show host Hughie Green. The swishy character from Are You Being Served (John Inman) is talking to a couple characters from Coronation Street. I think the actresses are Patricia Phoenix and Violet Carson. They reference another character from the show, named Len Fairclough.
The last panel on the page makes the Fugitive joke, and also references David Janssen's most recent series, the detective show Harry O.
Here's something weird. I came across a fan site for Space: 1999 that lists parodies of the show; you've got most of them here, but one of them is really obscure.
It's an Italian comics magazine from 1979 called Ti Faccio un Cratere Cosi', which apparently translates idiomatically to something like "I'm going to tear you a new asshole". The cover shows parodies of Space: 1999, A Fistful of Dollars, and a combination of Grease and Saturday Night Fever. There's very little information about it to be found online, but there is a store listing:
If I'm reading it right, this was a one-shot supplement to a comics series called Goldrake, a semi-pornographic James Bond rip-off. This may have been semi-pornographic itself, seeing as the lead story is called Space: 6969. But that's all I could find. Has anyone out there ever heard of this?
On the first page of the British Mad parody, the Minister with the big eyebrows is Denis Healey, who was then Chancellor of the UK.
ReplyDeleteAt the bottom of page 4, the guy with his fingers crossed is game show host Hughie Green. The swishy character from Are You Being Served (John Inman) is talking to a couple characters from Coronation Street. I think the actresses are Patricia Phoenix and Violet Carson. They reference another character from the show, named Len Fairclough.
The last panel on the page makes the Fugitive joke, and also references David Janssen's most recent series, the detective show Harry O.
Here's something weird. I came across a fan site for Space: 1999 that lists parodies of the show; you've got most of them here, but one of them is really obscure.
ReplyDeletehttps://catacombs.space1999.net/comics/parody/w2parody.html
It's an Italian comics magazine from 1979 called Ti Faccio un Cratere Cosi', which apparently translates idiomatically to something like "I'm going to tear you a new asshole". The cover shows parodies of Space: 1999, A Fistful of Dollars, and a combination of Grease and Saturday Night Fever. There's very little information about it to be found online, but there is a store listing:
https://www.endrucomics.it/prodotti/ti-faccio-un-cratere-cosi-space-1999-a-fistful-of-dollars-grease-comics-spoof/
If I'm reading it right, this was a one-shot supplement to a comics series called Goldrake, a semi-pornographic James Bond rip-off. This may have been semi-pornographic itself, seeing as the lead story is called Space: 6969. But that's all I could find. Has anyone out there ever heard of this?