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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WEB*STAR
MAD #251, December 1984
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres
Alex Karras, football player turned actor, went out of his range to play a football player turned sports announcer, George Papadopilus. Together with his wife Katherine (Susan Clark, his real-life wife) they're a newly wed couple in Webster who are the godparents of the child of the title (Emmanuel Lewis) that get custody after the death of Travis Short, the child's natural father. The show was inspired by the NBC sitcom Diff'rent Strokes which had a similar premise of a rich white man acquiring custody of small black children, the star played by someone with a kidney disease that made the character eternally five years younger than the real actor. ABC saw this and said “Hold my beer”.
Alex Karras' most famous role before this was Mongo in Blazing Saddles and the parody makes a few background references to it.
Merlin Olsen was one of the first known football players-turned-actors with Father Murphy. Marv Thornberry, Dick Butkiss, Bubba Smith, and John Madden were other athletes-turned-actors who did commercials.
Jerry Silver (Henry Polic II) was Katherine's secretary.
WEBFOOT
Cracked #205, August 1984
a: O.O. Severin (John Severin)
Eventually Diff'rent Strokes moved to ABC and the two shows were teamed together.
From If TV Shows Were Combined, same issue.
George Peppard was Hannibal and Mr.T. was B.A. Baracus.
WAYNE'S HURLED
Cracked #273, August 1992
w: Lou Silverstone
a: John Severin
Based on the recurring Ssturday Night Live sketch about two teenagers in Aurora, Illinois, Wayne Campbell (Mike Myers) and Garth Algar (Dana Carvey) who broadcast a public access show from Wayne's basement.
Benjamin Kane (Rob Lowe) is a TV producer who is in bed one night with his girlfriend (Ione Skye) and while flipping through channels come across Wayne's World, which she is a fan of. He thinks how he can buy it. Wayne and Garth finish their show and hang out at the donut shop and Wayne keeps running into his ex-girlfriend Stacey (Lara Flynn Boyle) who still carries a torch for him. Later, Wayne and his friends hang out at the gasworks and he falls in love with singer Cassandra Wong (Tia Carrere)
Wayne learns Cantonese to get with Cassandra. Meanwhile Benjamin woos Noah Vanderhof (Brian Doyle-Murray), an arcade owner, as sponsor for Wayne's World, even though he hasn't even bought the rights to the show or even talked to Wayne. He eventually buys the show, gets them a set at the television studio that looks exactly like his basement, tells them to read off cue cards, but doesn't tell them the show's sponsored by the arcade.
Wayne gets around being told to read from the index cards while interviewing Noah by writing smug comments about him that only the audience can see but Noah can't. He's reprimanded for it, quits, has a falling out with Garth, then makes up.
Wayne and Garth find out from a security guard at a concert that a record executive is coming into town and figure out a way to cut into the sattelite feed in his limo. Wayne's plan is to get Cassandra on his show but to do that he has to get her back from a richer and better-read Benjamin who's seduced her and promised to make a music video. The movie has several different meta-endings where things work out both wrong and right for everyone.
Bill and Ted had movies around the same time, thus the ending here. I'm not sure what the Fred Flintstone reference is. Time travel, maybe? Alice Cooper had a bit part in Wayne's World.
BRUCE WAIN'S WORLD
Cracked #288, March 1994
w: Lou Silverstone
a: John Severin
Val Kilmer was also Batman in two movies. Some of these villains are based one real ones, some aren't.
The Riddler (Jim Carrey), The Joker (Jack Nicholson), Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), and Penguin (Danny DeVito) were the main Batman villains.
MAD #168, July 1974
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
Katie Morosky (Barbara Streisand) is a political crusader working at a radio station in the 1940s. After a broadcast she goes out for drinks with her co-workers and runs into Hubbell Gardiner (Robert Redford), a passed out sailor on leave, who she once know in college.
For a few years Streisand was married to Elliott Gould, in the lower left panel.
The movie flashes back to their college days, when Katie spoke on behalf of the Communist party talking about the dangers of Hitler overseas to a mocking crowd.
Katie is working at a restaurant Hubbell, his friend J.J. (Bradford Dillman) and their girlfriends (I'm not being sexist by not naming them. They weren't named in the movie either) and make fun of her with their WASPishness and opposing political views. Despite this, Katie and Hubbell still hit it off at a college dance. In the forties, Katie brings home a sleeping Hubbell.
Katie's friend was played by James Woods, not well known enough to get the Drucker treatment yet.
During the backdrop World War II in New York City, the film shows how Katie and Hubbell's relationship consummates and blossoms. Hubbell is a sailor in the war but is really an aspiring novelist, which keeps them together despite political differences. She makes friends with his friends, which include old college mates.
Katie and Hubbell have arguments, then make up, and eventually move to Malibu where Hubbell becomes a screenwriter. It's during the Red Scare, all of Hollywood is under investigation, and Hubbell tells Katie to keep her political thoughts quiet for the sake of his career.
In the movie, they make a passing joke about how Katie would dress as Karl Marx at the costume party, which MAD must have missed.
The two finally realize politics is tearing their marriage apart and they get divorced. Fast forward to the sixties when the two meet again in New York City with he a TV writer and she still a political activist.
THE HECK WE WERE
Crazy #5, July 1974
w: Steve Gerber
a: Robert Graysmith
THE GORE OF THE ROSES
MAD #296, July 1990
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
The movie is a story told by Gavin D'Amato which he tells a client a about a marriage gone wrong before the guy considers a divorce himself. The story begins with a colleague of his, Oliver Rose (Michael Douglas), whose marriage to Barbara (Kathleen Turner), starts out perfect when they meet at an antiques show, buy a house, have kids, and hire a maid. Things begin to begin going downward after an argument in bed one night.
After a heart attack, Oliver is rushed to the hospital and Barbara didn't visit him because she says things were too hectic, then she confesses she wants a divorce. Neither wants to give up the house and there's no way either of them is obligated to give it up, so they finally agree to live in it separately, This results in endless fighting including his not telling her he ran over the family cat. They assure the kids (Sean Astim, Heather Fairfield) it isn't that bad and even try to reconcile.
Douglas and Turner had been in Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile together. He appeared in Fatal Attraction which had a scene where his mistress boils the family's pet rabbit. In the scene where the Roses try to reconcile, she serves him pate which she says is from the dog. Later a scene of the dog outside is edited in, and I'll wager that it was done at the last minute because of comments from test audiences
Oliver embarasses Barbara at dinner, she retaliates by running over his sports car. They continue to destroy each others' silverware, ornaments, furniture, and other possessions. Barbara hides in the attic. Eventually they find themselves hanging from a chandelier which Oliver and the maid try to rescue them from, but it's too late and they fall to their death.
Here Gavin has been telling the story to Mike Tyson who was going through a divorce case of his own during this time and served several years for domestic violence.
There are appearances by Geraldo Rivera and Bob Vila here. Zsa Zsa Gabor was arrested in 1990 for hitting a cop.
WAR IS HELL (1954)
MAD #14, August 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood
from Movie...Ads!, about how the advertisement makes a movie look more exciting than it really it is, back before people relied on hype months in advance from talk and entertainment shows.
WARPED GAMES
MAD #244, January 1984
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
At top secret government site NORAD, Dr. McKittrick (Dabney Coleman) is trying to sell the general (Barry Corbin) on the WOPR an artificial intelligence system that will figure out various strike possibilities to defeat the enemy. In Seattle, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) is showing his classmate Jennifer (Ally Sheedy) how he can hack into the school's computer system and change his grade in science, and he can change hers if she wants. He hacks into what he thinks are advance copies of the new video games but the WOPR system developed by Stephen Falker (John Wood), who originally named the system after his son Joshua.
At NORAD, the system has been hacked, and it appears they are on the brink of a nuclear invasion. They figure out that it was David Lightman who hacked into their system, track him down, and arrest him. He's brought to NORAD and locked in a room, but escapes on a bus touring NORAD.
Not just a Kramden cameo but Norton there in the manhole.
Having found out Steven Falker is still alive, David has found he's on a remote island off Oregon and the only one to save everyone from the brink of armageddon before the WOPR can figure out all the digits to the nuclear code. David and Steven direct the machine to play tic-tac-toe and throught that it realizes there are no possible winning outcomes.
In Germany, as well as other countries, everyone's always known who U.S. Leaders are but it doesn't seem to work the other way around.
MAD only had 3½ pages to work with but even with twice that Cracked didn't adapt much more.
WAR GAINS
Cracked #200, December 1983
a: John Severin
The movie began with NORAD taking workers through war games to show what went on there before the WOPR was fully developed.
David found out he was the one who hacked in the system by watching the news. He disposed of everything hoping he wouldn't be caught he was arrested before it was too late.
Hawkner faked his own death and isn't interested in helping anymore since he feels death is inevitable. They covince him as the earth verges on Defcon 1. It's a scale of how safe we are with Russia with 5 being the safest.
