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.
The Wizard of Oz is one of those things in everyone's DNA that everyone knows the story of, characters, situations, songs, lines, and phrases are part of the international lexicon. I probably haven't even seen it in nearly forty years and would recognize any reference, so would you. Therefore, I need not sum it up.
Oh, all right... In a nutshell, Dorothy (Judy Garland) is bored of her existence on a farm in Kansas, a tornado uproots her home, and she ends up in the land of Oz. Her house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, liberating all the citizens of Oz. She wants to get back home, and she's told by the Munchkins there that if she follows the yellow brick road she will meet the wizard (Frank Morgan), who will help her. Along the way, she meets the Tin Man (Jack Haley), Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who are seeking a heart, brain, and courage, respectively. They join Dorothy on her quest. The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), keeps trying to stop them every step of the way. They finally meet the wizard who acts all powerful and Dorothy's dog Toto, who was with Dorothy all along, rips a curtain to reveal the wizard is just a con man. He tells everybody what they've been looking for has been inside them all along. Dorothy repeats the mantra “There's no place like home” and wakes up on her farm. It was all a dream and the characters in her dream were all weird forms of farm hands and neighbors...
There, you happy now?
From Scenes We'd Like to See, back cover of MAD #123, December 1968, by Don Edwing and Jack Rickard.
MAD #128, July 1969
In this version, Auntie Em is Tiny Tim and Dorothy is Liza Minelli, who happened to be the real-life daughter of Judy Garland.
Aah, the old banana hoax. I learned about it from MAD. I don't know if they believed it or were in or it. Basically, while there were all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories about what hippies did, they created one of their own. They said that you can get high by grinding the inside of the skins into a powder and smoking it. I also don't know if that's what they thought you did or you held a whole unpeeled banana up to your mouth and lit it, then inhaled it, like it was a cigarette or joint.
The main munchkin is Dustin Hoffman while others are Simon & Garfunkel.
Pat Boone is the Scarecrow.
George Hamilton is the Tin Man and Michael J. Pollard is the Cowardly Lion.
Ed Sullivan is the Guru. There's no poppy field barricade to his castle.
MAD #157, March 1973
Here's some variations on the yellow-brick road theme.
The shock one experiences when leaping through time is always funny to me. If I woke up in the world of 2024 having been in a coma since 1994, sure things would be hard to adjust to. So much would be completely different and I'd be surprised by a lot of changes. I might be surprised we have no World Trade Center and things cost twice as much but it's not like I'd be completely lost like characters in movies seem to be. Except maybe if I was left loose in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But still, I'll run into people I haven't seen since the nineties and we'll talk as if no time has passed. And I still have some of the same clothes and furniture I've had since 2000. And people still bring up a prank I pulled in 1991 as if it still has repercussions (it hardly had any back then).
THE WIZARD OF ODDS
MAD #300, January 1991
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sam Viviano
The Good Witch is Vanna White. The Wicked Witch of the East is meant to be Leona Helmsley, a New York City real estate mogul. Among the Yupkins are Michael J. Fox, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda (in her Barbarella costume), Meryl Streep, and Sam Viviano. Imelda Marcos was first lady of Phillipines who had hundred of shoes.
The first panel has Reagan's budget director David Stockman and Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen of Wall Street. In the middle are Richard Gere and Julia Roberts as their characters from Pretty Woman.
The Witch of the South is Tammy Fake Bakker, wife of an indicted televangelist mocked for her excessive make-up. The wizard is a guy named Donald Trump, a millionaire with a big ego who was everywhere in the eighties and nineties. He seems to have disappeared from the public eye and nobody knows where he is now.
Cover to the British edition.
From Cracked's Sequels to Classic Movies, #180, September 1981, art by John Severin.
This article was longer ago now than this movie was then, so suck on that.
There was an updated musical called The Wiz with an all-black cast. It looks like the cover was commisioned far ahead of the interior and afterwards they figured it wasn't big enough for an interior parody.
Angelo Torres' first work for MAD. One of a few comic artists that started out as a horror and sciece-fiction guy, a contemporary of Al Williamson, but ended up in humor because he couldn't find much work in the other genres since they were basically killed by the comics code.
WHERE VULTURES FARE
MAD #130, October 1969
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres
In the winter of 1943-44, MI6 officers Colonel Turner (Patrick Wymark) and Admiral Rolland (Michael Hordern) assign Major John Smith (Richard Burton), five other commandos of the Special Operations Executive, and U.S. Army Ranger Lieutenant Morris Schaffer (Clint Eastwood) of the OSS to rescue U.S. Army Brigadier General George Carnaby (Robert Beatty), a chief planner for the Western Front. Carnaby was captured by the Germans and taken to the Schloß Adler, a mountaintop fortress in the Bavarian alpine village of Werfen, which is accessible only by cable car.
Disguised as German troops, Smith and his team are to parachute in, infiltrate the castle, and rescue General Carnaby before the Germans can interrogate him. After a Ju 52 transport plane drops the team into Germany, agent Mary Ellison (Mary Ure) is dropped separately in secret, her presence known only to Smith.
Anthony Quinn of The Guns of Navarone and Jim Brown of The Dirty Dozen appear in the first panel, and their movies are named, in case you didn't get that.
WHERE EAGLES BARE
Sick #71, November 1969
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Bill Robinson
Terry-Thomas, who played the commande=ing British officer in many WWII comedies, is in the corner of the bottom panel.
Clint Eadtwood is drawn as The Man with No Name from his spaghetti westerns. A Guns of Navarone reference is made here too with a caricature of David Niven.
Burton's real-life wife Elizabeth Taylor is portrayed here.
TRUE FAT
MAD #133, March 1970
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
In this western, Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) sees father (John Pickard) killed by Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) and travels to Fort Smith, Arkansas to seek his capture with the aid of Marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne). To get the money, she sells the property to Col. Stonehill (Strother Martin).
Mattie tracks down Rooster to talk business with him and convinces him with money and her persistence. He initially doesn't want her to join him but she wears him down. At the boarding house where she's staying, she meets LaBoeuf (Glen Campbell) a Texas Ranger who is also after Cheney. He wants to join them, teams up with Rooster, they keep trying to ditch Maddie, but she keeps catching up to them.
They get information about Chaney from members of his gang that are holed up in a shack. LaBoeuf feels Maddie is in the way while they're on Chaney's trail and tries to spank her, but Rooster intervenes. In the morning, when Maddie goes to the river to fetch some water, she falls down a hill, finds Tom Chaney himself, and shoots him with her father's gun that he had with her.
The rest of Chaney's gang comes after them and Rooster kills them off single-handedly. LaBoeuf is killed in the fracas. Tom Chaney is brought back home to justice and Maddie shows Rooster Cogburn her family graveyard, telling him she wants him to be buried in it when he goes. Rooster politely declines and rides off into the sunset. The last panel in this is a commentary on the increasing backlash against John Wayne.
THE YESTERDAY SHOW
Cracked #109, January 1973
a: John Severin
The Today Show has gone through many incarnations as NBC's morning news show. Its first version was The Dave Garroway Show and evolved from there. This incarnation from the early 70s had Frank Blair, Barbara Walters, Joe Garagiola, and Frank McGee.
Today was on opposite Captain Kangaroo.
THE TOO-DAY SHOW
Sick #132, April 1980
w: Arnold Drake
a: Jack Sparling
Later, it was hosted by Tom Brokaw and Jane Pauley, with movie critic Gene Shalit.
Phil Donahue wasn't on The Today Show, but had a syndicated morning program around the same time.
In 1969 their line up was Hugh Downs with Walters, Garagiola, and Blair. This was the cover of TV Guide by Jack Davis.
