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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YECCH! OR WHAT A WASTE!
MAD #164, January 1974
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Don Martin
MAD's take on what we'd expect to see from monster movies soon. The issue of pollution was much more of a concern them. The EPA had only been around for three years so its impact hadn't fully taken effect yet.
SOILED GREEN
Crazy #3, March 1974
w: Marv Wolfman & Steve Skeates
a: Enrique Ventura
Science-fiction film about a dystopian society that takes place... last year. The meat shortage and population explosion were big hot-button issues when this came out so this was the major subject.
The population of New York City is 40 million and the main diet of the people is a food called Soylent Green, which is rationed weekly. William Simonsen (Joseph Cotten) is on the board of the Soylent corporation. He is in his luxury apartment which is broken into and he gets whacked. Robert Thorn (Charlton Heston) is the detective who investigates his murder.
Det. Thorn goes home to his squalid apartment which he shares with Sol Roth (Edward G. Robinson), a former librarian, and he's brought items he's taken from Simonsen's apartment such as real food, booze, and some books containing potential information about Simonsen and Soylent. Thorn goes back to Simonsen's apartment to further inventigate his girlfriend Shirl (Leigh Taylor-Young) who is holding a party for the rest of the women in the building. It's unauthorized because in the future, women are considered furniture that come with the apartments. Of all the things about a dystopian society, this seems to be considered normal.
Not shown: Thorn is being followed by Tab Fielding (Chuck Connors) an associated of Thorn who feels he “knows to much” while he's been searching for clues about the crime, excess people in the street are purged by scooping machines that take them away to an unknown location.
Sol goes to be euthanized, feeling he's already lived a long life, leaving only a note behind. Thorn finds the note and runs to see him before he dies. Then he sees he dead bodies being carried away in trucks and processed. He runs away and fights off people working in the processing plant but is defeated and carried away, but not before letting out his last words:
Spoiler:
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SOYLENT GREEN IS MADE FROM PEOPLE!!!!!!!
IT'S PEOPLE!!
MAD #161, September 1973
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
In articles about MAD, they like to talk about how this was the only cover without Alfred E. Neuman. A bit of revisionism going on, since there were quite a few. They said it was the best-selling issue in their history, which was true, though that's more due to it being a high point for magazines in general. And it had the return of the original Kurtzman logo for just one issue.
The disaster movie was the dominant genre for big-budget movies until Star Wars came along.
Captain Harrison (Leslie Nielsen) runs the Poseidon and warns Linorcos (Fred Sadoff), owner of the ship's cargo, that the weather can't handle full speed for the ship, but is ordered to do so anyway.
They establish who the main characters are, Rogo (Ernest Borgnine) and his wife (Stella Stevens) are planning to head to dinner that night but she's afraid to go because she's afraid of running into one of her former clients from when she was a prostitute (the fact that she doesn't ruins the chance for a storyline right there). Belle and Manny Rosen (Shelley Winters, Jack Albertson) are resting on deck and run into lonely bachelor Martin (Red Buttons). Reverend Frank Scott (Gene Hackman) has just given a sermon.
Susan Shelby (Pamela Sue Martin) and her brother Robin (Eric Shea) are en route to meet their parents. Robin knows everything about ships. They all have dinner on New Years Eve when disaster starts to strike.
A wave turns the ship upside-down right after the New Years celebration. Rev. Scott takes the initiative in rescuing everyone. He believes that by going to the top (formerly the bottom), they can be saved. Robin knows that the propellor shaft has a hull only an inch thick, the thinnest part of the boat, which is above water and their greatest chance of getting out. A waiter named Acres (Roddy McDowall) is aleady at the top and everyone else climbs a christmas tree to get there.
Rogo's wife needs to take off her dress to navigate their escape but is wearing nothing underneath so puts on his shirt. Nonnie (Carol Lynley), a singer we saw previously, is another one of the survivors. Mrs. Rosen doesn't think she can get through because of her weight.
The first panel has Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz.
The way to the engine room is now flooded so they have to hold a rope and travel underwater to get there. Susan won't go without her brother because he is missing since he had to go to the bathroom (which he didn't need to do since the ocean is basically one big toilet. And how did he use a toilet when they're all upside-down and would be broken?). The rope needs to be connected first and Mrs. Rosen offers to do that since she was a championship swimmer once. Rev. Scott, the leader of the group, won't allow her but gets trapped underwater trying to do it himself. Nonnie can't swim but Martin tells her to hold on to him.
Now they all have to walk across a walk to get to the hull. Mrs. Rogo doesn't make it and falls into the fire below. (not shown: Mr. Rogo won't go on without her and blames everyone. They all tell him giving up is not what a cop, his former occupation, would do.) Rev. Scott, in turning off the steam valve, falls below too. A rescue squad overhears the remaining survivors and brings them all to safety.
THE PERSPIRIN' ADVENTURE
Cracked #111, September 1973
a: John Severin
Ben and Willard were rats from the movie Willard that came out that year, they missed the opportunity to make a joke about how Ernest Borgnine was in that as well.
Mrs. Rosen dies after coming back up for air and saving Rev. Scott.
THE UPSEIDOWN ADVENTURE
Crazy #1, December 1973
w: Len Wein
a: Ross Andru & Vic Martin
Gene Hackman's previous role was Popeye Doyle in The French Connection.
Every one of these parodies made a joke about a cruise liner that sank in real life. I guess I would too.
CAPER GOON
MAD #164, January 1974
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
Moses Prey (Ryan O'Neal) is a con artist in Kansas whose main scam is he looks at the obituaries section of local papers, goes to the homes of the deceased, and tells the widowed spouses who answer the door he's a salesman they ordered a bible from. The widow, feeling guilty about it all, pays Moses for it. As he's making his rounds, he meets Addie Loggins (Tatum O'Neal), daughter of a woman who just died, hears she is to be taken to her family, is heading to a train station nearby, and offers to take her there.
MAD's used the joke “after searching far and wide for the perfect actor, I finally found the one-- my own child” before, so the hype about 'nepo-babies' is nothing new. If truth be told, you may as well go all the way back to John Quincy Adams.
Addie's mother was struck down in a hit and run. Moses needs to make a stop before dropping Addie off which involves stopping by where the man who struck down Addie's mother works and blackmailing him. She overhears that Moses has done this, feels the money is hers, and won't go until she gets it back, which is impossible now that he's spent it fixing up his car.
Moses is stuck with Addie, and tries to make the best of it. She has a habit of smoking while listening to the radio. (Imagine any movie with a 9-year-old smoking today, even if it's set in the depression.) He brings her along on his bible scam, which she figures out while forced to sit in the car alone, and comes out to join in on it.
Addie turns out to be as skilled a con artist as Moses and they team up. He teaches her other scams, like confusing a cashier so they end up giving more back in change.
Moses meets Trixie Delight (Madeline Kahn), an exotic dancer and her servant Imogene (P.J.Johnson) at a carnival, and offers them a ride. He's obviously trying to get in her pants, and has even spent all the money from his and Addie's cons to by a new car to impress her.
Addie knows Trixie will eventually leave Moses and Imogene knows she's promiscuous, so Addie and Imogene come up with a scheme to set Trixie up with the desk clerk at the hotel where they're all staying (Burton Gilliam), so Moses will catch them in the act and be the one to leave her. At the next hotel Moses and Addie are staying, they spot a bootlegger. She eavesdrops on him and finds out where he stores his liquor, Moses goes there later and steals it, then sells it back to the man. The man's brother is sheriff of the town (John Hillerman), arrests them, they escape, and he and his men chase them. If they cross state lines, there's nothing the sheriff can do.
They need to get rid of their car quick so they're not caught, and trade it for a broken-down truck from the first family they see (In the movie, it's a bunch of hillbillies, including a typecast Randy Quaid). Not shown: The police catch up to them. They can't arrest Moses but they beat him up. Addie has her money now, their partnership is over, and he takes her to her family as intended. The movie ends with her not going.
That last panel is taken from a picture of the infantilized Carroll Baker on the poster for Baby Doll
There was a short lived TV series based on the movie with Jodie Foster in the Tatum O'Neal role.
MAD #159, June 1973
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Angelo Torres
The basic premise was simply that Owen Marshall (Arthur Hill) was a defense attorney) with his assistant Jess Brandon (Lee Majors).
Owen's secretary was Freida (Joan Darling).
When Memorex cassette tapes were first introduced, their campaign was that their recording was so close to the real thing, that if a voice that could break glass, so could that voice when recorded.
Reindeer is caricatured as Burt Reynolds. Whenever he was used, they always drew him in the same pose as his nude Cosmopolitan centerfold. There's a poster of Cosmo publisher Helen Gurley Brown in the background, just in case the joke was too subtle.
NUT GALLERY
Spoof #5, May 1973
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Marie Severin & Herb Trimpe
Rod Serling's follow-up to Twilight Zone, where he hosted a trio of science-fiction or horror stories, introducing them in a night gallery, where each story was told through a painting.
Not only are Pat Boone, Joe Namath, and Woody Allen all still alive as of this writing, and Woody still wears the same fishing hat fifty years later.
