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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ZAPPING
MAD #258, October 1985
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
In Zapped!, Scott Baio and Willie Aames play two teenagers who obtain telekenetic powers that make them able to take off womens' clothes. From Academy Awards for Teenage Films. That's right, they call them “films” and not “movies”.
THE WONDROUS WOODSTOCK FAIR
MAD #134, April 1970
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones
The festival itself was a year prior to the filmed version. A chronicle of one of the first outdoor rock concerts and became synonymous with the 1960s and counterculture. Her's a parody of the Thomas Hood poem.
WOODSTOCK REVISITED
MAD #257, September 1985
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones
Here's what would happen 15 years later, to the tune of 'We Are the World'.
CRACKED GOES TO WOODSTOCK
Cracked #83, March 1970
a: John Severin
WITLESS
MAD #257, September 1985
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres
Rachel (Kelly McGillis) and her son Samuel (Lukas Haas) are two Amish who must leave their community to visit a relative in Baltimore. While at a train stopover in Philadelphia, Samuel witnesses a murder in the bathroom. They are detained by officer John Book (Harrison Ford) who needs Samuel to identify the killer, and sees a picture of Lieutenant McFee (Danny Glover) at the station and recognizes him as the killer.
McFee is a narcotics cop involved in drug dealing and shoots Book in a parking garage. He drives Rachel and Samuel back to their farm, and since he didn't get medical help after being shot, passes out on the way back home and wakes up at the farm. He has to stat there because he'll be found at the hospital and therefore put Samuel in danger.
As John Book is being nursed back to health, he starts to fit in with the Amish. They don't quite like how he's been flirting with Rachel but shows he's one of them when he joins them in raising a barn. He gives more info to Sgt. Carter (Brent Jennings) who's later killed by Chief Schaffer (Joseph Sommer) who warns Book he's going to find him. Book goes to town regularly to use the payphone and is picked on by townies. Unlike other Amish, he surprises them by fighting back.
Schaffer, McFee, and another cop, Ferguson (Angus MacInnes) find the community where Book has been hiding and come after him. McFee is shot and Ferguson drowns in a corn silo. Schaffer is about to kill book when Samuel rings a bell summoning all the Amish in the area, who surround him and force him to give up. John Book is cleared of danger and wrongdoing and returns to his city ways.
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.
VALLEY CHICK
MAD #258, October 1985
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
from MAD's Academy Awards for Teenage Films in the category of “Dopiest Story Lines in the History of Motion Pictures”, featuring Nicolas Cage and Deborah Foreman. Weird category considering it's based on Romeo and Juliet.
THE $OUND OF MONEY
MAD #108, January 1967
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Musical based on Broadway show based on memoir, top-grossing film of all time for a few years. It's the story of Maria von Trapp, birthname unknown (Julie Andrews), a free-spirited nun in Austria who leaves the abbey where she's staying to become governess to several children, makes them into singers, marries their father, and they all escape Nazis. And presumably they live happily ever after. They must have if she wrote a book about it.
Ingrid Bergman in The Belles of St. Mary's, Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story, Debbie Reynolds in The Singing Nun, Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels, and Donna Reed in Green Dolphin Street played similar roles.
Maria works for Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), who introduces her to his children. He is a strict, humorless disciplinarian since losing his wife. The family has gone through several governesses who either can't follow rules or just can't tolerate the family. The children are initially mean to Maria and play practical jokes on her.
Julie Andrews was previously a flying nanny in Mary Poppins.
Maria gains the childrens' trust by not ratting on them for their tricks. She finally bonds with them when they're all scared during a thunderstorm and sings to them. Captain von Trapp comes in and is annoyed she is having fun with them.
When the Captain leaves for the day, Maria takes the children out for a day in the country and teaches them all to sing. Captain von Trapp is again annoyed she betrayed him and fires her until finding out they sing so well. The Captain's friend Max (Richard Haydn) is impressed with their singing and wants to enter them in a concert, which he forbids. Maria is having feelings of love for the Captain and he for her. Baroness von Schraeder (Eleanor Parker), who the Captain is engaged to, sees this, tells Maria, who flees and returns to the abbey. Maria tells Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood) how confused she is.
Captain von Trapp breaks up with the Baroness because Maria is his real love and they get married. He has been drafted into the navy for the Third Reich. It's against his principles, so he plots for the family to escape. They enter the festival and sneak out after their act and the spotlight turns off of them.
The Nazis chase after the von Trapp family, who are able to hide in the abbey. The Nazis are unable to find them but can't leave because nuns secretly took their engines.
'Climb Every Mountain' was also used earlier as a metaphor, when nuns urged Maria to follow her heart and go back to Captain von Trapp.
Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins. My Fair Lady was previously the top champion of roadshow musicals.
From Clean Ads for Dirty Pictures in MAD #166, April 1974, by Larry Siegel and Jack Rickard.
THE SWINE OF MUSIC
Muppet Magazine, Winter 1985
w: Jay Itzkowitz
a: Manhar Chauhan
RAUNCHY BUSINESS
MAD #246, April 1984
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
From group of movies reviewed by Siskel and Ebert.
Back when there were dozens of teen movies every week and when Tom Cruise was still virtually unknown. This is about Joel Goodsen (Tom Cruise), a high school and future Princeton student who runs a prostitution ring while his parents are away on vacation.
Joel's best friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) suggests he has fun while his parents are away and hires a prostitute for him.
The first prostitute turns out to be a guy in drag (Bruce Young), which he turns away. That was the joke because in the eighties, transphobia wasn't just a prejudice that would get you canceled, it was the norm. Later, he gets Lana (Rebecca DeMornay), who is just his type. Lana hides from her pimp Guido (Joe Pantaliano) and Joel lets her stay at his house while he's in school. That night, he finds she's let a friend stay there. He, Miles, and the girls are all chased by Guido, which results in Joel driving his father's car into the lake. He finds out he can't pay for it, so Lana suggests they bring in more prostiutes to have a party at his house, and during the party, a recruiter from Princeton shows up.
The next day after getting his father's car back, Joel comes home to find his house burglarized. Guido has taken everything from the house as payback for Joel and Lana stealing the women he “owns”. He's able to buy it all back and put it all back before his parents return home. Everything's exactly as it was,
except for a decorative egg. The Princeton recruiter was impressed by... something.
From Academy Awards for Teenage Movies in #258, October 1985, written by Arnie Kogen
Detective series about three guys who operate a detective agancy out of their boat. Cody Allen (Perry King) and Nick Ryder (Joe Penny) are the main guys who run it with Murray “Boz” Bozinzki (Thom Bray), a computer scientist, who invented a robot, The Roboz, to help them.
They are often at odds with Lt. Quinlan (Jack Ging).
