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 WRETCHES OF ECCHFLICK
MAD #276, January 1988
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
Tells the story of three friends, widow Alexandra Medford (Cher), divorcee Jane Spofford (Susan Sarandon), and single mother Sukie Ridgemont (Michelle Pfeiffer), who all meet and are seduced by Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson).
Titles of other Jack Nicholson movies are on labels throughout.
The three women have a weekly meeting and over wine talk about who would be the perfect man. They don't realize that the new man in town is the man they conjured up. Daryl has bought the Lenox mansion, a historical landmark because witches had been murdered there centuries ago. They all first meet Daryl at a town concert that he interrupts snoring in the back row. Neighborhood housewife Felicia (Veronica Cartwright) knows that Daryl is really the devil and tries to warn everyone and nobody believes her. Her husband (Richard Jenkins) tries to calm her down. Later, Alexandra runs into Daryl who invites her over for lunch and seduces him. She finds him vulgar but is drawn to him.
Felicia falls down a flight of stairs at the recital, and in the hospital is convinced Daryl is responsible. He visits Jane, who played cello in the town recital, and teaches her to be uninhibited with her music. The three woman meet at the mansion, and initially angry after finding out Daryl's been seeing both Alexandra and Jane, and has the hots for Sukie, all play tennis and realizing he's magic agree to share him. Felicia is reporter for the town paper and has slut-shamed them in the newspaper, but at one of their bacchanalias Daryl tells them not to worry as he swallows cherries, which Felicia regurgitates in her house. Since the movie is directed by the man who made the Mad Max and Babe movies, the puking is somewhat stylized.
Felicia's character assassination of Daryl becomes too much for him and he gets his revenge by telekenetically killing her, which convinces the women to cut him off, which makes him angry. He casts spells on all the woman, and puts Sukie in the hospital. The women also find out they've been knocked up by him and hatch up a plan where they feign interest in him and move into his mansion. While he's gone, they cast a voodoo spell and get rid of him. A couple years later it shows them with their babies that Daryl tries to reach through the TV.
German cover
Interesting trivia: This was George Miller's first American production. He didn't know that everyone had trailers on shoots and he told them he didn't need it. The producers saw this as a sign of weakness and took and advantage of it by not giving him what he wanted, until Jack Nicholson fought on his behalf.
THE UNWATCHABLES
MAD #276, January 1988
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Angelo Torres
Loosely based on the TV series of the same name, which was loosely based on the true story of Al Capone, though unlike the TV series the movie goes back to the beginning and ended with Capone.
Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) is talking to the press about being an “executive” in Chicago while being waited on, telling how selling liquor during the prohibition is just giving the people what they want. Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is starting his first day on the job as a treasury agent, being seen off to work by his adoring wife (Patricia Clarkson). He pledges to be virtuous and becomes the laughingstock of his office when his first bust turns out to be a bust. Dejected and on a bridge he's almost arrested for littering and possessing a gun, until telling the cop, Malone (Sean Connery) that he's a treasury agent. Ness later visits Malone to help assemble a group to help bust Al Capone.
The scene of raiding Capone's warehouse only to find crates full of umbrellas mirrors a special later where Geraldo hyped opening Al Capone's vault live on national television only to reveal it was empty.
Malone is reluctant at first but finally gives in. Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) is an accountant looking at Capone's financial records and figures Capone can be nailed for income tax evasion if only Capone can by linked to any of his businesses. Ness and Malone need another gunman for their group and recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia) from the police academy.
There are all kinds of references to movies that featured Connery and DeNiro throughout. Never Say Never Again was Sean Connery's attempt at making a comeback as James Bond. There must have been some Taxi Driver joke in the last panel but they forgot to paste in the caption. The last panel also has Robert Stack, Elliott Ness in the TV series.
Al Capone vows revenge after reading about Elliott Ness and his men (scenes are taken out of order here). At a board meeting, he gives a speech comparing the teamwork of his syndicate to that of a baseball team. A team needs get rid of the dead weight which he demonstrates by clubbing their weakest link to death with a bat (see clip below). Ness forms a raid on the men who are smuggling liquor in from the Canadian border with the help of their Mounties. They all fight, Stone is shot in the melee, and that makes Wallace really mad. They catch Capone's bookkeeper and get him to become witness, but he and Wallace are killed in an elevator right before the trial.
Ness confronts Capone at the opera house because it's become personal and wants to fight man-to-man without bodyguards (The friend that he says was killed was Malone, who's holding him back in this parody. Al Capone's hitman Frank Nitti [Billy Drago] figures a lot more in the film and is responsible for almost all deaths, but is only drawn here). Another of Capone's bookkeepers (Jack Kehoe), who is about to turn witness, but is placed under protective custody by Capone. Malone has just been murdered and his last dying words are that he knows the bookkeeper will be at the train station. While Ness is looking out for him, he sees a woman struggling with bringing a baby carriage up the stairs and helps her, and while trying to balance a shootout and helping her at the same time, loses control of the carriage which is stopped in the nick of time, in a scene lifted from Battleship Potemkin. While Capone is on trial, Ness finds out everyone is on the take including the judge, and blackmails him with that knowledge.
From Recasting Famous Old Movies With Today's Famous Wrestlers by John Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano.
UNTOUCHY BULLS
Cracked #233, January 1988
w: Mort Todd
a: John Severin
At the beginning, a store that refuses to pay protection is blown up by Frank Nitti, with a girl inside the store. Dan Aykroyd was in Dragnet '87 that year, playing the role originated by Jack Webb.
A Chicago alderman (Del Close) attempts to bribe Elliott Ness and his staff. When Ness comes home one night, Frank Nitti is outside threatening his family.
During the trial, Frank Nitti hands Al Capone a note telling him Malone has been killed and the jury has been bribed. Elliott Ness sees this, knows Nitti is about to open fire, but can't get the bailiff to confiscate the gun because Nitti has a note with permission to carry it from the mayor. Nitti realized he's cornered and runs away. This leads to a fight on the rooftop.
Capone's lawyer is portrayed by Raymond Burr as Perry Mason in this.
BLUNDERCATS
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: Mike Carlin
a: Steve Ditko
When I meet professionals, I like to bring up their most embarrassing work. Not necessarily their worst work, just not the most prestigious venue. I don't know why, it's a habit of mine. If it could harm their careers, I wouldn't do that, someone could do the same to me. But if it's just subpar work not representative of their careers, it's the equivalent of finding a picture of them in high school when they had bad acne or were president of the D & D club, and they usually have a sense of humor about it.
I've worked with Mike Carlin on and off over the years, usually as a writer on a DC project with him as an executive. I was a student at School of Visual Arts when he was a guest speaker as an editor at Marvel. I mentioned to him I know of him years before that at from Crazy, where he did a feature called Dirk McGurk, and his response was “I'm sorry. I think I owe you money.”
Steve Ditko was co-creator of Spider-Man, and even though he acknowledged he should have been better compensated for it, continued to do work like this as if it were equal, justifying work-for-hire and creator equity at the same time in his incoherent independent work.
As far as I know, this is the only movie or TV parody either of them did for humor magazines.
Thundercats was one of those after-school daily cartoons prominent in the eighties that existed to sell toys, similar to He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The ThunderCats, led by Lion-O, were Cheetera, Panthra, WilyKit, WilyKat, and Snarf. Their quest after waking from suspended animation was to acquire the Eye of Thundera from the sorceror Mumm-Ra, and keep Slithe and the Mutants of Plun-Darr from ruling Third Earth.
Lion-O's weapon was the Sword of Omens.
Ignatz was a mouse from the comic strip Krazy Kat, always trying to elude Offissa Pupp with his constant brick-throwing at Krazy.
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)
dir: Leonard Nimoy
MAD #271, June 1987
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), McCoy (Deforest Kelley), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Sulu (George Takei), Chekhov (Walter Koenig), and Scotty (James Doohan), is stranded on the planet Vulcan after the last movie. They returned Spock to his home planet to be revived, stealing the Enterprise against orders, then blowing it up when the Klingons were on it and then stealing their ship to get to Vulcan, Now they face court-martial.
Mark Lenard and Jane Wyatt appear briefly as Spock's parents.
As the crew is returnung home, there is an alien life form destroying the power of all vessels in uts path and issuing a signal that cannot be deciphered, and must be answered in order to be stopped. Spock determines the sound is the song of the humpback whale, a now-extinct species.
The crew must travel back in time to find two whales to duplicate the alien sounds, They go back to 80s San Francisco, and split into groups. Spock wears a headband to hide that he's an alien with different ears.
Kirk pawns possessions so everyone can have money, and he and Spock take a bus out to a zoo in Sausalito, where they find to whales, George and Gracie, when they are on a tour given by biologist Jillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks). Kirk keeps asking too many questions about the whales, Spock has dove into the tank to study them and determined one is pregnant. The two of them are dismissed as kooks and kicked out of the park. After work, Jillian sees them walking by the side of the road and she offers them a ride. She and Kirk end upgoing out on a date, where he admits he came from the future to take the whales and save the planet. Scotty and Dr. McCoy went to a plexiglass factory to get material for a tank to put the whales in, but in order to get it, had to pose as scientists.
Jillian beamed herself up into space with all the others, having no life on Earth without whales. The Enterprise crew goes to trial and their charges are all dropped because they saved the Earth. Except the penalty of disobeying a superior officer, for which Kirk is demoted from Admiral to Captain again. Jillian has become science officer in a different branch of Starfleet.
STAR DREK IV: THE VOYAGE BACK HOME TO THE FUTURE
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: Mort Todd
a: Bill Wray
Wendy Pini was the artist for a comic in the 80s called ElfQuest.
There was a bit where they noticed everyone was swearing, so they decided to swear too to blend in, but got it all wrong.
There's a scene where Chekhov is injured while trying to collect energy and taken to the hospital, and Kirk, McCoy, and Jillian pose as doctors to break him out.
STAR TRACKS
Cracked #127, September 1975
a: John Severin
Welcome to part two of twelve days we look at parody versions of the Star Trek franchise. We start with The Original Series that the spinoffs and movies evolved from. Yesterday were parodies from MAD, Sick, and Muppetmagazines. Today here are the Cracked ones. There are even more series than the ones parodied in the two weeks ahead and there continue to be more as we speak.
The premise of the show is explained in the opening. It's basically the first week of first year nerdspeak at this point, though I may explain aspects as if nobody's ever heard of the show before. It took place three hundred years into the future aboard the Starship Enterprise, exploring and discovering new worlds. Part of the main crew mas Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), executive officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Doctor “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Lt. Commander Scotty (James Doohan), Lt. Sulu (George Takei). Klingons and Tribbles were frequent aliens that appeared on the show.
Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett) and Lt. Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) are missing from this parody.
The last panel has Soupy Sales, Jonathan Winters, Bill Cosby, Don Rickles, Fess Parker, Jim Nabors, Joey Bishop, Jackie Gleason, Red Skelton, Dan Rowan, Robbie the Robot, and Phil Silvers.
From If the Fonz Guest Starred on Other Shows in #137, November 1976.
From If Michael Jackson Had Starred In... in #207, October 1984, art by John Severin.
Hurry-Ups in #228, July 1987, art by Rick Altergott.
From Cracked Collectors' Edition #103, July 1995
This was done in anticipation of the new series in #232, November 1987
The second panel features Daniel J. Travanti, Veronica Hamel, James B. Sikking, and Bruce Weitz of Hill Street Blues. The third is a refernce to Lost in Space.
The German humor magazine Kaputt reprinted the Cracked material and had a cover.
There have been several sketches on Saturday Night Live, most notably when William Shatner was at a convention telling fans to get a life. Here was there first.
