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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YOUNG BUMS
Cracked #243, March 1989
w & a: Rick Altergott
Western about the Lincoln County Regulators, “Dirty” Steve Stephens (Dermot Mulroney), “Doc” Scurlock (Keifer Sutherland), Dick Brewer (Charlie Sheen), Charlie Bowdre (Casey Siemasko), and Jose Chavez y Chavez (Lou Diamond Phillips), ranch hands under the tutelage of John Tunstall (Terence Stamp) that all join Billy “The Kid” Bonney (Emilio Estevez). Tunstall has a feud with rival rancher Lawrence Murphy (Jack Palance).
Lou Diamond Phillips' big breakthrough was as Ritchie Valens in La Bamba.
One of Murphy's hired hands, McCloskey (Geoffrey Blake), joins up with Tunstall, while Doc attempts to court Murphy's Chinese ward, Yen Sun (Alice Carter). Murphy's men kill Tunstall, leading his lawyer friend Alexander McSween (Terry O'Quinn) to arrange for the Regulators to be deputized and given warrants for the killers' arrest. Hotheaded Billy challenges Dick's authority as the group's foreman, as the Regulators attempt to take Murphy's henchmen in alive. Instead, Billy guns down several unarmed men, including McCloskey, whom he suspects of still working for Murphy. Newspapers paint the Regulators as a deadly gang headed by a larger-than-life outlaw, "Billy the Kid".With bounty hunters seeking them all over the West and unsure where to go, Chavez leads the others on a peyote trip.
One of the men on their warrants. Buckshot Roberts (Brian Kieth), tracks them down and a shootout ensues. Roberts barricades himself in an outhouse and kills Dick, and as a reaction, the rest of the Regulators shoot up the outhouse. This lead the others to go on the run, while an injured Doc goes his own way. Chavez reveals that Murphy's corruption led to the deaths of his mother and her Navajo tribe, and urges the others to abandon their need for bloodshed, but Billy takes charge as their new leader, determined to avenge Tunstall. Doc visits Yen Sun before rejoining the gang, and they kill the corrupt Sheriff William J. Brady (Danny Kamin) and his men. They meet with a furious Alex, who explains that their badges have been revoked. Though they are now wanted men, Billy insists that their actions will bring attention to Murphy's corruption. While Charlie revisits a brothel, Billy kills an arrogant bounty hunter, and the gang escapes to Mexico, where Charlie marries a local woman. Soon-to-be-sheriff Pat Garrett (Patrick Wayne) warns Billy that Murphy's men will make an attempt on Alex's life the following day.
At Alex's house in Lincoln, the gang is surrounded by Murphy's men and famed outlaw John Kinney. Realizing that they were lured into a trap, the Regulators survive an entire day's shootout. U.S. Army troops on the Houses take arrive, as does Murphy himself with Yen, who runs inside and is reunited with Doc. Murphy orders the soldiers to set fire to the house, while Alex's wife leaves unharmed and Chavez slips away. Trapped in the burning attic, the gang throws Alex's possessions out of the window, including a trunk with Billy inside, allowing him to surprise their attackers.
Young actors in the late eighties were often referred to as “the brat pack”, a reference to the previous generation of entertainers that was called “the rat pack”.
YOUNG EISTRAIN
Australian MAD #287, April 1989
w & a: Warren Brown
His real name is Greg Pead, which is actually funnier than his stage name.
Showcase for Yahoo Serious, a comedian who had his fifteen minutes of fame here in the U.S. during our brief period of Ozploitation in the late eighties. Young Einstein concerns the exploits of Albert Einstein as a youth. How he developed carbonated beer and went to the city to patent his formula, had it stolen and thus in danger of having the bubbles create the nuclear bomb, and along the way he invented surfing and rock & roll, and had a romance with Marie Curie (Odile LeClezio).
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? (1988)
dir: Robert Zemeckis
WHO DE-FAMED ROBBER RABBIT?
MAD #284, January 1989
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
Film noir that was a big hit for its many cameo appearances by characters from cartoons from the 30s-50s from different studios. It took place in 1947, with detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) reluctantly taking the case of animation studio head R. K. Maroon (Alan Tilvern) who suspects the reason for his star performer Roger Rabbit (Charles Fleischer)'s poor performance is that his wife Jessica (Kathleen Turner) is having an affair with Marvin Acme (Stubby Kaye). Eddie photographs the evidence, submits it to Roger, the next day Marvin is murdered. Roger has been set up and goes to Eddie to clear his name and this leads a plot by Judge Doom (Christopher Lloyd) of Toontown, the town where all the cartoon characters live, to destroy the area to make room for a freeway. Eddie, who previously hated 'toons', learns to appreciate them.
The MAD parody is about what was supposed to have happened after the story ended.
The character sitting on the curb is Baby Herman, Roger Rabbit's co-star, who acts like a baby on film, but is a talking adult who smokes when off the set. George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis were the main Presidential candidates of 1988.
'Patty cake' was what Jessica and Marvin were caught doing and literally that, not any actual sexual act. “I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way” was Jessica's tagline in the movie.
Benny, also voiced by Charles Fleischer, was Roger's taxi in the movie's big chase scene. Alfred Hitchcock is always shorthand for “movie director” when it's not Erich Von Stroheim. Mommie Dearest was a book written by Joan Crawford's daughter about how cruel she apparently was.
Howard the Duck, one of the first movies based on a Marvel character before the Marvel Universe was conceived for Hollywood, was considered one of the biggest flops of the 80s. I never saw it. Maybe in retrospect it wasn't as bad as people say it was.
WHEN ROGER RABBIT TECHNOLOGY TAKES OVER ALL OF HOLLYWOOD'S FILMS
MAD #285, March 1989
w: Stan Hart
a: Bob Clarke
As we all know, animation and live action has been done several times since the 80s, then there's CGI and deepfakes, and soon A.I. Will replace all of us.
THE GREAT TOON SURPLUS SALE
MAD #292, March 1990
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres
The lower left has Fox and the Crow which had few cartoons in the series and was already discontinued 40 years before this. There was a long-running comic book adaptation of it but even that was over long before most readers of this would have been born.
The weasel with the steamroller was one of Judge Doom's minions in the movie. Magilla Gorilla, next to Mickey and Donald, might be known by some.
German cover.
WHO FWAMED ROGER WABBIT?
Cracked #241, December 1988
w: Rick Kriegel (Lou Silverstone)
a: Walter Brogan
Elmer Fudd narrates the parody. Steven Spielberg wasn't the director. He may not even have been on the set. He was executive producer which could mean a lot of things.
Eddie spent a lot of time at a bar. The waitress was Joanna Cassidy.
Judge Doom had a solution called Dip, which was essentially ink remover, that he planned to execute Roger with.
Eddie hates Toons because one killed his brother. As he's about to be killed, Judge Doom reveals that he was that Toon, which is all Eddie needs to snap out of his hatred, turn the tables, and regain his sense of humor.
Disney release a few Roger Rabbit cartoons with their full-length movies in their attempt to bring cartoons back to theaters.
CRACKED INTERVIEWS ROGER WABBIT
Cracked #245, July 1989
w: Vic Bianco (Lou Silverstone)
a: John Severin
Cher, Morton Downey Jr., and Mel Blanc are the big Lakers fans.
Twinge is actually a noun and not a verb, as in “I have a small twinge in my arm”, maybe they meant it as a combination of 'Twins' and 'cringe'. Much of this parody looks rushed, in parts that will be evident in a minute.
MAD #288, July 1989
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Twins is about two twins separated at birth as the result of a medical experiment to create the perfect human being by having a woman inseminated by six men. The perfect specimen was Julius (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who was raised on a desert island another imperfect brother, Vincent (Danny DeVito) was a result of all the leftover DNA. The movie is about Julius finding Vincemt and their going on an adventure to find their real mother.
Many of MAD's movie parodies often begin with the audience in a theater on watching it at home and making comments about it. Here the splash panel is a drawing taken from the poster and the comments are all off-camera captions, suggesting Drucker didn't have time to draw anything else.
The parody is more about the actors' personalities and being twins but doesn't get into the plot about how Vincent owes a gambling debt and loan sharks are after him as well as a gangster after a device Vincent has in his possession. There's another plot where Julius has never been with a woman before and Vincent teaches him to cut loose. MAD gets their names mixed up too.
Vincent is a philandering letch who has a girlfriend, Linda, that's not used in this parody. Her friends tell her not to trust him. She has a sister, Marnie (Kelly Preston) who hates Vincent but meets Julius and develops a crush on him.
Julius goes to Los Angeles and seeks out Vincent at the orphanage where he was raised. They tell Julius how bad Vincent was, how he's probably in prison, he is for ignoring traffic tickets, and Julius finds him and bails him out. Vincent won't believe he's Julius' twin brother and keeps trying to ditch him. Julius keeps finding him by twin telepathy. Vincent gets tips from a the owner of a parking garage (David Caruso) that's a front for a chop shop and steals cars from them.
Also not in the parody: Vincent finds something in one of the cars he steals and finds out it's worth five million dollars. He has to go to Houston to get it. Julius finds out their biological mother is in New Mexico which is on their way but needs to take a shower first. Vincent sees this as an opportunity to abandon Vincent but just as he's about to leave he's visited by Linda and Marnie with a cake for his birthday. In New Mexico they go to the office of Dr. Mitchell Traven (Nehemiah Persoff), the doctor in charge of the experiment, to find their mother, but denies having anything to do with it until it makes Julius angry. All this time the loan sharks and a ganaster competing for the device are in pursuit of him. This road trip is about a third of the movie.
On the road, while the men and women are staying in separate hotel rooms, Vincent leaves and Marnie comes in, taking Julius' virginity. They have found out their mother, Mary Ann Benedict (Bonnie Bartlett), at an artists' colony. She was a famous artist who founded the colony but denies who she is because she assumes they are trying to scam her, saying Mary Ann is long dead.
Also not in the parody 2: Vincent becomes disillusioned he no longer has a mother and abandons everyone in the desert, driving to Houston to get his money. He finds out it's a fuel combustion engine and gets his money. The people giving him the money are there to steal it and abandon him but he doesn't care. The gangster that was after him tracks him down as does Julius, they outsmart the gangster, and Julius convinces Vincent to do the right thing and the the engine to its proper owner.
They use the reward to start a legitimate corporation. The mother sees this in the newspaper, realizes they were honest people, and reconnects with them.
TOILET ZONE
Cracked #236, July 1988
w: Steve Skeates
a: Bob Fingerman
Twilight Zone is an anthology show that's been rebooted several times, each episode with a self-contained story that starts out as a realistic event that gets incresingly disturbing with a twist ending, and is often fantasy or horror based.
The parody has host Rod Serling ending up in the 80s with President Ronald Reagan and the casts of Leave it to Beaver, I Dream of Jeannie, Sgt. Bilko, I Love Lucy, and The Partridge Family, half of which came after the fifties and were already in color.
Saturday Night Live did a similar bit with Ricky Nelson repeatedly repeateadly going to the wrong home, ending up in reruns of other shows, and then finding he's in The Twilight Zone. They also had a recurring bit during one of their "lost" seasons called Limits of the Imagination.
NEIGHBORES
Australian MAD #278, April 1988
w & a: Peter Broelman
Not to be confused with the Dan Aykroyd/John Belushi movie. This was a soap opera that took place on a street in Edinsborough, Victoria. The main characters were Charlene (Kylie Minogue) and her husband Scott (Jason Donovan), Jane Harris (Annie Jones), and Helen Daniels (Anne Haddy).
The Logie is an industry award for TV shows in Australia.
Jim Robinson (Alan Dale) lived in one house. Des (Paul Keane) was married to Daphne (Elaine Smith).
Lucy (Kylie Flinker) was another of the Robinson children. Henry (Craig McLachlan) was fromone of the Ramsays, another family on the block.
The show often had celebrity guest stars, so in this version the guest was then prime minister Bob Hawke.
The show became popular because of Kylie Minogue and vice-versa, and she started her career with a cover of The Loco Motion.
Adapted from the British series of the same name. Four provinces competed in a series of games for charity. The hosts were Fiona MacDonald and Billy J. Smith.
The British and Australian shows were both adapted from a French show which was borrowed from an Italian show.
THREE MORONS AND A BABY
MAD#280, July 1988
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres
Peter (Tom Selleck), an architect, Michael (Steve Guttenberg), a cartoonist, and Jack (Ted Danson), an actor, are all living together, and are always having swinging bachelor parties at their home in New York. One day, as Jack leaves town for a film shoot, Peter and Michael find a baby on their doorstep, the result of one of Jack's trysts..
They panic because they know nothing about raising babies. There's a subplot, that while he're gone, Jack has arranged for them to take a package for a friend. Some guys come to pick up the package, Peter doesn't know the package is heroin and thinks it's the baby, and gives the guys the baby, which they think is a cover for the heroin and they think the talcum powder they were given is the heroin. Peter and Michael are being watched by narcotics officers who know there's a transaction going on.
After Jack's come home, he asks his mother (Celeste Holm) to take care of the baby, which she refuses to do to teach him a lesson. The Three Men come up with a scheme to trap the drug dealers in an elevator in one of Peter's buildings while Jack distracts them,and film the whole thing, then give the film to the officers. The drug dealer and the baby plot have nothing to do with each other, so this must have been intended as two different movies.
The doll in the middle left panel is of John Higgins from Selleck's Magnum P.I TV series.
The mother of the baby (Nancy Travis) comes to pick it up and go back to England and they're relieved, then they realize how attached they've become to the baby and run to the airport to get it back, miss the plane, go home defeated, go back home to find her there. They ask her to move in and the movie ends with the four of them raising the baby together.
