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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SLEEPWALKER, TEXAS STRANGER
MAD #343, March 1996
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
A regular police show about Cordell Walker (Chuck Norris) a member of the Texas Rangers, a part of the state police. His partner was Jimmy Trivette (Clarence Gilyard) and they worked with D.A. Alex Cahill (Sherree North). His former captain was C.D. Parker (Noble Willingham) who now owns a bar and in this parody is mistaken for his Uncle Ray.
Around the start of the internet which was around the time of this show's popularity, we had 'Chuck Norris jokes' based on this program that were all factoids people made up about his strength and masculinity like “Chuck Norris was bitten by a poisonous snake and than the snake died” or “Chuck Norris' bearskin rug isn't dead, it's a live one afraid to move”
WRECKER, TEXAS MANGLER
Cracked #308, July 1996
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
Lou Silverstone makes a reference to his former MAD co-worker Sergio Aragones.
The officers at the end are James McDaniel, Dennis Franz, and Jimmy Smits of NYPD Blue which was notorious for showing nudity.
TWIT-STERS
MAD #349, September 1996
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Paul Coker, Jr.
In Twister, Bill (Bill Paxton) is a former tornado tracker who used to work with his ex-wife Jo (Helen Hunt), and has come to their site to get her to sign divorce papers so he can marry his fiancee Melissa (Jami Gertz), and they're stuck tracking the next tornado with Jo.
Note how many of MAD's mascots are caught up in the storm in this spread, including the apteryx getting its feathers blown off.
The beginning shows Jo experiencing a tornado as a child, which takes away her father and starts her lifelong obsession with them. Cut to the present of Bill on the current site where he used to work. He's retired and started a new job as a weatherman and his crew is glad to see him. He's only there to get Jo to sign divorce papers. Jo's finished Dorothy, a machine they've invented that will get into the heart of the tornado and be able to warn civilians in time. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes) is a rival meteorologist with a similar prototype he's showing the press.
Melissa was curious about Bill's past exploring tornadoes on the ground but realizes how dangerous it is, and also realizes still a spark between Bill and Jo. She's constantly being interrupted by patients calling her as they drive through tornadoes.
Jo and her team of stoners and slackers go to visit her Aunt Meg (Lois Smith), an artist that's always glad to see them and feed them,. Over meals everyone discusses the most powerful tornadoes they've ever seen. Jo's made several Dorothy prototypes that keep breaking. A tornado eventually destroys Aunt Meg's house and injures her.
They comment how the movie could be improved with Wizard of Oz dialogue though the movie does reference it by calling their machine “Dorothy”
Meg's sculpture is left standing and looking they realize something similar to it could work as a makeshift Dorothy prototype which ends up working. Melissa can't relate to Bill's return to his former adrenalin-based lifestyle and leaves him, and Bill reconciles with Jo.
The parody continues with the Wizard of Oz parallel and has Helen Hunt waking up in her sitcom Mad About You with co-stars Paul Reiser, Anne Ramsay, Leila Kenzie, and John Pankow.
OY, WHATTA STORY
Cracked #306, March 1996
w: Andy Simmons
a: John Severin
Another parody I suspect was written from press materials before being able to see the movie.
The toys, led by Woody (Tom Hanks), are a piggy bank (John Ratzenberger), a Slinky dog (Jim Varney), Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles)Bo Peep (Annie Potts), and Rex the Tyrannosaur (Wallace Shawn). They eavesdrop on their owner Andy (John Morris)'s birthday party. The father is not in the movie.
Andy's new toy, an astronaut named Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) fascinates all the other toys. Buzz thinks he's a real person and doesn't realize he's just a toy like the rest of them. Woody is jealous of Buzz's popularity and worried about being shunned, schemes to kill him and sets a trap to get him to fall out a window.
Buzz's catchphrase is “To infinity and beyond”
The other toys get mad at Woody and turn against him, but don't go outside like in this, and there's no teddy bear.
Woody feels bad for what he did and goes out to get Buzz, and now they're lost. They find Andy and his mother at a pizza arcade restaurant but end up in the home of Andy's neighbor Sid (Erik Von Detten), a sadistic kid who takes toys apart and has an even more menacing pit bull. Woody and Buzz, once enemies, reconcile when Buzz realizes he's onlt a toy and gives up.
At Sid's house, examples of his previous toy “experiments” are strewn about the room, and Woody and Buzz fear they'll be next. Sid shows up with plans to destroy them the next day when he wakes up.
Reference is made to Apollo 13, a live-action Tom Hanks movie.
In the real movie, Andy is moving, and Woody and Buzz catch up and their other toy friends in the van using the M-80 Sid planned to torture Buzz with. After everything has now settled down, it ends with Christmas and Andy's new gift, which is even worse competition for them, a puppy.
APPLIANCE STORY
MAD #345, May 1996
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Steve Smallwood
THREE MASCOTEERS
Cracked #121, November 1974
a: John Severin
David Carradine, Tom Laughlin, and Lee Majors' characters are not in the movie.
D'Artagnan (Michael York) inadvertantly ends up insulting Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain), The Three Musketeers, at different times when he first arrives in town, and must duel with them. They are attacked by the Cardinal's guards and he teams up with them temporarily. They are impressed with his swordsmanship and split the money they have taken with him. D'Artagnan finds lodging which he almost turms down until seeing that the elderly lady's wife Constance (Raquel Welch) is there.
It is Ron Ziegler, John Ehrlichman, and John Mitchell of the Nixon staff in the second panel
Though D'Artagnan has proven himself a worthy fighter, there's no room for him as a musketeer.
Meanwhile, the queen (Geraldine Chaplin) has confided her troubles in Constance, who asks d'Artagnan to go to England and retrieve the diamonds. D'Artagnan and the three musketeers set out. Planchet is played by Roy Kinnear.
On the way, the cardinal's men attack them. Only d'Artagnan and his servant make it through to Buckingham, where they discover the loss of two of the diamond settings. The duke (Simon Ward) replaces the two settings, and d'Artagnan races back to Paris. Porthos, Athos, and Aramis, wounded but not dead as d'Artagnan had feared, aid the delivery of the complete necklace to the queen, saving the royal couple from the embarrassment which the cardinal and Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) had plotted.
THE THREE DUNCE-KETEERS
Sick #101, December 1974
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jerry Grandenetti
Constance's husband is played by Spike Milligan.
The movie was remade in 1993 directed by Stephen Herek.
THE THREE MUSKE-TWITS (1993)
Cracked #289, May 1994
w: Andy Simmons
a: Walter Brogan
In this retelling, Aramis is Charlie Sheen, Keifer Sutherland is Athos, Oliver Platt is Porthos, and Chris O'Donnell is D'Artagnan.
Tim Curry is the Cardinal (hence the Rocky Horror joke), and Rebecca DeMornay is Milady DeWinter.
Julie Delpy was Constance, Gabrielle Anwar was Queen Anne.
Jack Kervorkian was a doctor in the 90s that invented a machine to make suicide easier. I've mentioned Lorena Bobbitt a million times, but if you didn't catch it before, she was the one who cut off her husband's penis,
This is the earliest parody posted so far, pre-dating any of these magazines or comics. The Three Must-Get-Theres was released in 1922.
TIRED CROCK FAR FROM FUN
Cracked #309, August 1996
w: Greg Grabianski
a: John Severin
The premise was that a group of aliens was sent to earth (title of the show) to observe it taking the guise of a family of humans. They would convene on the roof of their house. The family was Dick Solomon (John Lithgow), Harry (French Stewart), Tommy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and Sally (Kristen Johnson)
Dick took the identity of a physic professor at Pendleton College. His co-worker was Mary Albright (Jane Curtin).
Tommy, the one disguised as a teenager, pretended to be a high school student.
