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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ALIENATED³
Cracked #276, November 1992
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: John Severin
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) is once again awoken from a coma having escaped in her last movie and landed in a penal colony on the planet Fiorina (Freedonia, a reference to the fictional country in Duck Soup).
Leona Helmsley was a real estate tycoon in the 80s and 90s.
She is the only woman on the planet which is disruptive to the prisoners and meets Clemens the prison doctor (Charles Dancer)
Clement tells her the rest of the crew is dead and they must perform an autopsy on Newt, the six year old girl, since she may be carrying an alien embryo.
She also must repair Bishop (Lance Henriksen), the android that was with them.
This was the debut movie of David Fincher. Although he's a big director now previously he had only been known for music videos.
He asks to be shut down.
Dillon was played by Charles S. Dutton.
Ripley and Clemens have an affair before he's attacked by the alien, which had hidden in the escape pod Ripley came in.
At this time, it was controversial that TV character Murphy Brown was a single mother.
Don Martin, long-time MAD artist, was poached by Cracked in the late 80s with the promise of more money and complete ownership. Here were the strips he did for that same issue.
UPDATE:
CRACKED VISITS THE ALIEN 3 SET
Cracked Monster Party #17, August 1992
w: Scott Franklin (Frank Santopadre) & John Leary
a: Walter Brogan
Mary Hart was host of Entertainment Tonight and there was a lawsuit that her voice gave one of her viewers seizures. It was the plot for an episode of Seinfeld.
The Alien parody I posted also has the scenes I posted with John Hurt, Harry Dean Stanton, Yaphet Kotto, and Ian Holm.
ALIENATORS
MAD #268, January 1987
w: Dick DeBartolo
a:Jack Davis
Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) has awakened from 57 years of suspended animation with PTSD about the voyage of the previous movie where she was the only surviving crew member. The corporation she worked for doesn't believe her story and goes back up with her to investigate. She doesn't want to go back up because of what happened unless they bring back-up to kill any potential aliens.
Jack Davis was probably one of the most prolific illustrators of all time and one of the regulars at MAD. He got the likenesses down pat as usual except for Bill Paxton as Hudson. Most likely it was an editorial decision to draw him as a chicken since throughout the movie he plays a coward. He's responsible for the movie's most famous line.
There's one likeness Davis didn't get we'll get to in a minute, though.
Burke (Paul Reiser) has her go up with marines who were also comatose, and Bishop (Lance Henriksen) who she discovers is a robot.
Corporal Hicks (Michael Beihn) is commander of the troops fighting the aliens.
On the planet that they thought was deserted except for the aliens they find a six-year-old girl named Newt (Carrie Henn)
Burke tries to impregnate Ripley with alien eggs while she's sleeping so he can use her to smuggle the eggs to earth, and kill everyone else off so there won't be another side to the story.
Most of the marines sacrifice themselves to the aliens nut Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop escape. The main alien has stowed away and Bishop has been cut in half.
There's also an action figure of him that breaks in half. They don't make action figures for kids anymore. That's just stupid.
Then again, I'm posting pages from MAD and Cracked, so who am I to judge?
Jack Davis may not have seen the movie since the aliens look nothing like the real ones. The first movie had been out for seven years and there were plenty of books with pictures of the film by then, so probably he didn't care. They made sure to get it right for the cover, or nobody would buy the magazine.
In Germany, they did their own cover.
ALIEENS
Cracked #226, March 1987
w: Joe Catalano
a: Bill Wray
I don't have much to say here that I didn't already say above.
They didn't pun the name of Private Vasquez (Jenette Goldstein) in the MAD parody. They did also mock what are thought of as masculine traits though.
I'm not sure who that is in the full body cast either.
UPDATE:
From the June 1987 issue of Playboy.
Her manager is based on Phil Silvers.
The strip normally didn't have sex jokes or jokes about her breasts but things got more explicit towards the end.
But it's a robot and not really her, so I guess the exploding breasts aren't quite as disturbing as it looks. The director looks more like Steven Spielberg than James Cameron. See how it's a different letterer in some of the panels, so they probably added dialogue at the last minute.
Looks like we have another royal flush (Mad, Cracked, Crazy, and Sick). Let us proceed, shall we?
MAD #212, Jan. 1980
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
The crew of the spaceship Nostromo (Noisy Roamer) awakes from their deep sleep and we are introduced to Dallas (Tom Skerritt), Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Brett (Harry Dean Stanton), Kane (John Hurt), Ash (Ian Holm), Parker (Yaphet Kotto), and of course Ripley (Sigourney Weaver).
After waking up from their coma, they check in with the mother computer (using the same joke basis from their 2001 parody).
They receive a distress signal and land on the moon to investigate it. They discover a group of eggs.
One of the aliens has hatched from the egg and affixed itself to Kane's face and has acidic blood.
They decide Kane is okay but another alien suddenly bursts through his chest.
When Brett goes looking for the cat (who must have also been in suspended animation, which I wondered when I was nine), he is also killed by the alien, which is now loose in the ship.
The remaining crew finds Ash is a traitor who's been ordered to bring the alien back with them. He gets in a fight with Ripley and they discover he is a robot.
With only three left (plus the cat) and the alien on the loose, they have no choice but to escape. It gets Parker and Lambert before they're able to get out, leaving Ripley the only one remaining.
In Germany, they put it on the cover.
Now let's see how Cracked looked at it.
ALLIEN
Cracked #164, November 1979
a: John Severin
Their take was that Alien had too much gore and this was a guide for where it was. This was a gimmick used a few years earlier for the movie Cannibal Girls.
Repeat gag of “mother ship” being someone's actual mother.
They give away the part about Ash being a robot at the beginning.
The face-clinging...
...and its removal, then the blood acid scene
Chest-bursting, then the scene where Brett is killed looking for the cat.
Ash decapitated
Parker and Lambert are killed getting rations.
AILIN'
Crazy #59, February 1980
w: Murad Gumen
a: John Reiner
This was from something they did called Shorty Cinema Satires which also parodied Moonraker and Rocky II.
AILIEN
Sick #130, December 1979
w & a: Dave Manak
The movie alludes to the fact that there are no sounds in space with the tagline “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
Bananas had UGH-Lien which I don't have. Spaceballs has always been my least favorite Mel Brooks film. In addition to lacking the repertory company of his previous movies, the spoof genre was starting to die out by then. Airplane! had started a different style without comedians and a deadpan delivery. What also made Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles work is that Mel Brooks and his collaborators had the tropes of monster movies and westerns embedded in their brains, having grown up on them. He was 51 when Star Wars came out. Spaceballs had one or two funny lines, but that's only because I always find something in even the worst comedies.
Why do I bring this up? Because towards the end it pays tribute to the famous chest-bursting scene from Alien using the same actor. UPDATE:
The tagline for the movie was “In space,no one can hear you scream”. From the British edition of MAD. There was no cover art for the domestic one.
From the Norwegian edition of MAD. It says Alien singular even though it came out after the sequel, but I'm going to guess it's for the first one.
UPDATE 2:
UGH! LIEN
Bananas #31, c. 1979
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
