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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THE WICKED DREAMS OF PAULA SCHULTZ (1968)
dir: George Marshall
MOVIE SPOOF
Sick #62, August 1968
w: Bill Majeski
Sorry everything's all scrunched up. It's all I could find on YouTube. Well, there are a couple other things. Another copy of the whole movie's there, but the link's only been there a year and I don't trust any links to stay if they've been up less than two years. There's also the opening titles on my own web page, which contains mostly animated sequences from movies. (Suggestions always welcome, but do a search to make sure they're not already there first). Almost everything I've posted a spoof of is on YouTube for that matter, the catch is they charge money, and I ain't payin' fer nuthin'.
WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966)
dir: Mike Nichols
WHO IN HECK IS VIRGINIA WOOLFE?
MAD #109, March 1967
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
Called that because the some of characters sing it to the tune of Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?, but just its meter, probably because they couldn't get the rights, as if it's the funniest thing they ever heard. It had an adults only warning when it was released theatrically before there was a rating system, though by today's standards there's nothing particularly dirty other than their behavior and somebody being called “angel boobs”. It had to pass MAD's ratings, which is why they used 'heck' instead of 'hell' in the title.
George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) are a forty-ish married couple coming back from a faculty party late at night drunk and as soon as they get home they start sparring verbally and going through wild mood swings,fighting, making up, being passive-aggressive, loving, then yelling at each other again.
Martha neglected to tell George she invited Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis). He's a much younger professor who was also at the party and she's his wife. They see the fighting and don't really want to be there, but now George insists they stay for drinks and some games.
Honey goes upstairs to the bathroom to freshen up and Martha joins her, leaving the men alone. Nick talks about his job as a biology professor, and George keeps forgetting whether the subject is biology or history. When Honey and Martha come down, Honey asks about the son Martha mentioned while they were gone, which George says he doesn't want to talk about. The subject of their son keeps coming up again. George disappears into the garage, gets out a rifle, shoots at them all and scares them, but it turns out to be a joke gun and an umbrella comes out, then they all laugh. The younger couple also get drunk, Honey can't handle her liquor, and throws up.
They all decide to call it a night. George and Martha drive them home, but they stop at a bar because the women want to go dancing. Honey dances but suddenly doesn't like the music and sits down. Nick and Martha dance together. They all drink and fight some more with Martha belittling George for being a failed author.
Martha takes off abandoning George by the side of the road, returns home to find Honey asleep in the car, and suspects Martha and Nick have gone off together. Martha is just belittling Nick, making him do chores, calling him “houseboy”, and he just wants to leave.
Martha brings up their son again, who she says is coming home from boarding school to celebrate his birthday, but George tells her he died in a car accident and that he ate the telegram that informed them. It's revealed that the son never existed and the “games” they were playing were about who could humiliate each other the most in front of the guests. George had to kill the son off to punish Martha for letting out their secret, and the son was made up to keep their marriage together. Nick and Honey decide it's finally time to leave.
In MAD's parody of The Music Man that I posted a few months ago, I went off on a tangent about how humor magazines parodied this hippie phenomenon, portraying them as a bunch of dirty kids who have sex all the time and do drugs and never take baths. Sick especially used them as a go-to target. I said then that it would be impossible for me to find every use of comedians not getting the counterculture, but I should put up more pages from issues of Sick.
The issue I had with 101 Hippie Jokes was missing a back cover, now that I've seen it, it continues the jokes from the inside.
Here's more hippie material from issue #58, February 1968.
Hippies made up the rumor about smoking bananas themselves. There's a part of Steal This Book that helped spread the hoax, saying the insides of bananas had hallucinatory properties. Donavan's Mellow Yellow was said to be about smoking bananas.
I've said Fred Wolfe is Paul Laikin. I believe this to be true because Paul Laikin has edited practically every MAD imitation in existence and used the same material in different magazines. Some of the recycled material has had both bylines.
Speaking of hippies, in 1991 there was a movie of The Doors directed by Oliver Stone, starring Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison. Cracked didn't do a parody of it, but did a poem about it in #263, September 1991.
SICK MOVIE CLASSICS
Sick #59, March 1968
w: Bill Majeski
Sick was always doing parodies in the guise of “reviews” using movie stills. Here they had stills from a bunch of movies that were then already 6-13 years old.
CONFESSIONS OF AN OPIUM EATER (1962)
dir: Albert Zugsmith
THE BACHELOR PARTY (1957)
dir: Delbert Mann
SEX KITTENS GO TO COLLEGE (1960)
dir: Albert Zugsmith
THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! (1966)
dir: Norman Jewison
There was a time in the sixties when there were all these long big-budget comedies with everything but the kitchen sink and they were all trying to outdo each other with the longest title. Here, I'll let them explain the plot.
MOVIE SPOOF! MOVIE SPOOF!
Sick #48, November 1966
w: Bill Majeski
One of the many movies MAD (and sometimes Cracked and Sick artist) Jack Davis did a poster for.
THE REBEL
Sick #17, December 1962
w: Bill Majeski
a: Jack Davis
Sick was always trying to separate itself from MAD in its early years by being more topical. "Sick" as in ill rather than gross. I think this is supposed to be against racism but I don't know if today it might come off as unintentionally racist itself. That's the fifties for you.
This was one of many wanderer anthology shows, but Johnny Yuma (Nick Adams) wasn't on the run from or in search of anything. He was a former civil war soldier with what you might call PTSD today, writing of his exploits when going from town to town fighting injustice when necessary.
MOVIE SPOOF: PSYCH-OUT
Sick #63, November 1968
w: Bill Majeski
Movie made to cash in on the counterculture, about a deaf runaway (Susan Strasberg) who goes to San Francisco to find her missing brother and discovers the Haight-Ashbury scene.
Here's the whole movie on YouTube if you want to see it. I don't know why it would be age-restricted. Unless it's the poster's choice.
