THE NAKED BUN 2 1/2: THE SMELL OF BEER

THE NAKED GUN 2½: THE SMELL OF FEAR (1991)
dir: David Zucker

THE NAKED BUN 2 ½: THE SMELL OF BEER
Cracked #269, January 1992
a: Walter Brogan

It's weird they'd do a spoof of a spoof. They managed to make it less funny. And if you weren't familiar with the original source, you wouldn't even know it was a comedy from this.

The prologue begins with Frank Drebin (Leslie Nielsen) at a dinner for President Bush Sr. and his cabinet, with the misogynistic hijinks of Drebin accidentally abusing Barbara Bush. The dinner is to celebrate an energy conference that is to happen the next day withAlbert Meinheimer (Richard Griffiths) to give a lecture about renewable energy. Quentin Hapsburg (Robert Goulet) is the head of an oil company.

At the table are energy secretary John Sununu, Vice President Dan Quayle and his wife, Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis and senator Edward Kennedy. Sununu's caption is a reference to how he flew around the country to expose forgeries of George Bush baseball cards from Bush's days as a college player.

There was an explosion at Meinheimer's lab which Frank Drebin, along with Ed Hocken (George Kennedy) and Nordberg (O. J. Simpson, before he was O. J. Simpson) helping to investigate. Jane (Priscilla Presley), who is now dating Hapsburg, was once a fiance of Frank's who broke off their engagement and is now a potential witness.

Life Stinks was Mel Brooks' attempt at doing a movie that wasn't a parody of anything. The sight gag in the third panel is a reference to one where the body outlines at the scene of the crime were shaped like Egyptian paintings.

Hapsburg and his henchmen plan to replace Meinheimer with a double (Earl Hacker) so Meinhemer's speech at the conference will now be about oil as a renewable energy source.

At the conference, someone manages to find the real Meinheimer who will give the speech, but Frank doesn't know that. He knows the real Meinheimer has a birthmark on his butt, so he will pull down the pants of the man he thinks is an impostor to show he's fake.

The next few pages show what it would be like if other movies used the Naked Gun formula, which is basically “What if these movies were parodied by Cracked?”

Airplane!, the first Zucker movie, used the “What is it?” gag a few times, and the Panic parody did the 'damn/dam' pun.

The more successful Naked Gun franchise evolved from the far superior TV series Police Squad!, which was more of a parody of 70s detective shows like Columbo or Cannon than a series of comedies about a clumsy cop. The latter flopped because the ways of watching television were much different forty years ago, and without paying attention, viewers didn't know that with the deadpan delivery and lack of laughtrack it was still a comedy using the Airplane! formula.

When the team of The Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams made Airplane!, it worked because such a way of parodying hadn't been done before, absurd lines delivered completely straight by actors who would've been in the very movies being parodied, and plots and background music that weren't comedic at all. By the time the Naked Gun movies were released, it wasn't surprising serious actors would do comedies and even though conventions were still being parodied, actors were mugging for the camera and there were “funny” situations.

POLICE SQUAD: O.J. ON THE ROCKS
MAD #344, April 1996
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

MAD parodied them too, or rather the movies and not the series. Again, treating it as if it weren't a comedy, but probably using it because O. J. Simpson played Nordberg.

O.J. Simpson, declared innocent, vowed to find “the real killers”. Behind him is lawyer Johnnie Cochran. Under the desk is Lisa Marie Presley, who was married to Michael Jackson.

In the first panel is a caricature of Rodney King, the victim of a police beating after trying to get both sides to make peace in the Los Angeles riots a few years earlier. The third panel has Leslie Nielsen narrating as Dracula from the Mel Brooks movie Dracula Sucks. The glove was supposedly planted as evidence. The running gag in the Naked Gun movies is that When Frank Drebin parks he drives into trees and hydrants.

Mark Fuhrman was famous for his racism.

CASABONKERS

CASABLANCA (1941)
dir: Michael Curtiz

MAD #300, January 1991
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker

Part of their 300th anniversary issue, where instead of parodying current movies, they did several of what were considered the most famous movies of all time.

Rick (Humphrey Bogart) owns a casino and bar in Casablanca during the beginning of World War II. People from all sides come into his club and he turns and blind eye when people commit questionable activities there, such as Signor Ferreari (Sydney Greenstreet).

Ugarte (Peter Lorre) has come into the club with passports that he has stolen and plans to sell. They would allow anyone who owned them to travel freely throughout Europe. He has asked Rick to hold on to them before his contract comes, but is arrested before that can happen.

Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) enters Rick's place with her husband Victor Lazlo (Paul Henreid), a Czech resistance fighter. They were the ones to have gotten the passports so he can continue his work in America. She notices Sam (Dooley Wilson), a person for her past, is there and asks him to play “As Time Goes By” for her. Rick hears this, and having asked before that it never be played again, sees she is in the bar now.

After the bar closes and everyone leaves, Rick drowns his sorrows and requests the song (with the most famous and most misquoted lines in all moviedom) and we find out why it was so special. Flashback to better times. Rick and Ilsa were lovers in the past and once lived in Paris.

When news hits that the Germans are invading Paris, they decide to meet at the train station that night. When they do, he gets a note from her saying she can't come with him and can't explain exactly why.

Strasse (Conrad Veidt), who was sent by Germany to make sure Lazlo doesn't get the tickets, starts singing the German anthem in the bar. It is drowned out by the French, using the house band to play La Marsellaise. Renault (Claude Rains), a corrupt police officer, closes the bar on the pretense that there is illegal gambling in the club.

After the place is evacuated, Ilsa confronts Rick about the tickets. He still refuses to hand them over until she pulls out a gun. She can't go through with shooting him because she's still in love with him. Back when they were in Paris, she was still married to Victor but thought he was dead. At the last minute, she found out he was still alive.

Knowing this he has a change of heart, deciding to help Lazlo with his work for the Resistance, and making her think she will stay with him and they will continue their life together.

Rick arranges to have Lazlo released with the aid of Renault in exchange for setting him up with possession of the tickets. At the last minute, Rick does a switcheroo on all of them in one of the all-time most famous movie endings.
It then ends open-endedly, with Renault suggesting the two of them leave Casablanca and join the Resistance themselves.

from MAD #285, March 1989 Recasting Old Movies With Today's Famous Wrestlers by J. Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano.