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.
Updated daily. There's posts besides this one archived in the sidebar on the right, you clods!
if you're at a laptop or desktop, right-click and open link on pages and they'll be clearer and legible in a new window.
Steven Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) is the patriach of a household in a Southern California suburb, where he lives with his wife Diane (JoBeth Williams) and their three children Robbie (Oliver Robins), Dana (Dominique Dunne), and Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke). Carol Anne speaks to the static on the TV at night.
You see, at one time before cable was the standard, and infomercials had not yet been invented, television sets used to sign off at night and then have nothing but static until the morning, and... oh, never mind.
The family gets into an argument with the neighbors when his remote control is interfering with their football game. Its significance in the movie is that animosity turns to empathy at the end, which is irrelevant when they leave that part out of the parody. The first omen of the house being haunted is that Carol Anne's pet canary dies. Robbie can't sleep because he's afraid of the tree he sees out a window during a thunderstorm but is assured there's nothing to be afraid of. The parody makes too much out of the fact that the parents smoke pot to relax at night.
Carol Anne, being so small, has no fear of the ghosts inside the TV static, who she refers to as “the TV people”. The ghosts escape and start to do weird things in the house, first harmless things in the kitchen.
The next night, the tree Robbie was scared of comes to life and tries to kidnap him. They save him and Carol Anne has been kidnapped by the ghosts. They call a paranormal team to investigate consisting of lead scientist Martha Lesh (Beatrice Straight) and her assistants (Richard Lawson and Martin Casella).
The children's room that was cordonned off has everything floating around, one of the investigators imagines himself peeling his face off in the bathroom, and Carol Anne communicated with the family through the television.
The family and the paranormal experts decide to hire a psychic, Tangina (Zelda Rubenstein) who in my opinion was creepier than anything in the movie. Tangina can see the other plane and can figure how to rescue Carol Anne by getting her to looking into the light, testing where things are with marked tennis balls.
The dollhouse says Ibsen because of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, and the doll you see is of The Crypt Keeper, which Davis had drawn years earlier.
They omit the “just when you think it's over” moment where they arrange to get out after the father's last day of work, and all hell breaks loose the minute he leaves.
Diane is thrown around in her bedroom, the two youngest kids are attacked by a doll in their room, and it's revealed all along that the house has been built on top of ancient graves.
POLTERGOOSED
Crazy #94, April 1983
w: David Allikas
a: Bob Camp
Another essential scene MAD omits is when Steven, who works for the agency that builds these developments, is being lied to by his boss Mr. Teague (James Karen, who people from NY and NJ would recognize from Pathmark commercials) about how they move the graves as well as the tombstones when they build new real estate on old graveyards.
The movie ends with the family evacuating prematurely and going to a hotel. The punchline in this is that it's the Bates Motel. In Cracked they decided to go a step further and do a mashup of the two.
POLTER-PSYCHO-GEIST
Cracked #221, August 1986
w: Mortimer Post and Mort Todd
a: John Reiner
Dee Snider, Stephen King, and Mikhail Gorbachev aren't in the article. Cracked would just include everything from the issue on their cover around this time.
Since Poltergeist ended with the Freeling family checking into a motel, they decided to pick up where the movie left off. Here it's the Bates Motel from Psycho run by Norman Bates (Tony Perkins).
The bellboy here is Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein.
The twist ending for Psycho was (spoiler) that the corpse of Norman's mother was kept in the basement motel and he would pretend to be her.
There were several unnecessary sequels to both Poltergeist and Psycho.
THE ELEVENTH HOUR SPECIAL
Crazy #63-69, June-December 1980
w: David Allikas
a: Walter Brogan, Dave Morris
Midnight Special was a series on Fridays after The Tonight Show comprised mostly of live musical acts. The Eleventh Hour Special was a regular feature in Crazy comprised of song parodies. The show had rotating hosts, often Wolfman Jack.
This first page had a parody of “In the Navy” by the Village People.
“Dream Police” by Cheap Trick and “My Sharona” by The Knack. It must have just been a co-incidence that Weird Al Yankovic's parody was also about bologna.
The Eagles- “Heartache Tonight”
Donna Summer & Barbara Streisand- “No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)”
The Ramones- “Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio?”
Pink Floyd- “The Wall”
Blondie “Call Me”
Billy Joel- “You May Be Right”
Linda Rondstadt- “That'll Be the Day”, cover of a Buddy Holly song.
The Pretenders- “Stop Your Sobbing”
Rondstadt was dating California governor and Presidential candidate Jerry Brown. Chrissie Hynde is wearing a button that says “We're English” even though she's from Ohio.
Kenny Rogers- “The Gambler”
Blues Brothers- “Gimme Some Lovin'”
Paul McCartney & Wings- “Comin' Up”
GUYS & DOLLS
Sick #121, June 1978
w: David Allikas
a: Bill Burke
Sick tried to do what MAD did parodying traditional musicals and putting them in contemporary settings. Here they updated the backdrop of Times Square's gamblers and gangsters in Guys and Dolls with the then-current life of pimps, prostitutes, porn, and drugs. If they were to do it today, it would be about tourism and theme stores. They obviously knew nothing about vice other than what they saw in TV, movies, and comics, and not using a Mort Drucker or Mort Drucker imitator, they didn't even try to attempt likenesses for the most part.
Sky Masterson was played by Marlon Brando in the movie, so he's portrayed here as Brando in The Godfather. The mayor is a pun on Ed Koch.
In order to raise money for a crap game, Nathan Detroit (Frank Sinatra) bets Sky Masterson that he won't be able to ask out Sarah Brown (Jean Simmons) from the Save Our Souls mission, a church that works in the streets, and he woos her pretending to be a recovering gambler. He ends up falling in love with her and attempts to save her church. Here she's a Moonie, a religious cult known at the time for brainwashing runaways. They were called that because they were disciples of Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
The show continued where All in the Family (see previous entry) left off. Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) bought the neighborhood bar and the show mostly took place there. Early on his wife Edith (Jean Stapleton) died and he was left to take care of his niece Steffie (Danielle Brisebois).
The original show was about a working class bigot always complaining about a changing world. His daughter and son-in-law lived with him and they were always at odds about politics, current events, and the differences in generations. He hated the African-Americans next door and they hated him just as much. It was very much a product of the early 70s. But without those things or even his wife as a sparring partner, the second version of the show now longer had any bite to it. Something MAD addressed in their parody.
MAD #228, January 1982
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
Archie enters the bar and greets the cast. His partner Harry (Jason Wingreen), regular customer Mr. Van R. (Bill Quinn), friend Barney Hefner (Allan Melvin), and waitress Veronica (Anne Meara). They are visited by former partner Murray (Martin Balsam).
His maid Ellen Canby (Celeste Holm) is surprised when he doesn't throw racial slurs at her.
Then the Christmas Carol homage begins. Archie is visited by three ghosts, the first of which is producer Norman Lear.
The second ghost is his late wife Edith.
The third ghost is George Jefferson (Sherman Hemsley) the aforementioned African-American neighbor he would fight with.
A clip from the episode of All In the Family with Sammy Davis Jr. is on the write-up of that show.
Unlike A Christmas Carol, there's a fourth ghost in this.
Archie realizes being a racist is what made him what he was. (Hope the slurs aren't triggering anything for anyone. That's what he was like). Funny how ythe parody shows he's no longer a bigot while being condescending, which would be bigoted as well.
.
ARCHIE'S BONKER'S PLACE
Crazy #93, February 1983
w: David Allikas
a: Kent Gamble
The intro is to the tune of the All in the Family theme song.
The premise of this parody is the bar is doing slow business. First they install video games (people weren't exactly racially sensitive 40 years ago).
Jose (I think the writer thought is name was Juan) and Raul were the two cooks.
Another niece Billie (Denise Miller) was added later in the show.
As was co-worker Katherine (Yvonne Wilder).
Archie finds out what's been taking his business away.
MORK AND MINDY MEET LAVERNE AND SHIRLEY FOR HAPPY DAYS AT ARCHIE'S PLACE
Wacko #1, 1980
w: Paul Laikin
a: Kent Gamble
This is a mash-up of several shows but I'm putting it here because there are many, many many more parodies of those three other shows, all of which are forthcoming.
Mork (Robin Williams) and Mindy (Pam Dawber) are already there.
The person in the last panel is Fred (Dean Scofield), a waiter from early on in the show Archie clashed with because of his homosexuality.
Laverne and Shirley (Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams) walk in.
Richie and Fonzie (Ron Howard and Henry Winkler) from Happy Days are next.
The “18½ minutes” refers to the missing gap in the Watergate tapes.
ARCHIE AN' THE “SHRINK”
Sick #132, April 1980
w: Arnold Drake
a: Jack Sparling
I guess this is a parody of this show. It doesn't say so, but it was printed when the show was airing in the first season when Edith was still alive.
They missed out on an opportunity for a joke when they talk about a moon and he has no pants.
His fare is a psychiatrist who leaves his briefcase behind. Archie has to go to his office and return it.
The lost briefcase plot was used in the episode of All in the Family with Sammy Davis Jr. that I just mentioned. The psychiatrist rewards him with sessions.
He punches the doctor during the session and now must take over for him.
He can't carry on the charade and the patent finds out he's an impostor anyway. Then he goes back home.
On radio show The Best Show (now a podcast), comedian Tom Scharpling takes calls from listeners, often one is a ringer who is his partner Jon Wurster, and the conversations often turn into one about the TV show he saw nobody else knows about that only aired once. One call was about the final episode of Archie Bunker's Place, which ends with Archie going to CBGB's to find his niece and he ends up dying in the electric chair.
