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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LURKING GIRL
MAD #288, July 1989
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Angelo Torres
Movie about Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith), a secretary from Staten Island that takes the initiative while her boss Katharine Parker (Sigourney Weaver) is laid up and works on a deal with Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford).
New Dorp Lane is one of the main streets of Staten Island. Gorillas in the Mist was one of Sigourney Weaver's other movies. Ivan Boesky was one of the first people to be arrested for insider trading.
Tess is smarter and more ambitious than the people who work above her. Her boyfriend Mick (Alec Baldwin) doesn't treat her well and ends up cheating on her. Her co-workers set her up with a job interview with a man who turns out to be a sexual predator (Kevin Spacey unseen here, playing against type) and she fights back which gets her fired. The human resources director (Olympia Dukakis) gets her a job at another branch in the firm.
Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko from Wall Street makes a cameo in the first panel. Something Wild was a previous Melanie Griffith film. Nora Dunn and Joan Cusack are two of Tess' co-workers caricatured in the third panel. Olympia Dukakis' cousin Mike is in a picture in the last panel.
Tess gets a job at a different branch of the firm working under Katharine Parker, who ends up mentoring her and listening to her ideas. She proposes the idea of merging with a radio company but gets dismissed and told by Katharine to keep trying. Katharine breaks her leg skiing and takes a leave of absence, so Tess takes advantage of this time to pretend being the boss. While house sitting for Katharine, she sees Katharine was planning to propose Tess' merger idea as her own. Later that night, Tess crashes an executive meeting and meets Jack Trainer.
The middle panel has MAD editor John Ficarra, who was also from Staten Island.
The editors must have allotted four pages to the movie and then realized it wasn't enough, since most of the last half of the movie is condensed on the last page.
After a night of drinking, Jack takes Tess home. She attends the acquisitions meeting the next morning and when she gets there she finds she'll be working with Jack. He assures her nothing happened, and they agree to put it all behind them and work together. They become romantically involved, and he tells her there's someone else he plans to break up with. That other woman is Katharine Parker. When Katharine gets home, she finds out Tess has been assuming her position and crashes a meeting just as Tess and Jack are about to finish merging the company with that of Mr. Trask (Philip Bosco). Katharine accuses Tess of stealing her idea when she was the one who stole it from Tess. Katharine is sent packing and Tess is promoted.
The Year of Living Dangerously was another of Sigourney Weaver's earlier movies. Nostromo was the ship in Alien. In Dan Quayle's, campaign for Vice President, he said he looking like JFK would win him votes, but the most famous line in his debate was his opponent telling him “you're no JFK”
THE WONDROUS WOODSTOCK FAIR
MAD #134, April 1970
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones
The festival itself was a year prior to the filmed version. A chronicle of one of the first outdoor rock concerts and became synonymous with the 1960s and counterculture. Her's a parody of the Thomas Hood poem.
WOODSTOCK REVISITED
MAD #257, September 1985
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones
Here's what would happen 15 years later, to the tune of 'We Are the World'.
CRACKED GOES TO WOODSTOCK
Cracked #83, March 1970
a: John Severin
The Wizard of Oz is one of those things in everyone's DNA that everyone knows the story of, characters, situations, songs, lines, and phrases are part of the international lexicon. I probably haven't even seen it in nearly forty years and would recognize any reference, so would you. Therefore, I need not sum it up.
Oh, all right... In a nutshell, Dorothy (Judy Garland) is bored of her existence on a farm in Kansas, a tornado uproots her home, and she ends up in the land of Oz. Her house has landed on the Wicked Witch of the East, liberating all the citizens of Oz. She wants to get back home, and she's told by the Munchkins there that if she follows the yellow brick road she will meet the wizard (Frank Morgan), who will help her. Along the way, she meets the Tin Man (Jack Haley), Scarecrow (Ray Bolger), and the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr) who are seeking a heart, brain, and courage, respectively. They join Dorothy on her quest. The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), keeps trying to stop them every step of the way. They finally meet the wizard who acts all powerful and Dorothy's dog Toto, who was with Dorothy all along, rips a curtain to reveal the wizard is just a con man. He tells everybody what they've been looking for has been inside them all along. Dorothy repeats the mantra “There's no place like home” and wakes up on her farm. It was all a dream and the characters in her dream were all weird forms of farm hands and neighbors...
There, you happy now?
From Scenes We'd Like to See, back cover of MAD #123, December 1968, by Don Edwing and Jack Rickard.
MAD #128, July 1969
In this version, Auntie Em is Tiny Tim and Dorothy is Liza Minelli, who happened to be the real-life daughter of Judy Garland.
Aah, the old banana hoax. I learned about it from MAD. I don't know if they believed it or were in or it. Basically, while there were all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories about what hippies did, they created one of their own. They said that you can get high by grinding the inside of the skins into a powder and smoking it. I also don't know if that's what they thought you did or you held a whole unpeeled banana up to your mouth and lit it, then inhaled it, like it was a cigarette or joint.
The main munchkin is Dustin Hoffman while others are Simon & Garfunkel.
Pat Boone is the Scarecrow.
George Hamilton is the Tin Man and Michael J. Pollard is the Cowardly Lion.
Ed Sullivan is the Guru. There's no poppy field barricade to his castle.
MAD #157, March 1973
Here's some variations on the yellow-brick road theme.
The shock one experiences when leaping through time is always funny to me. If I woke up in the world of 2024 having been in a coma since 1994, sure things would be hard to adjust to. So much would be completely different and I'd be surprised by a lot of changes. I might be surprised we have no World Trade Center and things cost twice as much but it's not like I'd be completely lost like characters in movies seem to be. Except maybe if I was left loose in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. But still, I'll run into people I haven't seen since the nineties and we'll talk as if no time has passed. And I still have some of the same clothes and furniture I've had since 2000. And people still bring up a prank I pulled in 1991 as if it still has repercussions (it hardly had any back then).
THE WIZARD OF ODDS
MAD #300, January 1991
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sam Viviano
The Good Witch is Vanna White. The Wicked Witch of the East is meant to be Leona Helmsley, a New York City real estate mogul. Among the Yupkins are Michael J. Fox, Ted Turner and Jane Fonda (in her Barbarella costume), Meryl Streep, and Sam Viviano. Imelda Marcos was first lady of Phillipines who had hundred of shoes.
The first panel has Reagan's budget director David Stockman and Michael Douglas and Charlie Sheen of Wall Street. In the middle are Richard Gere and Julia Roberts as their characters from Pretty Woman.
The Witch of the South is Tammy Fake Bakker, wife of an indicted televangelist mocked for her excessive make-up. The wizard is a guy named Donald Trump, a millionaire with a big ego who was everywhere in the eighties and nineties. He seems to have disappeared from the public eye and nobody knows where he is now.
Cover to the British edition.
From Cracked's Sequels to Classic Movies, #180, September 1981, art by John Severin.
This article was longer ago now than this movie was then, so suck on that.
There was an updated musical called The Wiz with an all-black cast. It looks like the cover was commisioned far ahead of the interior and afterwards they figured it wasn't big enough for an interior parody.
THE WRETCHES OF ECCHFLICK
MAD #276, January 1988
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
Tells the story of three friends, widow Alexandra Medford (Cher), divorcee Jane Spofford (Susan Sarandon), and single mother Sukie Ridgemont (Michelle Pfeiffer), who all meet and are seduced by Daryl Van Horne (Jack Nicholson).
Titles of other Jack Nicholson movies are on labels throughout.
The three women have a weekly meeting and over wine talk about who would be the perfect man. They don't realize that the new man in town is the man they conjured up. Daryl has bought the Lenox mansion, a historical landmark because witches had been murdered there centuries ago. They all first meet Daryl at a town concert that he interrupts snoring in the back row. Neighborhood housewife Felicia (Veronica Cartwright) knows that Daryl is really the devil and tries to warn everyone and nobody believes her. Her husband (Richard Jenkins) tries to calm her down. Later, Alexandra runs into Daryl who invites her over for lunch and seduces him. She finds him vulgar but is drawn to him.
Felicia falls down a flight of stairs at the recital, and in the hospital is convinced Daryl is responsible. He visits Jane, who played cello in the town recital, and teaches her to be uninhibited with her music. The three woman meet at the mansion, and initially angry after finding out Daryl's been seeing both Alexandra and Jane, and has the hots for Sukie, all play tennis and realizing he's magic agree to share him. Felicia is reporter for the town paper and has slut-shamed them in the newspaper, but at one of their bacchanalias Daryl tells them not to worry as he swallows cherries, which Felicia regurgitates in her house. Since the movie is directed by the man who made the Mad Max and Babe movies, the puking is somewhat stylized.
Felicia's character assassination of Daryl becomes too much for him and he gets his revenge by telekenetically killing her, which convinces the women to cut him off, which makes him angry. He casts spells on all the woman, and puts Sukie in the hospital. The women also find out they've been knocked up by him and hatch up a plan where they feign interest in him and move into his mansion. While he's gone, they cast a voodoo spell and get rid of him. A couple years later it shows them with their babies that Daryl tries to reach through the TV.
German cover
Interesting trivia: This was George Miller's first American production. He didn't know that everyone had trailers on shoots and he told them he didn't need it. The producers saw this as a sign of weakness and took and advantage of it by not giving him what he wanted, until Jack Nicholson fought on his behalf.
The Broadway musical that became a movie (and remade a couple years ago) was parodied a few times. The premise, based on Romeo and Juliet, about members of two rival gangs falling in love, lent itself to the issues of other then-current rivalries.
EAST SIDE STORY
MAD #78, April 1963
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
When Mort Drucker died a few years ago, this was cited as one of the pieces he was the most proud of. Instead of the Sharks and the Jets in a pre-gentrified Upper West Side, the backdrop is the newly-founded United Nations and the leaders of the Western World versus leaders of Eastern bloc countries. Here we have Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, Wladyslaw Gomolka of Poland, and Fidel Castro of Cuba among other communist nations representing a gang led by Nikita Kruschev. A lot of the world leaders aren't likenesses of anyone in partocular.
The Western nations are a gang led by JFK that included Charles DeGaulle of France and Harold MacMillan of the United Kingdom,
Barry Goldwater is in the Western gang as well.
WEST COAST STORY
MAD #142, April 1971
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Jack Davis
With campus protests in the news just this week, this article is another example of history repeating itself.
CURLYLOCKS AND THE THREE HOODS
Sick #12, March 1962
BEST SIDE STORY
Not Brand Ecch #6, February 1968
w: Gary Friedrich
a: Tom Sutton
This takes on the rivalry between Marvel and DC (or “Distinguished Competition” as Marvel called them). Dr. Strange and Wonder Woman fall in love.
Leonard Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story.
