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!
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The last of the updates... for now. The shows are all highlighted linking to previous postsfrom before in case you need to know the characters' real names or the actors who played them, or are lost in some other way.
I finally found this Bananas article I mentioned last week.
WKLOD IN CINCINNATI
Bananas #44, circa 1981
w: Megan Stine & H. William Stine
a: Samuel B. Whitehead
Funny how in 1981 eight characters was considered “too many”.
I think I see John Chancellor, Chevy Chase, Wolfman Jack, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, John Denver, Dan Aykroyd as Beldar Conehead, and Howard Cosell.
STRAIT-JACKET (1964)
dir: William Castle
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOAN CRAWFORD?
Sick #29, June 1964
w: Dee Caruso and Bill Levine
a: Gray Morrow
Sorry a reference to Joan Crawford is the closest thing I have this Pride Month.
The title of this is a play on the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. The movie was about a formerly institutionalized woman accused of ax murders.
Back when movie theaters were actual theaters and not just the friend of friend of a rich guy's screening room you once saw, stars would publicize the movie at a screening rather than TV appearances and press conferences.
THE EXORSICK
Sick #103, April 1975
w & a: Dom Rinaldo
I'm guessing this was an unsolicited contribution in their slush pile and they needed a few pages to fill, since I never saw the name before or since and the panels are all cut and reformatted to fit the page,
WACKY T.V. WEDDINGS
Trash #3. April 1978
a: Vic Martin
No seventies humor magazine would be complete without spoofs of these shows.
THE HOBBIT (1977)
dirs: Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bass
Before the movies there was this made-for-TV special.
MAD #283, December 1988
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) and Sue (Linda Kozlowski) have settled down in New York in this movie and Mick has decided it's time to look for a job. He gets one with his friend Leroy (Charles Dutton) delivering stationery. At one drop-off, he looks out and sees someone about to jump off a ledge, comes out and talks to him, walking as if he's just passing by.
Sue has an ex-husband (Dennis Boutsikaris) we didn't know about in the first movie. He's a photojournalist in Colombia who's happened upon some druglords and takes pictures of them before he's found out. He knows he'll be shot so he sends them to Sue. The druglords, headed by Rico (Hechter Ubarry), know he did that and come to New York and kidnap her, demanding to get the photos. She hadn't even been home to get them yet. Mick comes home to find the place trashed and gets a phone call from them telling him he'll see Sue alive if he goes to the subway station with the package. When he gets there, one of Rico's heavies is there pointing a gun at him.
Some Asian tourists come off the train and Mick foils the minion by putting a wastebasket on his head (The subway station has mesh wastebaskets) and they think Mick is Clint Eastwood.
A hitman comes to kill Mick. Mick still doesn't have Sue back, and he gets a plan to recruit a gang (or what the makers of the movie think a gang looks like) to storm the druglords' mansion, with the aid of Leroy.
He rescues her, and the authorities later seek his aid in nabbing the druglords. Then that plotline is somehow forgotten and Mick and Sue go to his land in Australia, as if she didn't know about his lifestyle in the first movie.
The druglords chase him there. He reunites with Walter (John Meillon), his guide, and his old friends first. They set a bunch of traps and distractions to capture Rico and his gang. I guess they go back home and turn him in. They don't make that quite clear. MAD added this ending of Sue asking Mick to marry her, which wasn't in the movie.
In case you were wondering what the introduction was talking about, this was Jacko. Yeah, he was annoying.
Cracked did their version too:
CRACKEDILE DANDEE, TOO!
Cracked #241, December 1988
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: Gray Morrow
Here Rico is caricatured as Edward G. Robinson
I guess he was meant to say something in the top right.
In the late eighties, the United States was hit with Australia mania. Suddenly pop culture from Australia was all the rage for about two years starting with this movie, followed by commercials with comedian Jacko, and movies with comedians such as Yahoo Serious, sales of Foster's beer, and then suddenly like a lot of fads in the U.S., it all disappeared.
Also in the late eighties, more households had VCRs, and sometimes people waited six months to a year for the release of a movie on video, bypassing seeing the theatrical release altogether. Six months to a year was also the lead time for a MAD movie parody, so that by the time the parody was printed, it was of a movie by then on video. Eventually it was in co-operation with the studios and they would get advance screeners. This is how things were presented until then. CROCK O' DULL DUMMEE
MAD #273, September 1987
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
American reporter Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) has been sent to the wilds of Australia to cover a local celebrity, a crocodile hunter named Mick they call “Crocodile” Dundee (Paul Hogan). He and a guide take her on a tour of the outback. A bull blocks them on the road and he hypnotizes the bull to sleep. She spends the night with him (just to write about him, no funny business happens or is even hinted at). He also saves her life by killing other wild animals.
She goes swimming on her own (an excuse to show cheesecake in the movie) and he keeps an eye on her not thinking she can survive in the wilderness. He saves her life when she's attacked by a crocodile. Later, she watches him in an aboriginal ritual and photographs him.
Though it was advertised as the plot of the movie, the scenes of him in New York City only make up the second half. He's unaccustomed to the ways of the city. He sleeps on the floor of his hotel room, shaves with a bowie knife, climbs a traffic pole to avoid crowds, wards off muggers with his knife (in the oft-quoted line from the trailer that's now usually associated with Australians), meets “ladies of the evening” without realizing what they're there for, beats up their pimp, and almost goes home with a transvestite.
He also uses his throwing skills to knock out a thief in the middle of Times Square. Sue and her boyfriend take him to meet her father, owner of the newspaper she's covering her story about Dundee for, at his mansion. At dinner, the boyfriend proposes to her. Dundee pretends not to be upset, but leaves early.
The next day, he goes on a “walkabout”, deciding to leave the city and embarking on his own. Sue catches up with him at a subway station, tells him he really doesn't love her boyfriend, has broken off the engagement and goes to him. Fade to black.
The jealous man in the foreground at the top was the star of the then-popular cop show called The Equalizer.
The parody didn't make the cover of this particular issue, but did for the British edition.
Same for Mexico.
Cracked didn't directly parody the movie, but did an article about what sequels would be like, in an article that would have even been considered out of date even for 1987.
FUTURE CROCODILE DUNDEE MOVIES
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: George Gladir
a: Gray Morrow
An episode of The Simpsons satirized an event that was controversial at the time, where a tourist in Singapore was forced to stay there and face their punishment, in an episode where the family goes to Australia and Bart can't get sanctuary for crimes has to undergo a public booting, making the show into a fictionalized version of the country.
UPDATE:
Cover for Australian MAD. I'm sure Crocodile Dundee was much more popular over there.
