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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Welcome to the second of five days of Mork. Yesterday we had the MAD, Bananas, and Sick versions, the first Cracked one, and another Crazy cover, all of which can be seen by clicking the “Older Posts” button below. Here are some more.
MUCK AND MUNDANE
Crazy #51, June 1979
w & a: Murad Gumen
This cover was one brush with celebrity a few years ago, when I posted this cover to Twitter, it was forwarded, and eventually got to Marie Osmond, who retweeted it to her followers, with the comment “those were the days” and hundreds of 'like's forwarded back to me, which I had to turn off because they kept coming weeks after. The others in this picture are Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta from Grease. The artist obviously hadn't seen the show and was working from black and white publicity stills, otherwise he would have gotten the colors of Mork's striped shirt right.
In case you didn't know, Mork and Mindy was a sitcom about Mork (Robin Williams), an alien from Ork, sent to Earth to report about it. He's discovered by Mindy McConnell (Pam Dawber) and lives in her attic. He has a hard time adjusting to Earthling ways, not getting metaphors and sitting in furniture upside-down among other eccentricities. He sprinkles his dialogue with Orkan language saying words like “Nanoo Nanoo” and “Shazbot”. All the while he has to hide that he's from space from most people.
The men from the Air Force are Casey Swaim and Edward Winter from Project UFO.
In the background of the third panel is Dan Aykroyd as a Conehead from Saturday Night Live. The panel after that has Mork's friend Eugene (Jeffrey Jacquet). Mindy's father Fred (Conrad Janis) and grandmother Cora (Elizabeth Kerr) own a music store. Fred objects to Mork living with Mindy thinking they're engaged, but later in the series he finds out Mork's an alien.
Cora is the hip and sassy one and has no problem with Mork and Mindy's living arrangement.
The police captain is Barney Miller. It looks like George C. Scott in the next to last panel but sometimes it's hard to tell.
The show was often compared to the earlier Ray Walston sitcom My Favorite Martian. At the end of every show, Mork would report what he learned that week to Orson (Ralph James), his boss on Ork that you never saw on camera.
THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF MORK AND MINDY
Cracked #161, August 1979
a: John Severin
Cracked's spoofs were less like parodies and more like fan-fiction. Here are two of many parodies they did of the show. They always had a roster of about five TV shows they would either rotate or combine.When they did Mork and Mindy it was so much less like a parody that they didn't bother changing the names.
Mork drinking through his fingers was one of the alien traits the program would use.
Eugene was a violin student at the record store.
Mork came to Earth in a spacaship that was an egg.
Cameo appearance by Judd Hirsch from Taxi. The show used the fact that as a comedian and actor, Robin Williams was always “on”.
THE RETURN OF MORK AND MINDY
Cracked #163, October 1979
a: John Severin
Like I said, often they'd combine shows to help sell more copies. They did Diff'rent Strokes here too, a sitcom about Arnold (Gary Coleman), a boy adopted by Mr. Drummond (Conrad Bain).
That's not all! The third part of five will be tomorrow!
THE GREATEST SEQUEL EVER MADE
Cracked #155, November 1978
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
All films here were parodied and/or will be posted here.
More of Cracked trying to repeat parodies as well as do several at once like they did all throughout the 70s and 80s.
At the beginning are their versions of The Bad News Bears and Marlon Brando as The Godfather.
Then Roy Scheider as Sheriff Brody in Jaws, C3P0 and R2D2 in Star Wars, and Richard Dreyfus as Roy Neary in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. They make a reference to how Dreyfus also played a character in Jaws.
John Travolta as Danny Zuko in Grease, Chewbacca also in Star Wars, and Sylvester Stallone as Rocky.
They had The Talking Blob as one of their recurring characters, and tried to convince their readers he was a real movie character.
There was a movie called The Bad News Bears Go to Japan which hadn't yet been released, but they still managed to fit demeaning Asian stereotypes in.
Steve McQueen and Paul Newman in The Towering Inferno, and King Kong.
Started out in 1971 as a Broadway show about a high school reunion taking place in Brooklyn, then rewritten to take place in a high school, then when it was made into a movie, the location moved to Los Angeles and added new songs, then when it was a stage production again it adapted the movie, which was shown on TV. This is the 1978 movie.
CEASE
MAD #205, March 1978
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) had met on the beach during the summer and had a fling, now everyone's back in school again. Danny doesn't know that Sandy has transferred to his school and Sandy doesn't know Danny's in his new school either. The T-Birds and Pink Ladies are re-united. Rizzo (Stockard Channing) is a member of the Pink Ladies who acts like she's more mature and more experienced to keep up appearances. Eve Arden is the principal and Alice Ghostley is a teacher. Allusions are made throughout of Travolta's previous role in Saturday Night Fever.
Danny and Sandy each tell their friends their own side of their summer romance.
MAD always has a footnote saying "Sung to the tune of" when it parodies lyrics but for some reason this is the exception.
I've heard women say they don't like how one of the lyrics was "did she put up a fight", I always argue it's a character in a movie. Then again that's easy to say from my perspective, I can only partially understand and am fully aware it comes off as mansplaining. It's one of the perpetual disagreements that will always last throughout time. I can agree it that in retrospect it was wrong for our third-grade music class to sing it in our assembly, though.
Danny and Sandy are reunited later at a pep rally, and even though he's glad to see her has to act like a tough guy to protect his reputation in front of his friends.
The girls invite Sandy to a slumber party at Frenchy(Didi Conn)'s house and make fun of her when she leaves the room. Rizzo sees Kenickie (Jeff Conway) outside the window and leaves to make out with him. While Kenickie and Rizzo are in his car, they're interrupted by Crater-Face (Dennis Cleveland Stewart) who challenges them to a drag race. At a diner, Danny sees Sandy with a new date (Lorenzo Lamas) and starts his tough guy act again when his friends show up.
Danny wants to win Sandy back so he tries to become an athlete. The coach (Sid Caesar) tries to see what Danny's good at and he hurts himself pole vaulting, gaining Sandy's sympathy and temporarily her affection. At the diner, where Frenchy works, she tells another waitress (Joan Blondell) she's dropped out of high school to go to vocational school, and failed a cosmetics course there as well. As they're closing she has a dream that Frankie Avalon sings to her.
Rydell High has been chosen to be the school for National Bandstand, a stand-in for American Bandstand. Danny meets his old girlfriend Cha Cha (Annette Charles), they dance together and win, and a jealous Sandy storms off. Danny tries to make it up to Sandy by taking her to a drive-in but comes on strong because he thinks that's what he's supposed to do, and she leaves him again. Rizzo's in another car and she says she thinks she might been knocked up by Kenickie when they made out earlier, and rumor about it spreads throughout the drive-in.
There's another musical number they don't use here where Danny's by himself and he sings a song pining for Sandy.
There's a drag race between the T-Birds and a rival gang and they make over their car (with another song they don't parody). For some reason, the shop teacher helps referee a game of death. Sandy wants to win over Danny and makes herself over for him. Even 43 years ago, MAD pointed out how sexist it was for the girl to change her image to make herself attractive to the boy. Well, sort-of back-handedly, anyway, because they also suggested that dressing provocatively is a bad thing. I'm starting to border on mansplaining again. I'll stop. At an end-of-the-year fair, they all resolve their issues and sing the finale.
That's Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back. Kotter at the drag race. John Travolta started on that show, though as a kid I didn't know they were the same person.
GREASED
Cracked #155, December 1978
a: John Severin
The prologue is used here, and mentions the fact that the part of Sandy was changed to an Australian for the movie because they couldn't get actress Olivia Newton-John to do an American accent.
The actors were all full-grown adults. Stockard Channing was 34. The number 34 would have made more sense for the song lyrics too since it rhymes with "tell me more". Maybe they know something I don't.
Dick Clark stand-in Vince Fontaine (Edd "Kookie "Byrnes), who would be arrested for sexual assault today. (Not shown in any of these parodies is a scene where the rest of the T-Birds moon the cameras on national TV and get in trouble for it).
When Danny and Sandy reconcile at the end they take off in a car that turns into a spaceship. To cash in on Star Wars, maybe?
GROSS
Crazy #44, November 1978
w: Murad Gumen
a: Kent Gamble
And here they used the same photo reference for Travolta that MAD did.
Who's that supposed to be in the first panel? Adlai Stevenson? You can't always tell with Kent Gamble.
And as usual with Crazy, the art director gets the dialogue balloons mixed up in some panels.
And they get the chronology of the movie mixed up.
Is that supposed to be Mickey Rooney as one of the T-Birds?
And Charles Martin Smith at the diner?
And Eisenhower and Ron Howard at the dance?
And Paul LeMat and Henry Winkler at the drag race?
I can tell that's Gen. McArthur and Nixon and the end, duh.
UPDATE 2:
cover to Pancada, Brazilian edition of Cracked
(“Pancada” means “knock” or “blow”)
Nos Tempos de Vaseline means In the Times of Vaseline and Danem Se Days means Damn Days. The former was a sexploitation comedy in Brazil around the same time.
