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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MAD #298, October 1990
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Real-estate developer Daniel Clamp (John Glover), who you'll never guess is a stand-in for, wants to guild a skyscraper on the site of shop owner Mr. Wing (Keye Luke) from the previous film. He sends some of his people to the store to try and convince Mr. Wing to sell, but he won't give in.
Mr. Wing dies a few weeks later and Mr. Clamp has nowbuilt his building, where Billy Seltzer (Zach Gilligan) and Kate (Phoebe Cates), now his fiancee, work. Clamp Enterprises also has a TV network which has a horror show whose host Fred (Robert Prosky) is friends with Billy.
There's a laboratory in the building as well. Often when the actor isn't that well known, Drucker doesn't even try to make a likeness of the actor, but surprisingly the lab doctor is generic here even though he's played by Christopher Lee, the most famous actor in the movie. Billy discovers that Gizmo the mogwai is in the lab, since he was on the property the Clamp Center was built over, and hides him in his office. Gizmo roams around the office after hours and a janitor (Jon Astin, the second most famous actor in the movie) gets him wet from a broken drinking fountain, and one of the rules from the first movie is not to get them wet because it will spawn new ones. Billy's boss Marla (Haviland Morris) is trying to promote him and come on to him at the food court below.
The other mogwai detain Gizmo as they run rampant throughout the building, and their eating from the food court after midnight makes them Gremlins. They set off the sprinkler system in the building to make the Gremlins multiply. Only Billy knows how to control them and bring the people in the building and Daniel Clamp to safety.
The other hero is Bruce Willis, who was having success with his own Die Hard franchise.
One of the shows on Clamp's network is a movie review show hosted by Leonard Maltin. The Gremlins have taken serums from the lab which have enabled them to combine with other species (there's a talking one voiced by Tony Randall). A Gremlin has spun a web and captured Marla, who Kate decides to save even though they are rivals. After several attempts to kill them, the Gremlins are finally all electrocuted.
The German edition of MAD had its own cover.
No use of Dick Miller is this parody or the parody of the previous film. He had a significant part in both movies and was in every Joe Dante movie as well as almost all New World pictures, where Dante got his start.
MAD #249, September 1984
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Rand Peltzer (Hoyt Axton) is in Chinatown looking for a gift to buy an esoteric gift for his son and goes into a shop full of stereotypical Chinese curiosities.
At the store is a little furry creature called a Mogwai that the owner refuses to to sell him. His grandson sells it to him with three rules (only the first three are real). Boy George was a pop singer that was a female impersonator, featured on the Cracked cover.
The Peltzers live in Kingston Falls, where Billy (Zach Gilligan) works at a local bank. Their home is owned by the mean landlady Mrs. Deagle (Polly Holiday) who hates dogs.
Billy works at the local bank with Kate (Phoebe Cates) and he brought his dog. Mrs. Deagle comes in saying if she ever finds the dog, she'll put him to sleep for ruining her Christmas decorations. Billy, now at home, is an aspiring artist, and is father, an aspiring inventor, returns with the mogwai that Billy decides to call Gizmo (voiced by Howie Mandel). Zach's friend Pete (Corey Feldman) runs the tree stand and is disguised as a tree as a promotional gimmick.
Pete is over and accidentally pours water on Gizmo, which causes him to multiply. Billy tells his father who is working on an invention and just sees the reproducing mogwai as a money-making opportunity. The next day, Billy has his science teacher Mr. Hanson (Glynn Turman) look at it. Later at home, one of the mogwai unplugs Billy's clock, making him think it's before midnight, and he feeds them, which turns them into gremlins.
The new stage of gremlins wreaks havoc on the Peltzer home, the town, and school, and attack Billy's mother (Frances Lee McCain). She fights with the ones that are in the house.
Gizmo is the one mogwai who hasn't been transformed and Billy keeps him in his knapsack. Bright light kills them and Gizmo knows to use the flashlight as a weapon. The surviving monster mogwai jump in a pool at a YMCA and reproduce there. Billy goes to the police to warn them of the Gremlin invasion but they won't believe him. They go to Mrs. Deagle's house and rewire her stair lift when she's not looking to make it speed up. Billy goes to rescue Kate and she tells him she hates Christmas because her father dressed as Santa and got stuck in the chimney.
The "Kevin McCarthy" on the Wanted poster is not the Congressman, who would have been 19 then. It was the name of the protagonist in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The mogwai/Gremlins attack a screening of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, but here it's a screening of the Barbara Streisand movie Yentl. They're finally done in by an explosion at the movie theater and eventual sunlight. Mr. Wing (Keye Luke, the only surviving member of the Charlie Chan cast) comes to the Peltzer household to take Gizmo back, saying this was the reason he wouldn't sell the mogwai in the first place.
GRUMBLINS
Cracked #209, January 1985
a: John Severin
I wouldn't call it virtue signaling but just stating a fact that when I point out that people were more prejudiced in the past, and Cracked and John Severin in particular were considered more so than most, even then. So was the character of Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
THROUGHOUT HISTORY WITH THE REAL GREMLINS
same issue
a:John Severin
The design comes from the WWII legend of gremlins being the cause of the problems with warplanes.
UPDATE:
Cover for Mexican version of MAD.
UPDATE 2: GRIMLINS
Maniac #2, circa 1984
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
