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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HOME ALONE 2: LOST IN NEW YORK (1992)
dir: Chris Columbus
Two trailers were made, one of which placed more emphasis on the burglars being hurt.
HOME A-GROAN: LOOT IN NEW YORK
MAD #318, April 1993
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
The criminals (Joe Pesci, Daniel Stern) were not released from prison, they escaped, but no matter. Stern first appeared in Breaking Away and Pesci had been in My Cousin Vinny.
The second movie begins like the first with the McCallister family running around the night before their Christmas vacation the next morning, this time to Miami. The parents are making sure they don't forget Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) this time. Kevin is recording everything he sees, including this commercial for the Plaza Hotel. The same thing happens before where their alarm clock accidentally becomes unplugged and they have to rush to make their flight on time. This time they didn't leave Kevin at home but he gets behind at the airport going through his father's bag looking for fresh batteries for his tape recorder.
They leave out the part where Kevin gets on the wrong plane and ends up in New York. He has his father's bag and is able to check into the Plaza Hotel. The concierge (Tim Curry) and bellhop (Rob Schneider) are not caricatured, which makes me suspect the parody was done from a press kit rather than seeing the film. The concierge is suspicious that there doesn't seem to be an adult present and peeks in the room, which Kevin has rigged to make look like someone else is present, using an inflatable clown he was given earlier as a gift and a recording of his uncle singing in the shower. Kevin visits a toy store run by Mr. Duncan (Eddie Bracken, also not caricatured), who tells Kevin he donates his profits to charity every Christmas. As Kevin goes through the city, he runs into the escaped burglars.
At the hotel, they find Kevin has been using a stolen credit card, and as management chases him and he escapes, he runs into the burglars and they vow revenge on him and chase him through Central Park. In Florida [they don't show how it's raining the whole time], Kevin's parents (Catherine O'Hara, John Heard) track him down through the reported stolen credit card. In the city, he meets a homeless woman (Brenda Fricker) who attracts pigeons and tells him about how she once had a life.
The burglars rob the toy store, Kevin had eavesdropped on them earlier and known they were going to do it, and he lures them into chasing him into his uncle's house, which is vacant and being renovated. There he sets up the cartoon slapstick booby-traps that hurt the burglars like in the first movie. After he finally foils them and they're arrested again, he goes to Rockefeller Center where his mother finds him talking to the tree. In this, the whole family meets him there. The cop here is also caricatured as John Candy, who wasn't in the movie, though he was in the first one.
ZIT HAPPENS
Cracked #278, January 1993
w: Andy Simmons
a: Rurik Tyler
The Home Alone movies made Macaulay Culkin a big star while he was still a child. This shows what life would be like for him as a teenager.
HOMEBOY ALONE 2: LOOT IN NEW YORK
Cracked #280, May 1993
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
Like yesterday, Cracked had more of the plot than the MAD parody.
MAD omitted how the night before the vacation, there was a Christmas pageant and his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray) upstaged and mocked him while he sang, Kevin took a swing and got the blame for ruining everything. The genie from Aladdin is drawn in the background of one panel for some reason.
Donald Trump, owner of the Plaza Hotel, makes a cameo appearance when Kevin checks in (see video clip above). In New York, we already had his number thirty years ago which is why we knew not to vote for him. The kindly toy store owner gives Kevin two turtledove ornaments, telling him to if he gives one to a close friend it will bind them for life.
The concierge is wearing a bikini because of Tim Curry's role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, as if a kid in 1992 would know that. I don't know why Dracula's in the park. I think the other guy is the old man from the first movie.
After Kevin outsmarts the burglars they run into the park where the homeless woman sics pigeons on them.
They make a comment here, too, about how this, like most sequels, is a rehash of the first one. Here they have a clip of the first one where the mother is rescued by John Candy. Back in the movie we're watching, the mother and son are reunited, and the family comes along later, and gets a free room at the Plaza Hotel. The toy store owner is overjoyed that Kevin brought the burglars to justice and the family wakes up to find a bunch of presents from him. Kevin sees turtledove ornaments on the tree and runs to the park to give one to the homeless woman.
-The composer in the last row of panels is supposed to be John Williams, who wrote the score for this.
-One of the other kids was Macaulay's younger brother Kieran, now grown up and the more famous of the Culkins.
WHO ELSE IS HOME ALONE?
Cracked #278, January 1993
w: Spark
a: Jim Bennett
Madonna was known earlier for appearing nude in movies. She was married to Sean Penn at the time and had earlier been romantically linked with Warren Beatty. Ice T. was most famous then for a rap song called "Cop Killer". Mike Tyson was still in prison for domestic violence.
THE SABOTEUR 'HOME ALONE' HOME PROTECTION SYSTEM
Cracked #278, January 1993
w & a: Michael Ricigliano
Spies and Saboteurs, Cracked's answers to Sergio Aragones' MAD Marginals, which you've seen in the margins of most Cracked parodies from the eighties on, sometimes had their own featured articles.
Saturday Night Live did this a couple years ago. It's still not the official thirtieth anniversary but what do you expect from writers just out of college?
UPDATE:
Cover for German edition of MAD, I'm pretty sure this is for the sequel. They used Madonna on the cover a lot more in the foreign editions.
I know in the heading I said this was alphabetical but I decided for Christmas Eve and Christmas I'd do a couple Christmas movies since they'll be coming up soon anyway, then I'll go back.
HOME A-GROAN
MAD #303, June 1991
w:Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano
It was the third highest-grossing movie when it came out, so I'm assuming most of you saw it, or at least know it's about a kid that gets left at home for Christmas.
Marley (Roberts Blossom) is the guy all the kids are scared of, he's always by himself so they've made up all sorts of stories about he's a murderer. Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) is pestering his parents Peter (John Heard) and Kate (Catherine O'Hara) as everyone is preparing for a trip to Paris the next morning. One of the burglars (Joe Pesci), is casing the house while impersonating an officer and has a telltale gold tooth. Kevin is constantly being picked on by his older brother Buzz (Devin Ratray). After his parents accidentally abandon him, he takes advantage by eating ice cream and looking through his family's stuff. The burglars are spying on him, the other one played by Daniel Stern.
A storm knocks out the electricity overnight, causing everyone to oversleep, so they're all in a rush to male it to the airport on time the next morning forgetting Kevin. Kevin, who was punished the night before by being made to sleep in the attic, wakes up to find his family gone, fulfilling his wish. On the plane, the mother worries they forgot to do something then she realizes it was to get Kevin. Meanwhile, we see the burglars breaking into the other houses in the neighborhood. Buzz's pet tarantula figures later into the plot.
One of the kids is the comic strip character Henry
After they realize Kevin is missing, the mother rushes back home to get to Kevin, but since it's Christmas and all direct flights are booked, she has to go take all sorts of connecting flights in various cities. At one airport, she tries to bribe an elderly couple into getting their seat. A polka player (John Candy) overhears her predicament, happens to be going her way, and offers her a ride. Meanwhile, Kevin seeks solace in a church where he encounters Marley and finds he isn't so scary after all. He's a loner because he hasn't reconnected with his son.
-The airport ticket clerk was played by Hope Davis, who was not famous enough to be caricatured yet.
-The elderly couple are caricatures of MAD publishers William and Anne Gaines.
-Jim Bakker was a preacher indicted for fraud in the late eighties who I think is back.
-The other members of the polka band in the background are MAD staffers Nick Meglin, Dave Berg, and Dick DeBartolo. I believe the passenger in the fishing hat is art director Leonard Brenner.
Kevin overhears that the burglars are coming to his house next and he booby traps the house to defend it and foil them, by doing what you see here; swinging paint cans on ropes, rigging a door so an iron falls on one of them, pouring water on the steps so it turns into ice, burning someone's hat with a blowtorch, putting sharp glass under the windowsill [not shown: the tarantula from earlier gets loose and bites one of them]. His mother finally gets home and is glad to see Kevin. Here the John Candy role is combined with that of Uncle Buck, the role of his (and writer John Hughes') previous movie.
That's supposed to be Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey in the first panel.
From Reel vs. Real in MAD #307, written by Russ Cooper.
HOMEBOY ALONE
Cracked # 262, May 1991
a: John Severin
This has a few things that weren't in the MAD parody.
A neighboring kid gets mistaken for Kevin when One of the McCallisters does a headcount.
Kevin runs into Marley when he's buying a toothbrush and runs away, and the cops run after him for shoplifting.
When John Candy's character meets Kate, he assumes she recognizes him.
More comparing violence against the burglars to cartoons.
The MAD parody doesn't point out that the burglars get caught and arrested.
HOME ALONE GOES PUBLIC
Cracked #263, July 1991
a: Don Orehek
