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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The issue of MAD this was in also spoofed Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom that month.
MAD #250, October 1984
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
Allen Bauer (Tom Hanks) runs a fruit distribution business with his brother Freddie (John Candy). Another typical chaotic day at work handling drivers and customers.
This film was one of the first releases of Touchstone Pictures, one of the many subsidiaries in Disney's “new look”. It's a completely innocuous movie, but the fact that it showed rear nudity was the furthest they had gone up to then. Anyway, it's the reason for the cartoon characters at the bottom of the splash panel (no pun intended).
Freddie is Allen's perverted brother and partner, bragging about a letter he had printed in Penthouse Forum and later at a wedding he's contriving ways to look up womens' dresses just like the earlier flashback (not shown). Allen is depressed that he just broke up with his girlfriend, and his brother tries to fix him up.
Allen decides to get away from it all by going to Cape Cod for the weekend. While there he tries to get directions and asks Dr. Walter Kornbluth (Eugene Levy), a condescendeing, hostile scientist convinced a mermaid exists, to help him across the ocean. He eventually finds someone to help him, falls out of the boat and drowns, and is rescued by a naked woman (Daryl Hannah).
The naked woman turns out to be the mermaid. When Allen drowned, his wallet fell out, which she found his address in. She goes to New York to find him and surfaces on Liberty Island where she's arrested for indecent exposure. All she has is his wallet and she can't talk, so the police call Allen and he bails her out. He takes her home, and they do nothing but have sex all night. He has to go to work and leaves her alone. She learns English from TV, and that clothes come from Bloomingdale's, which she finds her way to. When Allen returns home, he finds out from his doorman that the woman has gone there.
She's mastered how to speak and read the English language by watching the TVs at Bloomingdale's all day, though much of it is advertising hyperbole. After a night on the town, she decides her name is 'Madison' after seeing a street sign. Madison is always trying to hide the fact that she's a mermaid from Allen despite the clues being there. Doctor Kornbluth has found out where Madison is and is bent on exposing her but keeps bungling his attempts and getting injured.
Madison agrees to marry Allen but keep putting off telling him something about herself. When Kornbluth finally exposes her as a mermaid, Allen realizes what she's been hiding, and other scientists seize her for observation. Kornbluth has a change of heart and with the aid of the Bauer Brothers, helps her get back home to the sea. Allen says goodbye to her but once they're cornered goes in to live with her.
This was the cover to the Mexican edition. I can't tell what's going on either, though it looks like their Scarfaceparody was also in that issue.
SPLAT!
Maniac #1, c. 1984
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
MAD didn't use the prologue of the movie where Allen fell overboard on a trip twenty years earlier and met Madison when they were kids.
Charlie was the mascot for Star-Kist tuna modeled after Phil Silvers.
SPLATT!
Muppet #3, Fall 1984
w: Jay Itzkowitz
a: J. McIntosh
THE $OUND OF MONEY
MAD #108, January 1967
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Musical based on Broadway show based on memoir, top-grossing film of all time for a few years. It's the story of Maria von Trapp, birthname unknown (Julie Andrews), a free-spirited nun in Austria who leaves the abbey where she's staying to become governess to several children, makes them into singers, marries their father, and they all escape Nazis. And presumably they live happily ever after. They must have if she wrote a book about it.
Ingrid Bergman in The Belles of St. Mary's, Audrey Hepburn in The Nun's Story, Debbie Reynolds in The Singing Nun, Rosalind Russell in The Trouble with Angels, and Donna Reed in Green Dolphin Street played similar roles.
Maria works for Captain von Trapp (Christopher Plummer), who introduces her to his children. He is a strict, humorless disciplinarian since losing his wife. The family has gone through several governesses who either can't follow rules or just can't tolerate the family. The children are initially mean to Maria and play practical jokes on her.
Julie Andrews was previously a flying nanny in Mary Poppins.
Maria gains the childrens' trust by not ratting on them for their tricks. She finally bonds with them when they're all scared during a thunderstorm and sings to them. Captain von Trapp comes in and is annoyed she is having fun with them.
When the Captain leaves for the day, Maria takes the children out for a day in the country and teaches them all to sing. Captain von Trapp is again annoyed she betrayed him and fires her until finding out they sing so well. The Captain's friend Max (Richard Haydn) is impressed with their singing and wants to enter them in a concert, which he forbids. Maria is having feelings of love for the Captain and he for her. Baroness von Schraeder (Eleanor Parker), who the Captain is engaged to, sees this, tells Maria, who flees and returns to the abbey. Maria tells Mother Abbess (Peggy Wood) how confused she is.
Captain von Trapp breaks up with the Baroness because Maria is his real love and they get married. He has been drafted into the navy for the Third Reich. It's against his principles, so he plots for the family to escape. They enter the festival and sneak out after their act and the spotlight turns off of them.
The Nazis chase after the von Trapp family, who are able to hide in the abbey. The Nazis are unable to find them but can't leave because nuns secretly took their engines.
'Climb Every Mountain' was also used earlier as a metaphor, when nuns urged Maria to follow her heart and go back to Captain von Trapp.
Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins. My Fair Lady was previously the top champion of roadshow musicals.
From Clean Ads for Dirty Pictures in MAD #166, April 1974, by Larry Siegel and Jack Rickard.
THE SWINE OF MUSIC
Muppet Magazine, Winter 1985
w: Jay Itzkowitz
a: Manhar Chauhan
MAD #235, December 1982
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Jack Davis
Rocky week continues with the third installment.
Like the last sequel, this continues where the previous installment left off, with Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) beating Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) in a long match where both are left standing. This time we see rising boxing star Clubber Lang (Mr. T.) in the audience.
Fast forward a few years to Rocky becoming a huge celebrity with magazine covers and TV appearances. His wife Adrian (Talia Shire) and trainer Mickey (Burgess Meredith) are with him all the way. His brother-in-law Pauly (Burt Young) goes on a drunken spree jealous of Rocky's success and Rocky has to bail him out. Rocky later does a charity event with Thunderlips (Hulk Hogan), a wrestler twice his size.
Thunderlips goes berserk, Rocky comes back fighting, and it was all in good fun. Later he has a statue dedicated to him in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (which is actually there), Rocky is about to announce his retirement until Clubber Lang pops up and challenges him. Mickey is retiring though.
Mickey doesn't want anything to do with Rocky fighting a killing machine like Clubber Lang, and urges him not to do it. He especially thinks Rocky's going soft making his last training a theatrical public spectacle. At the match, Clubber badly beats him.
Because Dolly Parton has large breasts, you see.
Mickey dies during Rocky's fight, and Apollo steps in to be Rocky's trainer for the rematch. He begins training by taking Rocky to the gym he started at in Los Angeles.
One of the reasons Apollo brought Rocky to his old gym was to show how tough everyone there is, Rocky needs to get his groove back with what they have, “the eye of the tiger”. Rocky almost quits his training but Adrian gives him a pep talk about how he never gives up.
On the night of the match, Apollo gives Rocky his old shorts for good luck and he defeats Clubber Lang. They don't use the epilogue with Apollo and Rocky having a rematch in private, leaving it open-ended which one wins.
Jaws, James Bond, Star Wars, and Superman were the biggest franchises then.
Mr. T.'s most well-known catchphrase comes from this.
ROCKY'S SCRAPBOOK
Cracked #192, January 1983
a: John Severin
Got a bunch of parodies from Muppet magazine. These were also parodied by other magazines and are hyperlinked to. All other parodies from the magazine will be featured here will be when they come up alphabetically. I assume you're familiar with all the Muppets here, so I need not get into their personalities.
THE FROGSBY SHOW
#22, Spring 1988
w: Steve Morgenstern
a: Jon McIntosh
References are also made to Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver. Heathcliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) had a wife Claire (Phylicia Rashad) and their children Theo (Malcolm Jamal-Warner), Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe) and Rudi (Keshia Knight-Pulliam)
