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 #253, March 1985
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Jack Davis
In Argo City, a city that survived Krypton's explosion, Zaltar (Peter O'Toole) has “borrowed” the Omegahedron, a powerful item that can do things like create trees and animals and happens to power Argo City. He shows it to Kara (Helen Slater), a resident there and also a cousin of Superman.
They say Earth has 230 million people but I think they mean the United States.
Zaltar accidentally drops the Omegahedron and it breaks through the shield that was protecting Argo City. Kara goes through to rescue it which transforms her into Supergirl, bringing her to Earth. On the planet, Selena (Faye Dunaway) and Nigel (Peter Cook), a witch and a warlock, are having a picnic. The Omegahedron lands there and she realizes that now she has it, she doesn't need him anymore. Somehow, Selena knows what the Omegahedraon does.
Selena goes back to her home, an abandoned amusement park she shares with her sister Bianca (Brenda Vaccaro) and realizes she can now rule the world. Supergirl has landed on Earth and is hit on by truckers who she defeats with her superpowers. That day, she sees an all-girls' private school and enrolls herself in it as Linda Lee by falsifying records.
Linda is put in a dorm room and her roommate is Lucy Lane (Maureen Teefy), sister of Lois, who invites Linda into town for the weekend with Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure). Selena decides to invite a gardener she saw earlier that day, Ethan (Hart Bochner), give him a potion that will knock him out and make him fall in love with the first person he sees when he wakes up, which would be her. Ethan wakes up while she's not there and walks out and into the street, and in his delirium is chased by a runaway bulldozer.
Ethan is swallowed up by the loader and the bulldozer causes a series of accidents in town and starts a fire, which Supergirl must put out. She rescues Ethan, and becomes the first woman he sees and so fall sin love with her. Selena oversees this through a portal and becomes angry, calling Nigel to come and help her.
There's a scene where Linda has no idea what a bra is for, the reason she has one on her head in the first panel there.
Selena has made a mountain in the middle of the town which she has made into her fortress (I think the movie was heavily edited, because there's no explanation of how she did it or why everyone accepts that it's there.) She has made Ethan her Prince and banished Supergirl to the Phantom Zone, where she discovers Zaltar who has also been banished there. She breaks free and is able to get the Omegahedron back and return to Argo City.
This was the cover to the British edition.
STUPORGIRL
Maniac #1, c. 1984
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
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
MMTV
Maniac #2, c. 1984
w:Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
At one time there were three network channels and maybe a couple local channels and a UHF channel, HBO or Showtime if your family was rich, then in the early 80s all these basic cable channels started showing up, mostly specializing in one subject. MTV, which stood for Music Television, was one of the first, when it started it only showed music videos 24 hours a day, premiering August 1,1981 at midnight. I don't think they even show music videos anymore
When it started, there were five V.J.s, or video jockeys, that hosted visual versions of cuts from albums. They were J. J. Jackson, Martha Quinn, Mark Goodman, Nina Blackwood, and Alan Hunter.
YOU KNOW YOU'RE AN MTV FREAK WHEN...
Cracked #210, March 1985
a: Bill Powers (John Severin)
A MAD PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES AT A MUSIC VIDEO
MAD #267, December 1986
w: Mike Snider
a: Jack Davis
THE WORST MTV CONTESTS OF ALL TIME
MAD #348, August 1996
w: Desmond Devlin
a: Rick Tulka
There are three guys in ZZ Top, one without a beard. I feel bad for him because his name is Frank Beard. Boy George was jailed for molesting a male model though that was years after this piece.
Nobody knows who George Michael's partner was. Do you? Ozzy Osbourne was said to have bitten off the head of a plastic bat at a concert, and the rumor grew to the point where eating live animals was a regular part of his act. Milli Vanilli was exposed for not being the actual singers. Tupac was convicted of sexual assault. Sinead O'Connor was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live and sucker-punched the producer by bringing out a picture of the Pope and ripping it in half at the end of her act on live television. Lisa Lopes of TLC burned down the house of her boyfriend.
INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984)
dir: Steven Spielberg
MAD #250, October 1984
w: Dick DeBartolo
a:Jack Davis
Second in the Indiana Jones franchise (third one tomorrow). Opens at Club Obi-Wan in Shanghai where Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) is singing. Archaeologist/explorer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) has found the remains of an ancient emperor which he is giving crime boss Lao Che (Ray Chiao) in exchange for a diamond. After being given the diamond, he has been double-crossed and the crime-lords have poisoned his drink and threatened not to give him the antidote unless he returns the diamond. After her act, Willie comes to the table, because in movies, nightclub singers are always associated with criminals. Indiana then holds her for ransom unless he gets the antidote and amidst chaos that's been created, both the diamond and the antidote fall on the floors and everybody crawls on the ground looking for the respective properties they want.
Indiana has both the diamond and the antidote and is being chased by gunmen. He runs out of the club and takes Willie with him, I guess to have a female co-star, and they're rescued in a car driven by Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan), Indiana's very young sidekick. They escape in a plane which happens to be owned by Lao Che, and the plane's crew leaves them while in flight, and the only thing they have to escape in before the plane crashes is an inflatable raft. They land in the Indian village of Mayapore.
The Shaman there believes Indiana has been sent by god and ask him to free their kidnapped children and retrieve their lost Sankara stone from a palace in Pankot. The Maharaja's Prime Minister Chattar Lal (Roshan Seth) welcomes them and invites them to dinner, and are disgusted by the food made from unfamiliar species and parts, and monkey brains for dessert. When they spend the night, an assassin tries to kill Indiana. He has a chance to sleep with Willie and discovers her room is booby-trapped with controls that lead to a secret passageway. He and Short Round explore tunnels that correspond with a map and they wind up in a cave with walls will crush them and yell for Willie to find a lever that will stop the walls from moving.
Willie saves them in time and is covered by bugs. They find where a sacrifice ritual is being performed by Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) of the Thuggees and also within that tunnel is the stone and the children that have been forced into slave labor. Indiana tries to get to the stone but is caught and kidnapped. He is forced to drink the blood from the sacrifice ritual which has a hypnotizing power forcing him to become one of the bad guys, and they almost sacrifice Willie. Short Round burns him causing him to get out of the trance.
After freeing the children, he along with Willie and Short Round are chased by the Thuggees tracks on mining cars in a tunnel, they escape a flood only to find themselves on a cliff overlooking a river full of crocodiles, there's a fight on a suspension bridge, the British Army shows up to help them at the last minute (none of this is in the parody, and they return to Mayapore with the stone and the freed children.
This was the cover for the German edition.
And the Brazilian one. Maybe the woman is Romberta Pose? Or from it? I don't know if Romberta Pose is a person or a show or what?
INDIANAPOLIS BONES AND THE TEMPLE OF GLOOM
Cracked #206, November 1984
a: John Severin
Blake Carrington was a character from Dynasty.
Disneyland actually has an Indiana Jones ride which I think is like this.
UPDATE: INDIANA JONES OUTTAKES AND BLOOPERS
Maniac #2, circa 1984
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Steve Goldsworthy
