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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SHAFTED
Crazy #4, May 1974
w: Len Wein
a: Mike Ploog
Not the films, of which there were three, but the TV series. Since many of NBC's mystery series were revolving TV movies, CBS decided to do the same thing and brought Shaft to the small screen, alternating with the Jimmy Stewart series Hawkins. The Shaft series also featured Richard Roundtree as John Shaft, the big black dick who was sex machine to all the chicks.
There was an unwritten rule in the seventies that if one TV detective was parodied, they all had to be, hence the appearances by Ironside, Columbo, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, and Ironside on the cover. They're on the inside too.
Shaft's boss was Lt. Rossi (Ed Barth).
In Isaac Hayes' theme, a popular song in its own right, he describes Shaft as “a mean mother--” and is then interrupted before he can say the f-word.
3
Shaft's Big Score was the title of one of his movies.
Yesterday saw the first part of the Kung Fu parodies I know of, here's the second half.
KUNG FOOEY
Crazy #1, October 1973
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Mike Ploog
TV series about Kwai Chiang Caine (David Carradine), a fugitive from justice in China, that now must flee in the American West in the late nineteenth century and stay one step ahead of his captors, and each time he came to a new town, there was a problem he would help the locals with. Each week he was in a different town with a different cast.
Caine always had flashback to his training as a Shaolin monk and learning the martial arts under the tutelage of Master Po (Keye Luke)
The next to last panel is a quote from The Desiderata, a poem that became a new-age self-help guide in the 70s
“Grasshopper” was Po's nickname for Caine.
Caine didn't believe in violence, but had to use kung-fu for self-defense, and it was the “money shot” in each episode.
KUNG FOOEY
Crazy #7, October 1974
w: Marv Wolfman
a: Marie Severin & Herb Trimpe
This issue was supposedly articles rejected from previous issues of Crazy. The photo is of Marv Wolfman (who was also the editor).
Each show would begin with Caine as a child being told by Master Po he would finish his training once he was able to grab a pebble from Po's hands.
The man eating is portrayed is Frank Cannon, a TV detective who was a gourmet, which translates here to just being a glutton. Like in yesterday's Cracked parody, John Wayne also makes an appearance because it was the West.
“It's not nice to fool Mother Nature” was an ad campaign for Chiffon margarine.
The man at the end here is Fred Williamson.
From What Today's TV Programs Would Look Like If They Appeared in 2001 A. D. in Cracked #132, May 1976.
KUNG FOOEY
Sick #96, December 1973
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
Not a parody of the show, but of the kung-fu craze in motion pictures at the time, and included here because it was printed to make readers think it was a parody of the TV show.
“No tickee, no shirtee” and “an hour later, you're hungry again” were two of the racist tropes used in comedy at that time.
Sketch from The Carol Burnett Show which had lots of MAD's writers on staff. Some of them may have worked on this, who knows?
UPDATE:
From If TV Characters Aged While Their Shows Stayed the Same, art by Sururi Gumen, in Cracked #128, October 1975
