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 UNWATCHABLES
MAD #276, January 1988
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Angelo Torres
Loosely based on the TV series of the same name, which was loosely based on the true story of Al Capone, though unlike the TV series the movie goes back to the beginning and ended with Capone.
Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) is talking to the press about being an “executive” in Chicago while being waited on, telling how selling liquor during the prohibition is just giving the people what they want. Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is starting his first day on the job as a treasury agent, being seen off to work by his adoring wife (Patricia Clarkson). He pledges to be virtuous and becomes the laughingstock of his office when his first bust turns out to be a bust. Dejected and on a bridge he's almost arrested for littering and possessing a gun, until telling the cop, Malone (Sean Connery) that he's a treasury agent. Ness later visits Malone to help assemble a group to help bust Al Capone.
The scene of raiding Capone's warehouse only to find crates full of umbrellas mirrors a special later where Geraldo hyped opening Al Capone's vault live on national television only to reveal it was empty.
Malone is reluctant at first but finally gives in. Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) is an accountant looking at Capone's financial records and figures Capone can be nailed for income tax evasion if only Capone can by linked to any of his businesses. Ness and Malone need another gunman for their group and recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia) from the police academy.
There are all kinds of references to movies that featured Connery and DeNiro throughout. Never Say Never Again was Sean Connery's attempt at making a comeback as James Bond. There must have been some Taxi Driver joke in the last panel but they forgot to paste in the caption. The last panel also has Robert Stack, Elliott Ness in the TV series.
Al Capone vows revenge after reading about Elliott Ness and his men (scenes are taken out of order here). At a board meeting, he gives a speech comparing the teamwork of his syndicate to that of a baseball team. A team needs get rid of the dead weight which he demonstrates by clubbing their weakest link to death with a bat (see clip below). Ness forms a raid on the men who are smuggling liquor in from the Canadian border with the help of their Mounties. They all fight, Stone is shot in the melee, and that makes Wallace really mad. They catch Capone's bookkeeper and get him to become witness, but he and Wallace are killed in an elevator right before the trial.
Ness confronts Capone at the opera house because it's become personal and wants to fight man-to-man without bodyguards (The friend that he says was killed was Malone, who's holding him back in this parody. Al Capone's hitman Frank Nitti [Billy Drago] figures a lot more in the film and is responsible for almost all deaths, but is only drawn here). Another of Capone's bookkeepers (Jack Kehoe), who is about to turn witness, but is placed under protective custody by Capone. Malone has just been murdered and his last dying words are that he knows the bookkeeper will be at the train station. While Ness is looking out for him, he sees a woman struggling with bringing a baby carriage up the stairs and helps her, and while trying to balance a shootout and helping her at the same time, loses control of the carriage which is stopped in the nick of time, in a scene lifted from Battleship Potemkin. While Capone is on trial, Ness finds out everyone is on the take including the judge, and blackmails him with that knowledge.
From Recasting Famous Old Movies With Today's Famous Wrestlers by John Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano.
UNTOUCHY BULLS
Cracked #233, January 1988
w: Mort Todd
a: John Severin
At the beginning, a store that refuses to pay protection is blown up by Frank Nitti, with a girl inside the store. Dan Aykroyd was in Dragnet '87 that year, playing the role originated by Jack Webb.
A Chicago alderman (Del Close) attempts to bribe Elliott Ness and his staff. When Ness comes home one night, Frank Nitti is outside threatening his family.
During the trial, Frank Nitti hands Al Capone a note telling him Malone has been killed and the jury has been bribed. Elliott Ness sees this, knows Nitti is about to open fire, but can't get the bailiff to confiscate the gun because Nitti has a note with permission to carry it from the mayor. Nitti realized he's cornered and runs away. This leads to a fight on the rooftop.
Capone's lawyer is portrayed by Raymond Burr as Perry Mason in this.
CRACKED INTERVIEWS DICK CLOG, THE BLOOPER & PRACTICAL JOKE KING
Cracked #220, July 1986
w: Mort Todd
a: John Severin
Dick Clark co-hosted a show called TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes, which was basically that, the practical jokes were kind of like Punk'd or Candid Camera, but played on celebrities. It also featured commercials, old and foreign, man in the street interviews, and home videos. Clark hosted a bunch of other shows throughout the seventies and eighties and American Bandstand around the same time. If you notice in the video above, the credits and interstitials were by MAD's Sergio Aragones.
Dick Clark also hosted the game show Pyramid. His co-host for this one was Ed McMahon, who in addition to Bloopers also did Star Search.
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins was a movie from Dick Clark's production company. Even though he had his own production company, Bloopers was produced by Johnny Carson's.
Len Cella's Silly Cinemas was a series of short films three seconds long or so. Dick Clark also produced Puttin' on the Ritz, a short-lived lipp-sync show.
STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (1986)
dir: Leonard Nimoy
MAD #271, June 1987
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
The crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise, Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), McCoy (Deforest Kelley), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Sulu (George Takei), Chekhov (Walter Koenig), and Scotty (James Doohan), is stranded on the planet Vulcan after the last movie. They returned Spock to his home planet to be revived, stealing the Enterprise against orders, then blowing it up when the Klingons were on it and then stealing their ship to get to Vulcan, Now they face court-martial.
Mark Lenard and Jane Wyatt appear briefly as Spock's parents.
As the crew is returnung home, there is an alien life form destroying the power of all vessels in uts path and issuing a signal that cannot be deciphered, and must be answered in order to be stopped. Spock determines the sound is the song of the humpback whale, a now-extinct species.
The crew must travel back in time to find two whales to duplicate the alien sounds, They go back to 80s San Francisco, and split into groups. Spock wears a headband to hide that he's an alien with different ears.
Kirk pawns possessions so everyone can have money, and he and Spock take a bus out to a zoo in Sausalito, where they find to whales, George and Gracie, when they are on a tour given by biologist Jillian Taylor (Catherine Hicks). Kirk keeps asking too many questions about the whales, Spock has dove into the tank to study them and determined one is pregnant. The two of them are dismissed as kooks and kicked out of the park. After work, Jillian sees them walking by the side of the road and she offers them a ride. She and Kirk end upgoing out on a date, where he admits he came from the future to take the whales and save the planet. Scotty and Dr. McCoy went to a plexiglass factory to get material for a tank to put the whales in, but in order to get it, had to pose as scientists.
Jillian beamed herself up into space with all the others, having no life on Earth without whales. The Enterprise crew goes to trial and their charges are all dropped because they saved the Earth. Except the penalty of disobeying a superior officer, for which Kirk is demoted from Admiral to Captain again. Jillian has become science officer in a different branch of Starfleet.
STAR DREK IV: THE VOYAGE BACK HOME TO THE FUTURE
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: Mort Todd
a: Bill Wray
Wendy Pini was the artist for a comic in the 80s called ElfQuest.
There was a bit where they noticed everyone was swearing, so they decided to swear too to blend in, but got it all wrong.
There's a scene where Chekhov is injured while trying to collect energy and taken to the hospital, and Kirk, McCoy, and Jillian pose as doctors to break him out.
ROCKHEAD IV
MAD #262, April 1986
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
When we last left off, Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) won his bout with Clubber Lang (Mr.T.), and it was left to the viewer who won a private friendly match between him and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers). At home Rocky and his wife Adrian (Talia Shire) are having a party for her brother Pauly (Burt Young). The Soviets have developed their champion boxer Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren) which his wife (Brigitte Nielsen) is introducing to Americans.
In the audience in the splash panel are Benchley, Drucker's newspaper strip, and Hulk Hogan, who was in the previous Rocky movie.
Apollo comes out of retirement to fight Ivan despite protests from Rocky, the Italian Stallion. He goes through with it and gets pummeled to death by Ivan.
Rocky decides it's up to him to fight Ivan to avenge the death of Apollo, and the bout takes place in Russia, becoming a fight of “U.S. vs. U.S.S.R”. In Russia, he trains with primitive resources while Ivan has state of the art equipment. Pauly goes with him and he's later joined by Adrian. The crowd, being Russian, starts out on Ivan's side.
Rocky wins the bout. Is it even necessary to say? The Mount Rushmore here consists of Stallone as both Rocky and Rambo with Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson.
I made up words to the theme song in high school. All I remember is the middle, it went something like this: “Rocky 2...Rocky 3...Rocky 4...Rocky 5... That's a whole lot of Rockies...Why are there so many, I don't know...oh... Gonna fly now...” I don't know why Rocky was singled out as having so many sequels when there were a dozen or so other franchises. MAD picked Rocky in particular too in #264, July 1986.
Mexico's take on the parody.
And the Netherlands, with politicians only they would know about.
And Germany.
ROCKEY IV
Cracked #220, July 1986
w: Mort Todd
a: Bob Fingerman
In his match with Ivan Drago in Vegas, he came down a big stage with James Brown.
Stallone did a movie about arm wrestling called Over the Top.
ROCKEY: 2001
Cracked #219, May 1986
w: Eel O'Brien (Mort Todd)
a: John Severin
MR. ROCKEY'S NEIGHBORHOOD
Cracked #219, May 1986
w: Mark Lewis
a: John Reiner
Steven Freeling (Craig T. Nelson) is the patriach of a household in a Southern California suburb, where he lives with his wife Diane (JoBeth Williams) and their three children Robbie (Oliver Robins), Dana (Dominique Dunne), and Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke). Carol Anne speaks to the static on the TV at night.
You see, at one time before cable was the standard, and infomercials had not yet been invented, television sets used to sign off at night and then have nothing but static until the morning, and... oh, never mind.
The family gets into an argument with the neighbors when his remote control is interfering with their football game. Its significance in the movie is that animosity turns to empathy at the end, which is irrelevant when they leave that part out of the parody. The first omen of the house being haunted is that Carol Anne's pet canary dies. Robbie can't sleep because he's afraid of the tree he sees out a window during a thunderstorm but is assured there's nothing to be afraid of. The parody makes too much out of the fact that the parents smoke pot to relax at night.
Carol Anne, being so small, has no fear of the ghosts inside the TV static, who she refers to as “the TV people”. The ghosts escape and start to do weird things in the house, first harmless things in the kitchen.
The next night, the tree Robbie was scared of comes to life and tries to kidnap him. They save him and Carol Anne has been kidnapped by the ghosts. They call a paranormal team to investigate consisting of lead scientist Martha Lesh (Beatrice Straight) and her assistants (Richard Lawson and Martin Casella).
The children's room that was cordonned off has everything floating around, one of the investigators imagines himself peeling his face off in the bathroom, and Carol Anne communicated with the family through the television.
The family and the paranormal experts decide to hire a psychic, Tangina (Zelda Rubenstein) who in my opinion was creepier than anything in the movie. Tangina can see the other plane and can figure how to rescue Carol Anne by getting her to looking into the light, testing where things are with marked tennis balls.
The dollhouse says Ibsen because of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, and the doll you see is of The Crypt Keeper, which Davis had drawn years earlier.
They omit the “just when you think it's over” moment where they arrange to get out after the father's last day of work, and all hell breaks loose the minute he leaves.
Diane is thrown around in her bedroom, the two youngest kids are attacked by a doll in their room, and it's revealed all along that the house has been built on top of ancient graves.
POLTERGOOSED
Crazy #94, April 1983
w: David Allikas
a: Bob Camp
Another essential scene MAD omits is when Steven, who works for the agency that builds these developments, is being lied to by his boss Mr. Teague (James Karen, who people from NY and NJ would recognize from Pathmark commercials) about how they move the graves as well as the tombstones when they build new real estate on old graveyards.
The movie ends with the family evacuating prematurely and going to a hotel. The punchline in this is that it's the Bates Motel. In Cracked they decided to go a step further and do a mashup of the two.
POLTER-PSYCHO-GEIST
Cracked #221, August 1986
w: Mortimer Post and Mort Todd
a: John Reiner
Dee Snider, Stephen King, and Mikhail Gorbachev aren't in the article. Cracked would just include everything from the issue on their cover around this time.
Since Poltergeist ended with the Freeling family checking into a motel, they decided to pick up where the movie left off. Here it's the Bates Motel from Psycho run by Norman Bates (Tony Perkins).
The bellboy here is Marty Feldman as Igor in Young Frankenstein.
The twist ending for Psycho was (spoiler) that the corpse of Norman's mother was kept in the basement motel and he would pretend to be her.
There were several unnecessary sequels to both Poltergeist and Psycho.
