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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On the planet Krypton, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) warns everyone that Krypton will be destroyed by their sun and they ignore him.
Before Krypton is destroyed, Jor-El and Lara (Susannah York) send their only son to Earth. He lands in Smallville where he's discovered by Jonathan (Glenn Ford) and Martha Kent (Phyllis Thaxter). The baby lifts the truck and saves Jonathan from being crushed from it while changing it.
Marlon Brando only appears at the beginning for fifteen minutes and gets top billing, and was paid three million dollars, more than any actor was ever paid up to that point.
They decide to keep him and call him Clark. He hides his superhuman strength from the others in his school. One day after his father has died, Clark discovers a green crystal from the ship he landed in, leading him to the arctic where he created a Fortress of Solitude sees an image of his father telling him he is there to do good. Clark (Christopher Reeve) moves to Metropolis (which is an exact duplicate of New York City with a World Trade Center and Statue of Liberty) and gets a job at the Daily Planet, a newspaper run by Perry White (Jackie Cooper) and forms a friendship with Lois Lane (Margot Kidder), and meets Jimmy Olsen (Marc McClure).
Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Woodward and Bernstein are in the background.
Clark performs a number of good deeds. At the Daily Planet, Perry White demands one of the reporters gets an inside scoop on this Superman. Lois has a mystery date with someone who turns out to be Superman, who she interviews. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor (Gene Hackman), at his home underneath Grand Central Station, has plotted a scheme with his girlfriend Eve Teschmacher (Valerie Perrine).
Movie critic Rex Reed makes a cameo in the movie.
After Lois' interview with Superman, he flies her around Metropolis. Lex's plan has been bungled by his assistant Otis (Ned Beatty) and Eve needs to fix it. He has bought up all the vacant land in California east of the San Andreas fault and has reprogrammed a test missile so that it will cause earthquakes in Western California and make his land the new coastline, and therefore prime real estate. There is another missile which has been reprogrammed to destroy New Jersey. Lex Luthor has lured Superman into his lair by broadcasting a warning to Superman at a frequency only he can hear, and Clark hears it while in a meeting with his boss. Once Superman gets there, Lex shows he has found the last remaining piece of Kryptonite which will weaken and kill him. Eve has a change of heart since her mother is in New Jersey, and saves Superman.
Superman flies west where he stops the missile from destroying the California coastline and averts disasters that cause major damages there. All is saved except for Lois, who was on assignment and swallowed up by the fault line and killed. Superman is upset that he couldn't have stopped it. The voice of Jor-El reminds him that he can't use his powers to alter history, but the voice of his adopted father tells him to use his powers to do the right thing. He flies backwards around the earth to go back in time, saving Lois and stopping the missiles from being misdirected in the first place. Then he brings Lex and Otis to prison.
Crazy also ran this in the same issue, written by Paul Laikin under his daughter-in-law's name, and illustrated by Walter Brogan.
This was probably meant as a cover of that issue as well, but used for a later one.
SUPED-UP MAN: THE SATIRE
Cracked #160, July 1979
a: John Severin
This was only very loosely based on the movie.
From If Gary Coleman Played Other Parts in the next issue, also by John Severin, when they were parodying many of the same TV shows and movies over and over again.
Lou Grant had his own TV show at that point.
The Brazilian and German editions of Cracked also reprinted the Superman parody.
SHLEPPERMAN: THE MOVIE
Sick #128, August 1979
w: Arnold Drake
a: Jack Sparling
Rona Barrett was the main figure for Hollywood gossip and entertainment at that time.
There was a plot point at the beginning where Jor-El (Marlon Brando) has sentenced Zod (Terence Stamp), Ursa (Sarah Douglas), and Non (Jack O'halloran) to the Phantom Zone. It had nothing to do with anything until the sequel, maybe because both were filmed at the same time and they thought that might be in this.
Lois Lane is on assignment and goes into a helicopter which goes out of control and leaves her on the edge of a building, rescued by Superman.
Yeah, I crossed out a slur only because it might set off a trigger for some people, but you can tell what it is by the context of the joke. Underneath the desk is Herve Villechaise, famous for being a little person.
LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1973)
dir: Bernardo Bertolucci
Yeah, this trailer is age restricted because the movie was rated X. Sorry, kids.
LAST TANGLE IN PARIS
Crazy #3, March 1974
w: Marv Wolfman & Steve Skeates
a: Enrique Ventura
Movie about a French woman named Jeanne (Maria Schneider), who looks at an apartment and finds an American twice her age named Paul (Marlon Brando) is also checking it out. They decide to both take it to carry on an anonymous love affair.
Paul woos her using what we'd now call “negging”.
Jeanne's boyfriend Thomas (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is a filmmaker making a biography about their life, has no idea about Paul or their trysts, and proposes marriage to her. She goes back to the apartment and finds it empty, then Paul surprises her. She tries to call the affair off, but he insists in taking her out dancing. Afterwards, she tries to get away from him end ends up shooting him in self-defense.
They don't go into Paul's grieving over his ex-wife's suicide, which is sort of irrelevant to the steamy erotica used to sell the film.
from Clean Ads for Dirty Pictures by Larry Siegel and Jack Rickard in MAD #166 (the infamous middle finger cover issue), April 1974
UPDATE:
LAST TANGO IN PARIS
cover for Pancada, Brazilian version of Cracked
They called their parody (don't know if there was one inside) Last Chicken in Paris.
Started out in 1971 as a Broadway show about a high school reunion taking place in Brooklyn, then rewritten to take place in a high school, then when it was made into a movie, the location moved to Los Angeles and added new songs, then when it was a stage production again it adapted the movie, which was shown on TV. This is the 1978 movie.
CEASE
MAD #205, March 1978
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Danny Zuko (John Travolta) and Sandy Olsson (Olivia Newton-John) had met on the beach during the summer and had a fling, now everyone's back in school again. Danny doesn't know that Sandy has transferred to his school and Sandy doesn't know Danny's in his new school either. The T-Birds and Pink Ladies are re-united. Rizzo (Stockard Channing) is a member of the Pink Ladies who acts like she's more mature and more experienced to keep up appearances. Eve Arden is the principal and Alice Ghostley is a teacher. Allusions are made throughout of Travolta's previous role in Saturday Night Fever.
Danny and Sandy each tell their friends their own side of their summer romance.
MAD always has a footnote saying "Sung to the tune of" when it parodies lyrics but for some reason this is the exception.
I've heard women say they don't like how one of the lyrics was "did she put up a fight", I always argue it's a character in a movie. Then again that's easy to say from my perspective, I can only partially understand and am fully aware it comes off as mansplaining. It's one of the perpetual disagreements that will always last throughout time. I can agree it that in retrospect it was wrong for our third-grade music class to sing it in our assembly, though.
Danny and Sandy are reunited later at a pep rally, and even though he's glad to see her has to act like a tough guy to protect his reputation in front of his friends.
The girls invite Sandy to a slumber party at Frenchy(Didi Conn)'s house and make fun of her when she leaves the room. Rizzo sees Kenickie (Jeff Conway) outside the window and leaves to make out with him. While Kenickie and Rizzo are in his car, they're interrupted by Crater-Face (Dennis Cleveland Stewart) who challenges them to a drag race. At a diner, Danny sees Sandy with a new date (Lorenzo Lamas) and starts his tough guy act again when his friends show up.
Danny wants to win Sandy back so he tries to become an athlete. The coach (Sid Caesar) tries to see what Danny's good at and he hurts himself pole vaulting, gaining Sandy's sympathy and temporarily her affection. At the diner, where Frenchy works, she tells another waitress (Joan Blondell) she's dropped out of high school to go to vocational school, and failed a cosmetics course there as well. As they're closing she has a dream that Frankie Avalon sings to her.
Rydell High has been chosen to be the school for National Bandstand, a stand-in for American Bandstand. Danny meets his old girlfriend Cha Cha (Annette Charles), they dance together and win, and a jealous Sandy storms off. Danny tries to make it up to Sandy by taking her to a drive-in but comes on strong because he thinks that's what he's supposed to do, and she leaves him again. Rizzo's in another car and she says she thinks she might been knocked up by Kenickie when they made out earlier, and rumor about it spreads throughout the drive-in.
There's another musical number they don't use here where Danny's by himself and he sings a song pining for Sandy.
There's a drag race between the T-Birds and a rival gang and they make over their car (with another song they don't parody). For some reason, the shop teacher helps referee a game of death. Sandy wants to win over Danny and makes herself over for him. Even 43 years ago, MAD pointed out how sexist it was for the girl to change her image to make herself attractive to the boy. Well, sort-of back-handedly, anyway, because they also suggested that dressing provocatively is a bad thing. I'm starting to border on mansplaining again. I'll stop. At an end-of-the-year fair, they all resolve their issues and sing the finale.
That's Gabe Kaplan from Welcome Back. Kotter at the drag race. John Travolta started on that show, though as a kid I didn't know they were the same person.
GREASED
Cracked #155, December 1978
a: John Severin
The prologue is used here, and mentions the fact that the part of Sandy was changed to an Australian for the movie because they couldn't get actress Olivia Newton-John to do an American accent.
The actors were all full-grown adults. Stockard Channing was 34. The number 34 would have made more sense for the song lyrics too since it rhymes with "tell me more". Maybe they know something I don't.
Dick Clark stand-in Vince Fontaine (Edd "Kookie "Byrnes), who would be arrested for sexual assault today. (Not shown in any of these parodies is a scene where the rest of the T-Birds moon the cameras on national TV and get in trouble for it).
When Danny and Sandy reconcile at the end they take off in a car that turns into a spaceship. To cash in on Star Wars, maybe?
GROSS
Crazy #44, November 1978
w: Murad Gumen
a: Kent Gamble
And here they used the same photo reference for Travolta that MAD did.
Who's that supposed to be in the first panel? Adlai Stevenson? You can't always tell with Kent Gamble.
And as usual with Crazy, the art director gets the dialogue balloons mixed up in some panels.
And they get the chronology of the movie mixed up.
Is that supposed to be Mickey Rooney as one of the T-Birds?
And Charles Martin Smith at the diner?
And Eisenhower and Ron Howard at the dance?
And Paul LeMat and Henry Winkler at the drag race?
I can tell that's Gen. McArthur and Nixon and the end, duh.
UPDATE 2:
cover to Pancada, Brazilian edition of Cracked
(“Pancada” means “knock” or “blow”)
Nos Tempos de Vaseline means In the Times of Vaseline and Danem Se Days means Damn Days. The former was a sexploitation comedy in Brazil around the same time.
