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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LITTLE ANNIE FANNY
Playboy, circa 1984
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Will Elder Little Annie Fanny sort of did a takeoff of the whole Indiana Jones franchise, specifically Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, which had been released that summer. Caricatures are drawn of Harrison Ford and Steven Spielberg. The Nazis and snakes are more from Raiders of the Lost Ark, though.
TRAILERS OF THE LOST PARK
Bananas #50, circa 1981
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
The government agents are all Mr. Dithers from Blondie.
For the next twenty years? It's been 42 years and they're still making sequels now.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
MAD #18, December 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Jack Davis
Though this is more based on the book, there were two movie versions at this point, a live-action version from 1933 and an animated one from 1951 which may be better known. This and the cover from a few issues earlier are taken from the John Tenniel illustrations for the book.
PUMPING IRON (1977)
dirs: George Butler & Robert Fiore
Not a scene-by-scene parody of the movie but a look at the fad. The movie was a documentary about the professional bodybuilding world, specifically the Mr. Universe competition and champion Arnold Schwarzenegger before he was a movie star. These are posted because they came out around the same time of the movie and Schwarzenegger is caricatured in them.
LITTLE ANNIE FANNY
Playboy, c. 1977-1978
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Will Elder
NIGHT TIME TAKES A MAD LOOK AT A ROCK VIDEO
MAD #254, April 1985
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Harry North
Similar to the Person of the Year articles they did, parodying Ted Koppel interviewing Bob Pittman of MTV and Quincy Jones.
I think this was a misspelling of the name 'Pia Zadora' rather than a pun on it, considering the other names aren't changed.
LITTLE ANNIE FANNY
Playboy, c.1965
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Will Elder, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta
The topless bathing suit was something in a fashion show designed by designer Rudi Gernreich, though it was used in comic strips and comedy sketches more than it was ever worn in public. Annie's manager Solly Brass was patterned after Phil Silvers.
Among the cops here are caricatures of Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis from Car 54, Where Are You?. Raymond Burr from Perry Mason is the lawyer featured here.
The other lawyers are E. G. Marshall and Robert Reed of The Defenders.
The Nazi here is George Lincoln Rockwell.
In one of Chris Elliott's appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, he came on to plug his real appearance on Miami Vice.
HULLABADIG AU GO GO
MAD #105, September 1966
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Jack Davis
Parody combining all three shows on different networks, which all had the same themes, pop acts of the time performing in front of an audience, rotating celebrity hosts, and house dancers.
MAD's rock and roll acts were always called "[...] and the [...]"
Maria Callas was an opera singer.
I guess The Flatones is supposed to be a parody of Phil Spector-produced girl groups like The Ronettes or The Supremes.
This supposed to be a mashup of protest singers such as Bob Dylan, who I don't think did shows like this.
Most people know of Hullabaloo from the brief clip in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood not realizing it was a real show.
HOOPADEEDOO
Playboy, ca. 1966
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Will Elder & Jack Davis
For a while they where doing Little Annie Fanny on a monthly schedule and having other artists collaborate. Here they also had Jack Davis. Her agent, a recurring character, was modeled after Phil Silvers.
The protest singer looks like Bob Dylan but the song's more like Barry McGuire's Eve of Destruction. Sonny and Wanda are very loosely based on Sonny and Cher and their song is a parody of I Got You, Babe.
Loving Anthony is sort of a combination of Little Anthony and James Brown. The program director is a caricature of William F. Buckley.
Annie is always in the background with the focus of the stories being a satire of current events like Candide. But this being a feature for Playboy, they have to find a way for her clothes to come off in each episode.
Making fun of rock and roll has been around since the beginning.
Straw man argument for hate readers: Here at Rated Ecch, we separate the art from the artist. This parody was done in 1986, five years before his reputation as a child predator went down. We good? Okay, on with the show.
HENNA AND HER SICKOS
MAD #265, September 1986
w: Debbee Ovitz (Arnie Kogen)
a: Mort Drucker
I've said before I don't think Debbee Ovitz is a real person, probably an amalgam of writers or a pseudonym. The credit only appears on two articles. They've used tryout contributors before but never for movie or TV parodies, and before 1990 almost never had woman contributors (don't look at me). This is as much a parody of the Woody Allen persona as a whole and one of my favorite Drucker splashes. Also included are Louise Lasser (his ex-wife and former co-star) as Mary Hartmann, movie critics Siskel and Ebert, Jeffrey Lyons and Gene Shalit, and New York mayor Ed Koch, wearing a button with his catchphrase "How'm I doin'?"
Though as much as I admire Mort Drucker, it pains me to say it but every once in a while he can't get a photographic reference for an actor and ends up copying Al Hirschfield. Very rare, but it happens once in a while, like this Thanksgiving guest I can't seem to identify.
Lee (Barbara Hershey), one of the sisters, comes back home to her boyfriend Frederick (Max Von Sydow) and it's evident they're breaking up. Mickey (Woody Allen) is a television producer who thinks he may have cancer and used to be married to Hannah (Mia Farrow). Holly (Dianne Weist), the third sister of the title, is always changing careers and borrowing money to start them. Her newest one is a catering service she has with her friend (Carrie Fisher). One of the guests at a party they're catering (Sam Waterston) is an architect that ends up taking them both out. Elliot (Michael Caine) is married to Hannah but has just started seeing Lee secretly.
Aside: It always annoys me in comics when the titles on book spines are displayed upside-down.
In the crowd scene in the third panel is Benchley, which was a newspaper strip Drucker had for a while
Mickey has a flashback to earlier when he was married to Hannah and wasn't able to conceive, and asks his friend (Tony Roberts, who's mostly only played Woody Allen's sidekick) to be a donor for him. His wife, played by Joanna Gleason, is also depicted. Mickey finds out he's not going to die, which seems like it would be good news, but makes him even more depressed. Hannah ask her parents (Maureen O'Sullivan, her real-life mother, and Lloyd Nolan) if she's adopted.
Mickey contemplates becoming religious, but before that, we are treated to flashbacks of when he went out on a date with Holly and it didn't work out. In the present they meet again, with her finding her voice as a writer and them getting married. The last panel is a reference to how Mickey realizes life's worth living after seeing a screening of Duck Soup, plus the criticisms Woody was getting in real life as a filmmaker before his scandals started to overshadow them.
This was the final Little Annie Fanny in the September 1988 issue of Playboy. Not a parody of any actual Woody Allen film but Hannah had been the most recent one to feature him.
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY (1966)
dir: Sergio Leone
A FISTFUL OF LASAGNA
MAD Special #4, Fall 1971
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Jack Davis
Not a parody of any one Western in particular, but the spaghetti western genre as a whole. As the Western movie was dying off in the sixties and seventies, more were funded by and shot in Italy, thus the name. Above are trailers for the three most famous, re-released in the United States a few years later and which remain classics to this day.
Clint Eastwood appeared in many of these as "The Man With No Name". Nino Benevenuti was an Italian boxer who transitioned into acting. Joe Namath was also was an athlete-turned-actor, though he was not in a spaghetti western. Jon Voight was neither an athlete nor spaghetti western actor, but he played the persona of a cowboy in Midnight Cowboy. His character was gay but they would never get away with a joke like that now.
Lee Van Cleef also starred in some of these films.
Spiro Agnew famously said "If you've seen one city slum, you've seen them all."
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE GARLIC
Playboy, January 1970
w: Sol Weinstein, Dick Mathews
a: (breakdowns) Harvey Kurtzman
Today, you'd never have such elaborate sets and staging for a piece in Playboy. Not that this had a particularly big budget, especially relative to a movie, but more grandiose than anything they'd have now.
Much emphasis was on the fact that these Westerns were made in Italy, reminding you in case you forgot. Surely somebody paid the offices a visit.
Back when newspapers all had Sunday magazines comparable to any newsstand magazine, Jack Davis did this for the Los Angeles Times supplement.
