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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RAMBULL III
MAD #283, December 1988
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres
The third part of the Rambo saga. They got rid of First Blood from the title and it this point this was the biggest budget of any film thus far, and the setting this time was the Soviet-Afghan war before we became involved.
John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is visited again by his old army partner Col. Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna) and Robert Griggs (Kurtwood Smith) for another top secret military mission, fighting the Soviets. He's found stickfighting in Bangkok and they attempt to recruit him, but he is now living in a monestary and dismisses them, saying he has retired from warfare.
Funny how they joke here and further on about how old Richard Crenna was when Stallone is now so much older. More about that later.
Rambo has a change of mind and heart when Trautman is captured by the Russians. He goes to Pakistan, but the CIA will disavow his existence if anything happens to him. Once there he's led to a Mujhadeen village with the help of Mousa (Sasson Gabai). The village's leader Masoud (Spiros Focas) doubts his toughness but he proves worthy in their fighting games.
The Real McCoys was a sitcom with Crenna in the early 60s. Tabloids not reporting intrnational conflicts may be a joke here but not far off from reality with news now being a la carte.
Masoud is also aided by Hamid (Doudi Shoua), the boy who wants to be like Rambo.They help Rambo through a minefield where he is wounded and cauterizes the wound himself.
Rambo finds Trautman where he is about to be tortured and rescues him. They both escape the Soviets by hijacking a helicopter and outsmarting then with the Mujhadeen army.
Cracked often featured the movie on the cover before seeing it, to be timed with the release of the movie, then have their parody a few issues later. It was a sales strategy.
RAMBOZO III
Cracked #241, December 1988
w: Joe Catalano
a: Walter Brogan
Brigitte Nielsen, Sylvester Stallone's ex-wife, was also an action star.
Cracked also used the “don't try this at home” joke.
IF RAMBO FOUGHT OTHER WARS
Cracked #238, September 1988
w: George Gladir
a: John Severin
CRACKED INTERVIEWS RAMBOZO
Cracked #238, September 1988
w: Joe Catalano
a: Rob Orzechowski
Having not seen the movie yet, the assumed this would also be set in the jungle like its predecessor and not in the desert.
There was a reboot of the Rambo series that I never saw. I don't know what to expect since it was made in 2018. Sylvester Stallone was then 72.
RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (1985)
dir: George P. Cosmatos
DUMBO: MORE BLOOD PART II
MAD #259, December 1985
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Not the greatest moment for two of my all-time cartoonists to endorsing our use of troops in Nicaragua in the mid-eighties, which turned out to maybe not have been such a good idea when looking back on it in history.
Sequel to the earlier First Blood about former Green Beret John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone). We begin where that left off, where he is let out of a prison camp and back into the army by Col. Sam Trautman (Richard Crenna). His mission, under the command of Major Marshall Roger Murdock (Charles Napier), is to Thailand and photograph proof of missing Prisoners of War from Vietnam, and any that do exist are to be retrieved by soldiers. After landing, he meets agent Co Phung Bao (Julia Nickson).
Against orders, Rambo frees the P.O.W.s and is abandoned by the army. Murdock never intended to complete the mission, because he didn't intend for Rambo to actually find any missing troops, and orders it shut down. Rambo is kidnaped by Russian officers, and tortured by Sgt. Yushin (Vojislav Govedarica).
Rambo, with the aide of Co, overpowers the Russians and he vows to get back at the Americans that did him wrong. He and Co fall in love and he promises to bring her back with him. The Vietnamese go after Rambo, killing Co, and he escapes in one of their helicopters.
Rambo single-handedly overpowers the Russians and Vietnamese, hijacking their helicopter, shooting soldiers with explosive-tipped arrows, and bringing P.O.W.s home. He almost kills Murdock for sabotaging the mission and he knows there are more P.O.W.s out there, demanding Murdock have them rescued as well. Rambo's promised a medal by Trautmann but all he wants is for our country to love the troops as much as they love our country. Then he walks off and says he'll live life day by day.
Staying Alive was a film Stallone directed and Lords of Flatbushwas his first film.
The movie and image were popular enough that MAD kept using it, like with these two articles that were both in the same issue.
WHEN THE RAMBO INFLUENCE SPREADS EVERYWHERE
MAD #264, July 1986
w: Lou Silverstone and J. Prete (John Ficarra)
a: Angelo Torres
The politician, George H. W. Bush, had not been president yet. The game show host, Bob Barker, has his hair parted on the wrong side.
MAD'S WRESTLING PROMOTER OF THE YEAR
MAD #264, July 1986
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Mort Drucker
MAD usually had a [...] Of the Year profile where the interviewee was the latest celebrity. That issue's article about Vincent McMahon had Sylvester Stallone interviewing him in his Rambo garb.
Captain Lou Albano was known for his professional relationship with Cyndi Lauper.
Capt. Lou Albano, Sgt. Slaughter, and Fred Blassie are portrayed here.
Rowdy Roddy Piper is the opponent of Hulk Hogan. Gloria Steinem, Geraldine Ferraro, and Jackie Onassis are in the audience.
RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II
Cracked #217, January 1986
a: Kent Gamble
(When this was reprinted a few years later, they changed the name to lampoon it, calling it Rambozo: Worst Blood Part II)
The Charles Napier caricature looks more like a combination of Alexander Haig and Jack Palance.
Another of the Russian troops not used in the MAD parody is Lt. Col. Podovsky (Steven Berkoff)
This was the inside front and back cover for #219, a couple issues later.
HOT SNOTS PAS DE DEUXMENAGE A TROIS AH, THE HELL WITH IT... PART 2
Cracked #285, November 1993
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: John Severin
Weird for them to do a parody with the first Hot Shots, which was a spoof of Top Gun, but it's also weird for a parody to have a sequel, which was a parody of the Rambo franchise and action movies in general. They somehow managed to give it fewer jokes than it had.
Tug Benson (Lloyd Bridges), senile former admiral, is now President and needs Topper Harley (Charlie Sheen) for a secret mission to kill Saddam Hussein. Harley is now living in Thailand.
Col. Denton Walters (Richard Crenna) and Michelle Rodham Huddleston (Brenda Bakke) have tracked him down, but he doesn't want to go back because it reminds him of his romance with Dr. Ramada Rodham Hayman (Valeria Golino). In a sexist joke, all the women have the middle name "Rodham". They were making fun of it back then too.* There is a flashback parodying Lady and the Tramp. Topper catches up with Pres. Benson at a dinner with the Japanese prime minister, which parodies the news story of how George H.W. Bush threw up on the Prime Minister in real life.
They don't use the scene where Topper and Michelle make out in a limousine the night before his mission, which is a parody of No Way Out (see below).
The soldiers land in Iraq and Topper meets Ramada again, now an intelligence officer.
The Casablanca reference is also a reference to the Diet Pepsi commercials with Ray Charles.
Topper is believed to be missing and Benson goes to rescue him personally. They make references to Sea Hunt and Free Willy. The hostages they rescue are Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
They leave out how Benson sprays Saddam Hussein and his dog with a fire extinguisher, causing them to freeze and then shatter (parodying Terminator 2) and when the pieces thaw they end up combining so Saddam now has dog parts. There are scenes with Rowan Atkinson as Dr. Ramada's former husband, which makes it less funny since what made Airplane! funny is that it didn't have comic actors**.
*This isn't a defense of her. I took a long shower after voting for her in 2016. Just a defense of women keeping their last names. That's not virtue signaling, either. It's just annoying having to remember something different about someone from when I met them.
**This was written and directed by one of Airplane's three writer/directors, so he should have known better.
MAD #283, December 1988
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) and Sue (Linda Kozlowski) have settled down in New York in this movie and Mick has decided it's time to look for a job. He gets one with his friend Leroy (Charles Dutton) delivering stationery. At one drop-off, he looks out and sees someone about to jump off a ledge, comes out and talks to him, walking as if he's just passing by.
Sue has an ex-husband (Dennis Boutsikaris) we didn't know about in the first movie. He's a photojournalist in Colombia who's happened upon some druglords and takes pictures of them before he's found out. He knows he'll be shot so he sends them to Sue. The druglords, headed by Rico (Hechter Ubarry), know he did that and come to New York and kidnap her, demanding to get the photos. She hadn't even been home to get them yet. Mick comes home to find the place trashed and gets a phone call from them telling him he'll see Sue alive if he goes to the subway station with the package. When he gets there, one of Rico's heavies is there pointing a gun at him.
Some Asian tourists come off the train and Mick foils the minion by putting a wastebasket on his head (The subway station has mesh wastebaskets) and they think Mick is Clint Eastwood.
A hitman comes to kill Mick. Mick still doesn't have Sue back, and he gets a plan to recruit a gang (or what the makers of the movie think a gang looks like) to storm the druglords' mansion, with the aid of Leroy.
He rescues her, and the authorities later seek his aid in nabbing the druglords. Then that plotline is somehow forgotten and Mick and Sue go to his land in Australia, as if she didn't know about his lifestyle in the first movie.
The druglords chase him there. He reunites with Walter (John Meillon), his guide, and his old friends first. They set a bunch of traps and distractions to capture Rico and his gang. I guess they go back home and turn him in. They don't make that quite clear. MAD added this ending of Sue asking Mick to marry her, which wasn't in the movie.
In case you were wondering what the introduction was talking about, this was Jacko. Yeah, he was annoying.
Cracked did their version too:
CRACKEDILE DANDEE, TOO!
Cracked #241, December 1988
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: Gray Morrow
Here Rico is caricatured as Edward G. Robinson
I guess he was meant to say something in the top right.
We used to like him until ten years ago. Pretend it was ten years ago and we still like him.
THE CLODSBY SHOW
MAD # 255, June 1985
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres
Sitcom about an upwardly mobile family in Brooklyn. Cliff Huxtable (Bill Cosby) was an obstetrician. His wife Claire (Phylicia Rashad) was a lawyer. Their children were Theo (Malcolm Jamal-Warner), Denise (Lisa Bonet), Vanessa (Tempestt Bledsoe), and Rudi (Keshia Knight-Pulliam).
Cliff's office was on the bottom floor to make it convenient for plots.
Grant Tinker was President of NBC.
“When E.F. Hutton talks, everybody listens” was an ad campaign for that brokerage firm.
Ricky Schroeder was a kid from another successful NBC sitcom Silver Spoons.
The German edition of MAD always did all-new covers for their parodies.
THE SILLY COSBEY SHOW
Cracked #212, July 1985
a: John Severin
The last panel is a picture of Robert Culp, co-star of Cosby's previous TV series I Spy.
THE COZBY KIDS MEET THE A-TEEM
Cracked #217, January 1986
a: John Reiner
Family Ties used to follow The Cosby Show on NBC.
The A-Team was Murdock (Dwight Schultz), Hannibal (George Peppard), “B.A.” Baracus (Mr. T.) and Face (Dirk Benedict)
Bob Newhart's Newhart was around the same time, though not in direct competition with The Cosby Show.
THE COSBY SHOW
Cracked # 224, November 1986
a: John Severin
Occasionally Sandra (Sabrina LaBeauf), another daughter they added later, was a college student who would sometimes appear.
There was a special issue of Cracked that was supposedly taken over by Russians. This was from the article Communist Broadcasting System's New TV Lineup in #227.
Usually when a porn parody is done of a movie or TV show it doesn't extend beyond punning the name and making the box look slightly like the poster (so I've been told). There were at least two editions of Not the Cosbys that actually tried to duplicate the formula in the video itself. Here are the parts with the porn edited out.
UPDATE:
Noow... you see you put the thing in now you see you put it out there with the “blawwwww”.
When I posted things from this before people pointed out MAD could get so much more mileage out of him today. They also pointed out I don't mention his sexual predatoriness the way I do with some of the other actors I post. That's true. Lots of these pages don't age well. From MAD #266, October 1986, by Tom Koch and Paul Coker, Jr.
From TV Spinoffs Yet to Come in MAD #269, March 1987, by Tom Koch and Angelo Torres.
