Showing posts with label SERGIO ARAGONES. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SERGIO ARAGONES. Show all posts

Thursday, May 30, 2024

THE WONDROUS WOODSTOCK MUSIC FESTIVAL

WOODSTOCK (1970) dir: Michael Wadleigh

THE WONDROUS WOODSTOCK FAIR
MAD #134, April 1970
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones

The festival itself was a year prior to the filmed version. A chronicle of one of the first outdoor rock concerts and became synonymous with the 1960s and counterculture. Her's a parody of the Thomas Hood poem.
WOODSTOCK REVISITED
MAD #257, September 1985
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones

Here's what would happen 15 years later, to the tune of 'We Are the World'.
CRACKED GOES TO WOODSTOCK
Cracked #83, March 1970
a: John Severin

Sunday, March 24, 2024

CRACKED INTERVIEWS DICK CLOG, THE BLOOPER & PRACTICAL JOKE KING

TV'S BLOOPERS AND PRACTICAL JOKES
1984-1998 NBC

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.

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

NOVEMBER UPDATES

A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE
dir: Elia Kazan

COME BACK, LITTLE SHEBA (1952)
dir: Daniel Mann

DEATH OF A SALESMAN (1951)
dir: Laszlo Benedek

COME BACK, LITTLE STREETCAR!
Panic #2, April/May 1954
w: Al Feldstein
a: Jack Davis

Combination of several plays that became dramas, particularly A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams, Come Back, Little Sheba by William Inge, and Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller.
THE BLOB (1958)
dir: Irvin Yeaworth

ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN (1958)
dir: Nathan Hertz

THE TALKING BLOB
Cracked #149, March 1978
a: John Severin

This was their parody of youth horror movies. The first use of Cracked's attempt at making the Talking Blob a recurring character. The original film also starred Steve McQueen, who's caricatured here.
Also an homage to Saturday Night Live's Land Shark sketches.
THE STAR TREK SAGA
MAD Star Trek Special, Holiday 1994
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Sergio Aragones

The cover promised a new Star Trek: Generations spoof. This must mean what they meant. All seven movies and four TV series were parodied last month, no need to go into them now.

Thursday, September 28, 2023

STAR ROARS

STAR WARS (1977)
dir: George Lucas

STAR ROARS
MAD #196, January 1978
w: Larry Siegel & Dick DeBartolo
a: Harry North, Esq.

After two weeks of showing every known Star Trek parody, here's the other “Star” franchise. Don't blame me, it's how the alphabet works. The movie that's changed the way all movies are made to this day. This is from when it was considered the first one when it came out, it's since become the fourth part and retitled A New Hope. This blog has already shown the parodies of its two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Here's the first of three posts with MAD's parodies of the original Star Wars. I'm sure everyone reading this knows the movie by heart, but I'll try to tell the plot in a nutshell.
The Rebel Alliance has the plans for the Empire's Death Star, which they are trying to get, and only Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) of Alderaan knoes where they are. She is kidnapped by Empire leader Darth Vader (David Prowse/James Earl Jones) but before she does she hides them inside R2D2 (Kenny Baker), who flees to Tattoine with fellow droid C3PO (Anthony Daniels).
On Tattoine, C3PO and R2D2 are sold by the Jawas to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and his family.
When this was first published, kids my age were surprised to find a slur in MAD, though we didn't know one of the co-writers was gay himself. The article has been reprinted several times, and the slur has since been replaced with “gay robot” for contemporary audiences, and not those in a galaxy far, far away.

Luke finds the recording inside R2D2 of Leia begging for help from Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi (Alec Guiness), who Luke's late father fought with in the past. They find Ben, who travels with them to Alderaan to rescue the princess. Ben says Luke must learn the Force to guide him through future travels. He uses the force to hypnotize stormtroopers at a checkpoint.
At the Cantina bar, Ben and Luke look for a pilot that can take them to Alderaan, and find Han Solo (Harrison Ford), who, with his pet Wookie Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) take them on the Millenium Falcon for a price. Luke practices using the Force, which involves fighting a flying target blindfolded.
Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing), Darth Vader's second-in-command, is interrogating Princess Leia, who still won't talk. The Millenium Falcon is sucked into the Death Star, and Han Solo and the gang hide in compartments to avoid capture. They disguise themselves as stormtroopers (which isn't shown here) to get through, while Ben fends everyone off by fighting Darth Vader, who was once a student of his that turned evil.
Han and Luke find the captured Princess, about to be executed, rescue her, and end up in the system's trash disposal unit in order to escape storm troopers. C3PO rescues them at the last minute. Ben Kenobi fights Darth Vader but is defeated.
The Rebels, now at war with the Empire, and Luke, using the Force, is able to blow up the Death Star, with the aid of Han Solo, who previously was only in it for the money, but had a change of heart at the last minute. Both are rewarded after all is done.
Here was how Sergio Aragones parodied it in the next issue, including a take on Darth Vader using the Force that woudn't be accepted by modern audiences,
Cover for the Mexican MAD.
And two German covers
The Fold-In in #199, June 1978
MAD #203, December 1978
After plans were announced for several sequels, MAD published this in #230, April 1982. After I cut the pages, I realized I did it the wrong way, but it shouldn't matter.
Tomorrow, a look at all the parodies Cracked did, and the day after that, all the rest.