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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YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN—UNSEEN
Sick # 102, February 1975
a: Jerry Grandenetti
How do you do a parody of a parody? Sick thought of a novel way to do it. Their solution: you don't. This is just a parody of the Frankenstein legend. I've pointed out that in some of these magazines they do a spoof without ever having seen the target, here they admit it. They don't even try to make the characters look like Gene Wilder or Peter Boyle, or even have the monster be bald. It's even possible they may have had an article already and added the name to cash in on the release of the movie.
From If Movies Were Combined in Cracked #131, March 1976, art by John Severin
Crazy often used stock photos in their subscription ads. Here they used a still from Young Frankenstein.
The last of the updates... for now. The shows are all highlighted linking to previous postsfrom before in case you need to know the characters' real names or the actors who played them, or are lost in some other way.
I finally found this Bananas article I mentioned last week.
WKLOD IN CINCINNATI
Bananas #44, circa 1981
w: Megan Stine & H. William Stine
a: Samuel B. Whitehead
Funny how in 1981 eight characters was considered “too many”.
I think I see John Chancellor, Chevy Chase, Wolfman Jack, Leonard Nimoy as Spock, John Denver, Dan Aykroyd as Beldar Conehead, and Howard Cosell.
STRAIT-JACKET (1964)
dir: William Castle
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JOAN CRAWFORD?
Sick #29, June 1964
w: Dee Caruso and Bill Levine
a: Gray Morrow
Sorry a reference to Joan Crawford is the closest thing I have this Pride Month.
The title of this is a play on the film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. The movie was about a formerly institutionalized woman accused of ax murders.
Back when movie theaters were actual theaters and not just the friend of friend of a rich guy's screening room you once saw, stars would publicize the movie at a screening rather than TV appearances and press conferences.
THE EXORSICK
Sick #103, April 1975
w & a: Dom Rinaldo
I'm guessing this was an unsolicited contribution in their slush pile and they needed a few pages to fill, since I never saw the name before or since and the panels are all cut and reformatted to fit the page,
WACKY T.V. WEDDINGS
Trash #3. April 1978
a: Vic Martin
No seventies humor magazine would be complete without spoofs of these shows.
THE HOBBIT (1977)
dirs: Arthur Rankin Jr. & Jules Bass
Before the movies there was this made-for-TV special.
When they say “Off-Beatle”, they really mean it. None of them look like the actual Beatles. They took everybody by surprise when they came to America and revived what was assumed a dead genre outside of cities, and I guess Jack Davis and the staff of Sick thought the Beatles would be just a passing fad and by 1966 nobody would remember them. Boy, were they wrong.
MOVIE SPOOF: A HARD DAY'S NIGHT
Sick #33, December 1964
w: Paul Laikin
It's funny they say “staff writer” as if to imply there's a bunch of people who work in an office together when it was just a cubicle where one person probably put several magazines together.
Jake Ehrlich=celebrity fixer/lawyer. Xavier Cugat=Cuban bandleader. C. Aubrey Smith=British cricket player. Jean Hersholt=silent matinee idol. Percy Kilbride and Maria Ouspenskaya=character actors who were old. Shelley Berman=more known now for Curb Your Enthusiasm was once popular stand-up comic.
Frankie Darro=child actor
Tommy Manville=socialite with 13 marriages
Willie Sutton=bank robber. The movies mentioned were known for being inconsequential.
MAD had many references to the Beatles over the years. This was a poster they had as an insert in MAD Super Special #25 in 1978, eight years after they broke up. Did the MAD staff think they were a new thing?
Most of the jokes about them were about their hair. This was a parody of the Breck shampoo ads that had paintings of famous models from the 30s to the 60s. The back cover of MAD #90 in October 1964.
Frank Frazetta only did a few jobs for them and they wanted him to be a regular but they could never work a deal about keeping the original art (contributors were able to just send digital files towards the end). Had he become one of the “usual gang of idiots” he might not have been known for his fantasy art.
Other jokes about the Beatles were just about their name.
More articles from the issue of Sick I showed the cover for at the beginning of this post.
The centerspread for this issue reads more like something you'd read in a fan magazine than something you'd see in a humor magazine.
Back cover for that issue.
Probably a coincidence they were bald for the cover of Help!
Probably also a coincidence the Beatles' next movie was called Help!
National Lampoon did a whole issue dedicated to The Beatles.
The grandfather wasn't actually reading Sick in the movie like above, but they very well couldn't use the photo of their manager with the competition.
