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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Another show from the US that wasn't parodied here but was in Australia. Dinosaurs was a sitcom conceived by Jim Henson but executed after his death. The characters were the Sinclair family consisting of Charlene (Sally Struthers), Fran (Jessica Walter), Earl (Stuart Pankin), Robbie (Jason Willinger), Baby (Kevin Clash), and Ethyl (Florence Stanley).
The grandmother looks like she's wearing Elmo slippers and Kevin Clash is also Elmo. Elmo wasn't the breakout character of Sesame Street yet so it's probably just my mind making up conspiracies.
Even though it wasn't done in any magazines here, there was a brief gag about it it on The Simpsons.
STIFFS
Cracked Monster Party #22, Winter 1993
w: Andrew Osborne
a: Walter Brogan
Dating game show in the 90s hosted by Mark DeCarlo, similar to The Dating Game except it took place after the date and it was unchaperoned. It was also much raunchier and innuendo-ridden with them rating each other on the sex.
This version, being from Cracked's spinoff, starred all horror characters and was hosted by Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) from Silence of the Lambs.
A sponsor for the show in most outlets was 1-900 numbers, phone sex services where you would pay by the minute to to to someone, a predecessor to Pornhub only with audio instead of video.
One of the female contestants here is Mina Harker, a character played by Winona Ryder in what was then the most recent adaptation, though it doesn't seem to resemble her. The male contestants are Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street, Jason Voorhees of the Friday the 13th franchise, and Bram Stoker's Dracula, which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Kathy Najimy, Bette Midler and Sara Jessica Parker of Hocus Pocus also seem to be bachelorettes.
1-900 numbers weren't just used for sex. There was also LaToya Jackson's Psychic Hotline.
Studs was parodied on The Simpsons and The Ben Stiller Show.
One of those “unless you've been living under a rock” shows I need not describe further. I've even used clips from it here as examples of parodies. It's a shadow of its former self but remains an anchor show for Fox, not only the longest-running prime time show but the only show that's been there since the beginning of the network if you include the interstitials from The Tracey Ullman Show. The first few years it was everywhere with Bart hyped as star of the show.
MAD never did a proper parody of it, but they did a special Simpsons issue.
The audience member in the Andrew “Dice” Clay panel is Saturday Night Live cast member Nora Dunn, who refused to be on the show the week he hosted.
Maggie eventually talked on one episode, voiced by Liz Taylor. The spread contains caricatures of both MAD staff and Simpsons crew members.
People with Facebook still “Simpsonize” themselves in their profile pictures twenty years after such a thing started as a fad.
Who these people are is pretty self-explanatory.
I'm always pointing out “things you couldn't do today”, and even The Simpsons has some of that and makes reference to it.
Some of the MAD staffers have pointed out that Al Jaffee was the only one who could do the Fold-In. They tried to have other artists do it and it never worked. In this issue his genius went further by setting you up to think the fold-in would be one thing...
...but turn out to be something else.
For a long time The Simpsons aired opposite The Cosby Show occasionally taking digs at it, and even basing a character on him.
CRACKED INTERVIEWS THE SIMPERSONS
Cracked #258, November 1990
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Gary Fields
The bylines are a play on Matt Groening's name.
THE SIMPLESONS
Cracked #257, October 1990
w: Rich Kriegel (Lou Silverstone)
a: Gary Fields
WHEN ALL TV REFLECTS THE SIMPSONS INFLUENCE
Cracked #260, January 1991
w: George Gladir
a: John Severin<
Letterman's NBC show had a segment called “Stupid Pet Tricks” where people would bring on their pets as problem solvers.
As everyone knows, the O.J. Simpson trial was also going on in the 90s, so it was inevitable that everyone and their mom would make this analogy.
THE SIMPSON
Cracked #295, December 1994
w: Greg Grabianski
a: Don Orehek
MAD #221, March 1981
w: Larry Siegel
a: Angelo Torres
It all begins with Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) taking a job as caretaker at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado in the middle of nowhere while it's closed for the winter. The isolation will help with his writing and do good for his family.
With all the cameos from iconic horror characters, they missed the most obvious one. Norman Bates is right there.
After the owner, Mr. Ullman (Barry Nelson) sees he qualifies, he returns with his wife Wendy (Shelly Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd). He's not put off by rumors of the hotel being haunted.
McLean Stevenson was used as a punchline when they needed shorthand for unbankable star. He had several TV shows that flopped, including Hello, Larry, spinoff of Diff'rent Strokes, parodied within MAD's parody of that show
In the background you can see a reference to A Clockwork Orange, one of Kubrick's previous films. There are later background gags that mention Barry Lyndon, Dr. Strangelove, and 2001. MAD was always trying to get the objects of their parodies to notice them but as far as I know never got Stanley Kubrick's attention.
Danny talks to his imaginary friend Tony through his finger, which they're assured by a psychologist is nothing to worry about. They're given a tour of the hotel when they arrive by the management before it closes, the management including cook Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers). Dick and Danny turn out to share a psychic link and he's warned not to go into Room 237 (here they call it “Room 238”, in case you don't get the pun). The family is told by management not to worry about caretaker Delbert Grady (Philip Stone) who was a caretaker there that murdered his family years earlier.
The hotel's maze becomes exposition for later in the movie. While riding through the hotel on his tricycle, he gets hints that the hotel is haunted and meets twins from the Grady family. Jack has been mild mannered all along, and it's established earlier that his recovering alcoholism is under control, but his anger starts to break through.
The 'Redrum' graffito, 'murder' spelled backwards, isn't revealed until later, and Danny doesn't see the haunted barroom, but—hey--artistic license.
Jack assures Danny there's nothing to worry about when he's around, though his creepy demeanor is suspect. He says Room 237 isn't really haunted, but when he sees it actually is, lies and tells Danny it's not. Jack goes to the hotel bar, reverts to his alcoholism, and sees ghosts from back when the murders were cmmitted there decades earlier.
”Serutan spelled backwards is Natures” was the slogan of a laxative once.
Jack runs into the spirit of Delbert Grady (literally) which seemingly takes possession of him, passing on the tradition of killing your family with an axe. Trying to find them. Wendy sees what Jack has been writing, which turns out to be hundred of pages that just say “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”. Jack finds his family and chases them while wendy tries to defend herself with a baseball bat. Dick has a premonition something is wrong and flies out to Colorado from his off-season Miami home.
”Marvelous Marv” Thornberry was player for the New York Mets, then the McLean Stevenson of baseball teams.
Jack kills Dick with his axe, then goes back after his family. Danny runs through the previously-exposited maze, and he and Wendy successfully escape him. We don't know what happened after that. Jack freezes to death.
Stephen King never found the movie to be a faithful adaptation, but that didn't stop him from representing it in a letter to MAD.
The German version used the parody for their cover. If they were going to use written text for the toilet paper, the “All work and no play” manuscript would have been a perfect gag, or would that be a spoiler?
This is the cover for the Portuguese edition.
And here's the South American one.
There was another trailer for the movie, but I didn't have it at the top because it didn't show any of the actors or story.
THE SIGNING
Crazy #69, December 1981
w: Paul Kupperberg
a: Steve Smallwood
Here's the Norman Bates reference. Though being a bachelor was an essential part of his character. Here's a John Denver appearance too.
Reference in the third panel to Room 222, TV show about a 'hip' schoolteacher.
Stanley Kubrick is on the wall in the last panel.
Mark Trail was and may still be a newspaper strip that teaches readers about wildlife. The ending refers to 2001: A Space Odyssey, about an astronaut named Dave destroying HAL 9000, an A.I. Computer which has overtaken his spaceship.
The movie's been spoofed many times on The Simpsons, including on one of their halloween specials.
The Simpsons has always done gags that are well-known references and I've talked to younger people that don't know of the actual source material. Ex:“Being forced to watch movies wearing headgear that has clamps that keep your eyes open? You mean like they did on The Simpsons once?” I've mentioned this several times, but I've always wondered whether younger people think “Here's Johnny” was written especially for The Shining and don't know it's a quote from The Tonight Show.
