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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Showing posts with label STU SCHWARTZBERG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label STU SCHWARTZBERG. Show all posts
V-V-VENOM!
Crazy #90, September 1982
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Kent Gamble
Not to be mistaken for the Spider-Man movie. British horror film involving snakes and a kidnapping. Philip (Lance Holcomb) is a boy whose hobby is snakes, his mother is going away and has asked the grandfather, Howard Anderson (Sterling Hayden), to watch after him. While she is gone, the maid Louise (Susan George) and her boyfriend Jacmel (Klaus Kinski) have decided to take the boy hostage and Louise has seduced the chauffer Dave (Oliver Reed) so he can help them with their plot.
Philip goes to the pet store to get a snake for his collection against the protests and the maid, because Philip has to be at home when Jacmel arrives. Philip goes anyway, but we find out his snake was mixed up with the deadly black mamba, which was to be delivered to the local institute, and the mix-up is discovered by Dr. Stowe (Sarah Miles).
The kidnapping plot goes awry when the black mamba snake bites Louise, taking her life before Dr. Stowe can arrive with the antidote. Dave accidentally shoots a cop. Howard used to be a hunter and can find the mamba snake and hunt it down, but the kidnappers don't want it to interfere with their plot.
The police and everyone outside assume Louise is still alive, and Jacmel uses these false pretenses to lure Dr. Stowe in and hold her hostage as well, and cuts off Louise's fingers to give to the police making them think they;re Dr. Stowe's fingers and that he means business.
The black mamba snake gets Jacmel just as the police shoot him so it's assumed they got both him and the snakes, but while the snake was in the house, it reproduced. So the film ends with a “The End?”-type ending.
Yesterday we looked at the MAD and Cracked parodies of The Towering Inferno (click on “older post” or one of the several other methods), now here are takes from Crazy and Sick.
THE SOURING INFERNO
Sick #105, August 1975
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jerry Grandenetti
It's the ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Glass Tower, The world's tallest building, located in San Francisco, designed by Doug Roberts (Paul Newman), developed and owned by James Duncan (William Holden). Harry Jernigan is head of security supervising through monitored rooms up inside.
Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles are not in the movie. Red Skelton, Lawrence Welk, Dean Martin, Danny Thomas, and Phil Silvers appear later on. I guess the artist just wanted to show he could draw them.
Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain), son-in-law of James Duncan, was responsible for construction, and used shoddy wiring when building it. The premiere party has started on the top floor. Among the guests are Harlee Claiborne (Fred Astaire) and Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones). Duncan has invited Senator Parker (Robert Vaughn) in hopes to win favor and have more building contracts approved.
Publicist Dan Bigelow (Robert Wagner) is having an affair with his secretary (Susan Flannery) and they get trapped in his office. Everybody at the party has to leave the room and move to a lower floor, including Doug's girlfriend Susan (Faye Dunaway). Mike O' Halloran (Steve McQueen) is the fire chief called to put out the fire in the building.
The fire has spread out of control and everyone has to evacuate the building, mostly through makeshift ropes and helicopters.
Commercials for Hanes' Beautymist pantyhose with Joe Namath were a big ad campaign in the seventies,
After a lottery of who gets rescued first and everyone is finally saved, Chief O'Halloran gives Doug Roberts a lecture about how skyscrapers are a potential disaster.
THE TOWERING MESS
Crazy #11, June 1975
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Vance Rodewalt
This parodies the entire genre. Mostly The Towering Inferno with parts of The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and the Airport series.
Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters were in The Poseidon Adventure, Charlton Heston was in Airport '75 and Earthquake. This was years before Airplane was released as a parody of the genre, when they couldn't have been aware Kareem-Abdul Jabbar would have a major part.
Charlton Heston was best known for Moses in The Ten Commandments, so he had to have his crook with him.
A big scene in Poseidon was to have women give up their lingerie so it could be tied together to make ropes for everyone to climb up.
And a few years before Airplane!, the Zucker brothers sent up the genre in The Kentucky Fried Movie.
It started as a series of bandes desinees (Belgian for comics) in the fifties called Les Schtroumpfs, was also a big hit here as a line of toys and merchandising juggernaut, latter a couple movies, but this is just about the Saturday morning cartoon.
HAS AMERICA GONE SNURF CRAZY?
Bananas #68, circa 1983
w: Jovial Bob Stine
a: Sam Viviano
They were all a few inches tall and lived in the forest, Gargamel and his cat Azreal were trying to destroy them. And they would use the word 'Smurf' in place of regular words. Instead of names there was a different type of every Smurf. Papa Smurf was the only adult and Smurfette was the only woman.
SMURPHS
Crazy #94, April 1983
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Marie Severin
POLICE GORY STORY
Crazy #8, December 1974
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Vance Rodewalt
Anthology series similar to Love, American Style that had no recurring characters, was a different one-shot cop show each week.
Usually, when I'm stumped with caricatures in TV parodies I can check with something like IMDB or Wikipedia to confirm, but since Poilce Story didn't have recurring characters, I'll have to guess. I can tell the new cop in the splash is Richard Thomas from The Waltons. Maybe the other guys are E.G. Marshall and Darren McGavin? A few people suggested maybe Charlton Heston but he didn't do TV.
The foreground of the last panel is Telly Savalas as Kojak. His gimmick was he always had lollipops to quit his smoking habit.
NUT GALLERY
Spoof #5, May 1973
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Marie Severin & Herb Trimpe
Rod Serling's follow-up to Twilight Zone, where he hosted a trio of science-fiction or horror stories, introducing them in a night gallery, where each story was told through a painting.
Not only are Pat Boone, Joe Namath, and Woody Allen all still alive as of this writing, and Woody still wears the same fishing hat fifty years later.
MURDER, SHE HOPES
MAD #261, March 1986
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
The series centered around Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury), a retired English teacher that became a mystery writer and inadvertantly ended up unsolving crimes, finding murders in the places she visited.
On the flight, she is sitting next to Telly Savalas as Kojak.
The police detective is caricatured as Leslie Nieslen playing Frank Drebin from Police Squad and the Naked Gun movies.
The murderer is caricatured as Tony Perkins in Psycho, wearing a pin saying “Mom” referring to his mother fixation just in case people didn't recognize him.
MURDER, SHE WROT
Cracked #230, September 1987
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Marie Severin
Tom Bosley was Sheriff Amos Tupper in her hometown of Cabot Cove. Arnold Finsky is a caricature of Raymond Burr. Angela Lansbury often used her power to have older actors on her show to make sure they got health benefits.
Denise is drawn as Barbara Streisand, even though Renphew isn't a caricature of anyone.
MAD #264, July 1986
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Mystery-comedy-drama show with Maddie Hayes (Cybill Sheperd) and David Addlestein (Bruce Willis) running the Blue Moon Detective Agency and the “will they or won't they” tension between them (spoiler: they eventually did). The premise established early on is that Maddie is a former model who bought the agency as a tax write-off and ended up working there). The posters on the wall are of past film noirs and screwball comedies that influenced the series. (The buttons on in the Thin Man poster are references to William Powell and Myrna Loy) Their receptionist, Agnes DePasto (Allyce Beasley) answered the phone in rhyme.
During the time Mort Drucker also did the comic strip Benchley, he would give the character a cameo in every one of his parodies. The falling duck is a reference to You Bet Your Life.
The program would have the type of dialogue one would find in a Howard Hawks movie. David would often hint at sex, suggesting the two of them “boink”.
GOONLIGHTING
Cracked #226, March 1987
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Bob Fingerman
Bruce Willis did commercials for Seagram's wine coolers. (see above)
Pierce Brosnan and Stephanie Zimbalist had the detective show Remington Steele, she played Laura Holt.
The Cabbage Patch Kids' names are changed but not the Garbage Pail Kids.
