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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Here are some parodies of movies from a few days ago that were also parodied by Cracked. One because it was the only issue I didn't have when I was assembling material last year, the other because it was past the cutoff point I established. Click 'previous' a few times to see the trailers and summaries and who the actors are. Enjoy.
TWISTED
Cracked #312, November 1996
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
Spielberg wasn't the director for Twister. It was only produced by his company.
TWITS
Cracked #245, July 1989
a: Walter Brogan
PLATOON (1986)
dir: Oliver Stone
PLA-TOONS
Cracked #245
w: Matthew Sweeney
a: Walter Brogan
This parody doesn't require having seen Platoon, it just made for a good pun.
The end has Charlie Sheen and Kevin Dillon from Platoon, as well as Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter and Sylvester Stallone as Rambo. If they were going to use actors from other films about Vietnam, they missed out on they opportunity to use Charlie Sheen's real life father Martin Sheen of Apocalypse Now.
The reason Charlie Sheen's helmet says 'Estevez' is because it's his real last name.
TWIT-STERS
MAD #349, September 1996
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Paul Coker, Jr.
In Twister, Bill (Bill Paxton) is a former tornado tracker who used to work with his ex-wife Jo (Helen Hunt), and has come to their site to get her to sign divorce papers so he can marry his fiancee Melissa (Jami Gertz), and they're stuck tracking the next tornado with Jo.
Note how many of MAD's mascots are caught up in the storm in this spread, including the apteryx getting its feathers blown off.
The beginning shows Jo experiencing a tornado as a child, which takes away her father and starts her lifelong obsession with them. Cut to the present of Bill on the current site where he used to work. He's retired and started a new job as a weatherman and his crew is glad to see him. He's only there to get Jo to sign divorce papers. Jo's finished Dorothy, a machine they've invented that will get into the heart of the tornado and be able to warn civilians in time. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes) is a rival meteorologist with a similar prototype he's showing the press.
Melissa was curious about Bill's past exploring tornadoes on the ground but realizes how dangerous it is, and also realizes still a spark between Bill and Jo. She's constantly being interrupted by patients calling her as they drive through tornadoes.
Jo and her team of stoners and slackers go to visit her Aunt Meg (Lois Smith), an artist that's always glad to see them and feed them,. Over meals everyone discusses the most powerful tornadoes they've ever seen. Jo's made several Dorothy prototypes that keep breaking. A tornado eventually destroys Aunt Meg's house and injures her.
They comment how the movie could be improved with Wizard of Oz dialogue though the movie does reference it by calling their machine “Dorothy”
Meg's sculpture is left standing and looking they realize something similar to it could work as a makeshift Dorothy prototype which ends up working. Melissa can't relate to Bill's return to his former adrenalin-based lifestyle and leaves him, and Bill reconciles with Jo.
The parody continues with the Wizard of Oz parallel and has Helen Hunt waking up in her sitcom Mad About You with co-stars Paul Reiser, Anne Ramsay, Leila Kenzie, and John Pankow.
THE UNSTABLE GUY
Cracked #311, October 1996
w: Andy Simmons & Rob Weske
a: Frank Cummings
The premise of this was that Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick) moves into a new apartment after breaking up with his girlfriend, and after slipping his cable guy Chip Douglas (Jim Carrey) extra money to get pay channels, Chip decides Steven is now his friend for life. This spoof also parodies three other movies from that year that would eventually have been on cable, Eraser, Striptease, and Twister.
Eraser was an action film with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Chip takes Steven to a satellite dish out in the country that's apparently the master dish to all the cable of the world. Here it is a literal food dish, and they use it to make fat jokes about Louie Anderson. Striptease was a movie with Demi Moore about just that.
LaToya Jackson did infomercials for a psychic hotline.
Chip takes Steven to the Medieval Times chain restaurant where they end up jousting and Chip later shows up when Steven and his friends are playing basketball, inviting himself into the game and taking it too seriously, being violent and embarrassing Steven.
Chip tries to make things right as Steven tries to reconcile with his girlfriend Robin (Leslie Mann), hooking him up with a cable channel showing Sleepless in Seattle. Here it's Twister, a disaster movie about a tornado starring Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.
The cause of the tornado in Twister turns out to be The Mask, another Jim Carrey movie. In The Cable Guy, Chip has become friends with Robin separately, and when Steven and Robin go to see his parents, Robin has invited Chip along, and he hits it off with Steven's family, who all ignore Steven's claims that Chip is a psycho.
There's a suplot they don't use here where you see on TV throughout the movie—a trial of child star Sam Sweet (Ben Stiller) that mirrors the Menendez brothers trial that was going on then. Similar to a sketch Stiller would have done on his sketch comedy show a few years earlier. (His whole cast has bit parts in other scenes). Chip has kidnaped Robin and brought her to the master satellite and Steven goes to save her. At the same time, the world is fixated on their TVs watching the Sweet trials and at the exact moment everyone is about to hear the verdict, Chip plummets down and knocks the cable out everywhere.
