GOOSE OR BARE

TRUTH OR DARE (1991)
dir: Alex Keshishian

Documentary about Madonna on her Blond Ambition tour

Yes, at one time even Alfred E. Neuman committed sexual assault.

From Video Reviews in #310, April 1992, by Stan Hart and Sam Viviano

Madonna was linked to Warren Beatty, friends with Sandra Bernhart, and married to Sean Penn for several years.

KINDERGARTEN PAP

KINDERGARTEN COP (1990)
dir: Ivan Reitman

KINDERGARTEN PAP
Cracked #263, July 1991
w: Vic Bianco (Lou Silverstone)
a: John Severin

This begins with the reason for the whole story. Cullen Crisp (Richard Tyson) is a drug dealer the police are after. John Kimble has caught him but doesn't have sufficient enough evidence to convict him and has to let him go. His girlfriend is a credible witness but won't talk.

Crisp is on his way up to Astoria, Oregon to reclaim his 6-year-old son, and detectives John Kimble (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and Phoebe O'Hara (Pamela Reed) go up there posing as a kindergarten teacher and her brother to stop Crisp before he gets to his son and ex-wife Joyce (Penelope Ann Miller) who's started a new life there as a teacher.

Phoebe becomes sick so John has to take his place teaching. He's inexperienced with both teaching and children and initially can't control the class. The principal is played by Linda Hunt, but is drawn here as Dr, Ruth Westheimer. John first narrows down the suspects by asking the students to tell the class what their father does for a living. There's a student that's always saying “boys have penises, girls have vaginas”

While putting the kids down for a nap, he gets to know Joyce and they start a relationship. He accidentally walks in on Phoebe and her fiance, a gourmet cook, in bed. John's students start to like him when he starts acting like a police officer.

John originally had Phoebe posing as his Austrian sister while she tries to nudge him and Joyce together, and they finally have to confess to Joyce who they really are. Her ex-husband and his mother (Carroll Baker) are in town and Joyce is in danger.

Crisp sets the school on fire as a distraction so he can get his son Dominic (Christian & Joseph Cousins). Crisp's mother hits Phoebe with her car. Kimble and Crisp meet in the abandoned school. When it looks like Kimble is doomed, his pet ferret, which he didn't know was loose, bites Crisp and disarms him.

Phoebe comes out of nowhere and hits Crisp's mother in retaliation for being hit. Kimble has been shot badly and has to go to the hospital but when he gets better he returns to teaching and marries Joyce.

MAD also did their take in MAD Video Reviews in #304, July 1991, by Stan Hart and Sam Viviano

THE KAROCKY KID, PART II

THE KARATE KID, PART II(1986)
dir: Jon G. Avildsen

THE KAROCKY KID, PART II
MAD #268, January 1987
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres

Continues right where the previous movie left off, the first five minutes of credits tell the story of the first movie. (see yesterday's post)

At the end of the last movie Daniel (Ralph Macchio) won the competing tournament and the rival coach Mr. Kreese (Martin Kove) is angry his student Johnny (William Zabka), Daniel's opponent, came in second place, berating him and coming close to beating him in the parking lot. Daniel's mentor Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita) intervenes, but does not actually hurt Mr. Kreese. Mr. Kreese hurts himself fighting back and Mr. Miyagi comes inches close to hitting Kresse, but just pretends to tweak his nose. Later. At heir house Danny is learning more karate through discipline by building a house, taught to pound in nails with one pound of the hammer (not with his bare hands like here). Mr. Miyagi gets a letter that his father is on his deathbed so he must return to his homeland in Japan.

As Mr. Miyagi embarks to Japan, Daniel shows up and comes with him. They arrive in Okinawa thinking they are being picked up by chauffeurs only to be taken by Sato (Danny Kamekona)'s family into a warehouse and met by him. Sato and Miyagi were childhood friends that were karate students under Miyagi's father. Both had intentions to marry Yukie (Nobu McCarthy) and agreed to settle it over a fight. (Not like she would have a say because it was the forties) Rather than fight, Miyagi moved to America. 45 years later, Sato wants to settle this. He now basically owns the town. Miyagi's father dies and Sato gives him three days to mourn and then they must fight.

Mr. Miyagi thinks the whole idea of fighting and honor is silly and would just leave again but stays because Sato is threatening to level the whole village. He agrees to fight on the condition that Sato give the land back to the villagers. Meanwhile, Daniel and Yukie's niece Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita) develop a romance and while going through the city end up in a tough bar where people place bets one whether anyone's tough enough break blocks of ice. Daniel is forced to break through six, an amount unheard of, but Mr. Miyagi shows up and gives him confidence.

A storm hits the town and everybody must run for cover in the one safe building. Sato is pinned under a wooden beam he practiced on at his dojo and Mr. Miyagi runs and gets him out from under it by breaking it in half. By saving Sato's life his honor is now restored and they are friends again. They all celebrate in the town castle. Kumiko is doing a ceremonial dance and Sato's nephew Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) swoops in and kidnaps her unless Daniel fights him, which he does and wins.

There were four Karate Kid movies in all, a reboot, and currently there's a TV series. MAD briefly spoofed the third one in MAD Video Reviews by Stan Hart and Sam Viviano in MAD #293, March 1990.

HARLEM NUGHTS

HARLEM NIGHTS (1989)
dir: Eddie Murphy

HARLEM NUGHTS
Cracked #254, July 1990
w: Vic Bianco (Lou Silverstone)br> a: Walter Brogan

Team-up of three generations of comedians. Murphy and Pryor own a nightclub and outsmarting the cops and gangsters who demand protection. It starts with Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor) operating a casino, and an angry gambler who doesn't like that Sugar Ray's errand boy is in the room, since he believe children bring bad luck. He's about to kill Sugar Ray, but the boy shoots him, Sugar Ray adopts the boy and names him Quick, Twenty years later, Ray and Quick (Eddie Murphy, who looks more like Steve Harvey in some panels) own a nightclub. The cast, besides Sugar Ray and Quick are Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner), Sgt. Cantone (Danny Aiello), Dominique (Jasmine Guy), Bennie (Redd Foxx), the boxer Jack Jenkins (Stan Shaw, here drawn as Mike Tyson), and Vera (Della Reese). Arsenio Hall has a small part as the brother of a gangster he thinks was killed by Quick.

Sugar Ray and his employees are counting the money they earned at the end of the night, think Madame Vera may be skimming money, she and Quick fight over it, and Quick ends up shooting her toe off. Sgt. Cantone comes in and demands a cut, but Sugar Ray decides he'd rather skip out, but comes up with a plan. In the last panel, cut off, are supposed to be Robert Redford and Paul Newman of The Sting.

Quick is seen visiting business associate Tommy (Thomas Mikal Ford) not knowing that Tommy was killed by Bugsy's men, is seen leaving the apartment by Tommy's brother (Arsenio Hall) who thinks Quick did it, tries to get Quick back, and is killed in self defense. Later, he goes on a date with Dominique, knows it's a set-up, and kills her in defense as well.

Sugar Ray's men set up Calhoune's money collector Richie (Vic Polizos) with Sunshine (Lela Rochon), one of his hookers [there's a lot of that in this]. She's called Sunshine, because as Madame Vera says in the movie "her pussy is so good, if you threw it up in the air, it would turn into sunshine". He falls in love and leaves his wife for her. He goes to pick her up, and they get stopped by Sugar Ray and Quick, impersonating who tell him Sunshine's a drug dealer and he's an accessory. They confiscate the bag of alleged drugs, but it's accidentally mistaken for the bag of money next to it in the car.

Richie goes to Calhoune to deliver the bag, not knowing it's been switched, and finds it's not only the wrong bag, but the packets of heroin are just sugar. Vera comes to Calhoune saying she had nothing to do with this whole scam, but is only acting as a decoy while Calhoune's place is blown up.

I'm not sure how it all works either. I'm just the messenger.

MAD also had a small thing in MAD's Video Reviews in issue #296, also July 1990.

HAMLET

HAMLET (1990)
dir: Franco Zeffirelli

From MAD Video Reviews in #304, July 1991 by Stan Hart and Sam Viviano

Hamlet and the queen are Mel Gibson and Glenn Close. Viviano draws himself in the second panel. I believe the other two are also MAD staffers.

FLOPLINERS

FLATLINERS (1990)
dir: Joel Schumacher

FLOPLINERS
MAD #302, April 1991
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

From article Video Reviews, even though it takes place in the theaters.

Film about medical students attempting to perform experiments on each other that simulate near-death experiments. Pictured are Julia Roberts and Kiefer Sutherland.

A FISH CALLED WANDA

A FISH CALLED WANDA (1989)
dir: Charles Crichton
MAD #289, September 1989
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano


Excerpt from MAD's Video Reviews.

Comedy starring, Michael Palin, Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis, and John Cleese, about a diamond heist. Like the encapsulation says., the plot is kind of convoluted. The movie's not difficult to understand at all, just hard to explain in a few sentences.

UPDATE:
Cover to German edition. The American version only had the reference above, leading me to wonder if there was another parody done overseas.

FIELD OF DREAMS

FIELD OF DREAMS (1989)
dir: Phil Alden Robinson
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano

From MAD's Video Reviews in #293, March 1990.

Kevin Costner plays a man who builds a baseball field in his yard and attracts the ghosts of famous baseball legends to live his fantasy games. He's not caricatured here, but Shoeless Joe Jackson is played by Ray Liotta.

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS

THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS (1989)
dir: Steve Kloves

Failing lounge act becomes hit after hiring female singer. From MAD's Video Reviews in #296, July 1990, by Stan Hart and Sam Viviano. That's Viviano in the audience.

THE DOCTOR

THE DOCTOR (1991)
dir: Randa Haines

MAD #310, April 1992
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano

From Video Reviews. Movie about doctor (William Hurt) who learns to be more human when he sees it from the patient's point of view.

DO THE RIGHT THING

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)
dir: Spike Lee

MAD #293, March 1990
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano

From MAD's Video Reviews. Look at a block in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the summer, climaxes in clash between Italians at neighborhood pizza place owned by Danny Aiello, the predominantly black residents of the block, and employee Mookie (Spike Lee) caught in the middle. Depending on how you look at it, some may see an "us vs. them" bias in the parody. It was written by a white guy in his sixties who lived in Westchester, so don't blame the messenger.

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS

DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS (1988)
dir: Frank Oz

Michael Caine and Steve Martin play con men, one a sophisticated Englishmen and the other an American pretending to be a simpleton, who have a contest to see who can swindle an heiress out of her fortune.

From Video Reviews in MAD #289, September 1989 by Stan Hart and Sam Viviano

In a moment of logrolling, the movie contains a scene at the beginning of Steve Martin reading a MAD magazine and bookmarking it.

DIE EVEN HARDER

DIE HARD 2: DIE HARDER (1990)
dir: Renny Harlin

DIE EVEN HARDER
MAD # 302, April 1991
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

From article MAD's Video Reviews, a way for them to do several parodies at once.

The other critics in the theater are Gene Shalit and Leonard Maltin. The pin on Willis' sweater refers to Moonlighting co-star Cybill Shepherd, though they spelled her name wrong. The other action franchises in the last panel are Danny Glover and Mel Gibson of Lethal Weapon, Ralph Macchio of Karate Kid, and Sylvester Stallone of Rocky, though by now there have been more Die Hard films than any of those.

TRIED HARD 2: TRIED HARDER
Cracked # 259, December 1990
a: John Severin

Takes place a couple tears after the first film. John McClane (Bruce Willis) is at Dulles Airport in Washington, DC waiting to meet his wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) and is about to see a terrorist plot and chases them to the baggage area.

McClane kills one of the terrorists who he later finds out was reported missing in action years earlier. He tries to tell this to the chief of airport police Lorenzo (Dennis Franz), something big's about eo happen, but gets shut down completely.

The "something big" is that Col. Stuart (William Sadler) has taken control of the airport. Gen. Esperanza (Franco Nero) is about to be extradited into the United States but his men demand a plane to rescue him and get away in. To show they are serious, they have made a pilots on a random plane think they're further in the air than they actually are. McClane decides to run out onto the runway waving torches in the air so that plane will see where the ground really is, but it's too late. An anti-terrorist unit, led by Major Grant (John Amos), is dispatched to stop it all.

McClane tries to stop Esperanza's plane from landing, and when he enters, they escape and trap him there, filling it with grenades. He manages to eject himself before it explodes. Grant's troop invades a church that was the terrorist group's nearby base of operations.

Hudson Hawk was another action movie Willis was in that year.

It turns out Grant was on the side of the terrorists all along and they're about to make their escape with Esperanza. McClane Heads them off with the help of a reporter (Sheila McCarthy) whose chopper drops him off on the wing of the plane where they're trying to escape. He fights Grant and shoves him into a propeller.

He then fights another terrorist and loses, getting kicked off the wing before they take off. What they don't know is that all this time they've been leaking fuel and leaving a trail behind on the runway. After being knocked to the ground, McClane lights the trail of fuel, which causes the plane to explode. This now means all the other planes that had been circling the air for hours now have light on the runway to land, including the plane that had been keeping Holly from coming home.

TRIED HARD

DIE HARD (1988)
dir: John McTiernan

MAD #289, September 1989
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano

Excerpt from MAD's Video Reviews

TRIED HARD
Cracked #259, December 1990
a: John Severin

Bruce Willis' character is named John McClane. He's on vacation in Los Angeles trying to get back home to New York in time for Christmas. The Century City building has been taken hostage and only he can save everyone.

Then there was Spy Hard, made after Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer replaced the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrams as kings of the spoof movie and ran it into the ground. The problem with the former is they would parody specific scenes from popular movies from the past five years, instead of just the genre and conventions in general. Another problem is that by that time almost all spoof movies starred Leslie Nielsen, who had become a comedy actor when what initially made him funny was that he was not one and played everything completely straight.

DEAD POETS SOCIETY

DEAD POETS SOCIETY (1989)
dir: Peter Weir

MAD #293, March 1990
w: Stan Hart
a: Sam Viviano

Robin Williams plays an unconventional boarding school English teacher in the fifties. From article MAD's Video Reviews.

DAYS OF BLUNDER

DAYS OF THUNDER (1990)
dir: Tony Scott

DAYS OF BLUNDER
MAD #302, April 1992
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

From an article called Video Reviews parodying Siskel & Ebert at the Movies.

DAYS OF PLUNDER
Cracked #259, December 1990
a: Walter Brogan

Cole Trickle (Tom Cruise) shows up as a new stock car driver. He has no experience, but he shows coach Harry Hogge (Robert Duvall) and owner Tim Daland (Randy Quaid) what he can do. He tries out in the car of Rowdy Burns (Michael Rooker), who becomes his rival.

The wheelchair is a reference to how a year earlier Cruise won an Oscar for playing a Vietnam Vet in Born on the Fourth of July


The site of each race is printed on the screen at the beginning of each scene.

Even going to dinner after a race, Cole and Rowdy drive in the streets as if they are still competing.

Both Rowdy and Cole get into a serious accident and have to go to the hospital. They're still racers when they have to get to the emergency room in their wheelchairs. At he hospital, Cole falls in love with Dr. Lewicki (Nicole Kidman)

Trickle and Lewicki start a relationship and Burns can't drive no more. He's replaced by up-and-comer Russ Wheeler (Cary Elwes). Rowdy Burns has to undergo an operation but is too proud to go to a doctor, so now it is up to frenemy Cole Trickle to convince him. Rowdy will do it on one condition: Daytona, the big event, is coming up and he asks Cole to drive his car.

Andrew Dice Clay is one of the actors in the last panel even though his movie, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, isn't one of the stickers.

There was sort of a parody years later with Talladega Nights, the common ground being they were both about NASCAR drivers and both had John C. Reilly as co-star. Will Ferrell and Tom Cruise had the same career trajectory where they played the same character every few months except this time it's a race car driver, an ice skater, a bartender, etc.