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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CAPTAIN O. U. KIDD
Wild #1, February 1954
w: Stan Lee
a: Al Hartley
Tale told several times about English pirate and his men, from which almost all pirate stories are evolved. This parody relies on every pirate and riverboat gambling joke possible.
Chris-Craft was and still is a boat company.
Natchez was and still is a city in Mississippi.
Copacabana was and still is a nightclub in New York City.
JULIUS CAESAR!
MAD #17, November 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood
“There were so many imitations. The imitations were coming out of the woodwork. I've got an attic filled with MAD imitations, Blecch, Ecch, Ptui, Ergh, Blaugh, Blurp...”
--Harvey Kurtzman Comics Journal interview, 1981
More of a parody of parodies than the movie itself, how when MAD first came out in 1952 and became a runaway success eventually, every other publisher jumped on the bandwagon trying to duplicate that success, and it was ubiquitous enough of a target for them.
The movie was an adaptation of Shakespeare's play, with Louis Calhern as Caesar. James Mason was Brutus.
These are caricatures of actual existing U.S. Senators.
Marlon Brando played Marc Anthony in Julius Caesar. Martin Kane was sponsored by the American Tobacco Company. The Sherlock Holmes portrait is based on Bill Elder's drawing of him in many MAD parodies.
“Dom Da Domm Domm” comes from the horns used in the Dragnet theme.
Kurtzman was no stranger to doing take-offs of take-offs, before MAD, he did this in his strip for Lana #2 in 1948.
Bijou Funnies, an underground comic of the 60s and 70s, did a whole issue that was a parody of Kurtzman's MAD in 1973, with the back cover a parody of the opening page from this story, written by Jay Lynch and drawn by Ralph Reese, who had been an assistant to Wood.
DEATH TO A SALESMAN
Trump #2, March 1957
w: Mel Brooks
a: Bill Elder
Okay, so sort of a cheat here, as the play has been adapted into film almost a dozen times, and this sketch has common ground in title only, but when else will we ever have the opportunity to use a Mel Brooks script with a Bill Elder illustration?
From before Mel Brooks was a director or worked in front of the camera, when he was just a comedy writer, most notably for Sid Caesar. For those who don't want to read all this text, here is where the sketch first appeared, with Paul Lynde, in a movie/play called New Faces of 1952.
DEATH OF A SALES MANAGER
Wild #5, August 1954
w: Stan Lee
a: Morris Weiss
The play is about Willy Loman returning home from a long business trip, complaining his children Biff, a potential star athlete, and Happy never amounted to anything. His own failure to live the American dream as he sees it and life with his family and co-workers is told in flashbacks. Here was another loose version.
