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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MISSION: RIDICULOUS
MAD # 118, April 1968
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
This was a long-running TV series that was remade as a film franchise and then another TV series, about an espionage agency known as the Impossible Mission Force. Each week Jim Phelps (Peter Graves) would be given an assignment through an intercom disguised as a regular object which would then self-destruct.
The movie theater is showing Sandy Dennis in Up the Down Staircase which is parodied in that same issue of MAD.
Phelps' crew was Rollin (Martin Landau), Barney (Greg Morris), Cinammon (Barbara Bain), and Willy (Peter Lupus).
Usually casts member of a movie or TV show would write about their appearance in the magazine after the parody was done, here's one where cast members wrote in asking why they hadn't appeared yet, though it was probably also staged.
Martin Landau and Barbara Bain were a real-life husband and wife team that only appeared in TV shows that had colons in the title, later featured in Space:1999.
From A Treasury of Television Poetry and Prose by Tom Koch and Jack Davis, from MAD #152, July 1972.
The back cover of MAD #134 was also a brief Mission:Impossible parody, written by Chevy Chase, which we have in our Caddyshack entry.
MISSION:IMPLAUSIBLE
Cracked #80, October 1969
a: O.O. Severin (John Severin)
From Sneaky TV Cigarette Commercials in Cracked #91, March 1971. Cigarette advertisements were banned from television that year and this article was about how they could theoretically get around it.
From The Effect of the Energy Crisis on the Entertainment World in Cracked #119, September 1974, art by Severin.
THE MISS AMERICA BEAUTY PAGEANT
1954-?, NBC, ?, Peacock
THE MISS AMERICAN BEAUTY PAGEANT
MAD # 107, December 1966
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Believe it or not, at one time Miss America was actually considered a big deal. At its height, the beauty pageant was on prime time TV like the Oscars. Knowing who Miss America was was somewhat common knowledge. Judges were people you've heard of. It was kind of the equivalent of the Presidency back when the idea of a woman in politics was considered like a unicorn. It was started a hundred years ago and has always been on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. While he was still alive, Bert Parks was the emcee. I have no idea who is now. It may have been televised in the last few years but I don't know where. Maybe late night syndication where they have infomercials. It's streaming now. It started losing legitimacy in the past fifty years as feminism started gaining traction. The final nail in the coffin may have been in 1984 when that year's Miss America did a Penthouse pictorial, it caused a big scandal, and then everybody realized they're basically the same thing when it comes down to it. Or maybe it was when imitations like Miss USA and Miss Teen USA started popping up.
Co-hostess is Bess Myerson, one-time Miss America, disgraced mayoral aide, and childhood friend of founding MAD artist Bill Elder. Announcer is John Cameron Swayze. I don't think the chairman of BVD is based on a real person, but Otto Preminger is caricatured. He's the director of films such as Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with the Golden Arm but probably best known as Mr. Freeze on Batman. Woody Allen's in the audience and regardless of where you stand on his innocence, we know for a fact he likes them young.
Across the pond, in Great Britain they had their equivalent, Miss Cosmos.
IF THE PRESIDENT WERE CHOSEN LIKE “MISS AMERICA”
MAD #127, June 1969
w: Earle Doud
a: Jack Rickard
The judges here are the head of Boeing aircraft, Dick Gregory, and Otto Preminger. Woody Allen is in the same place in the audience again. It doesn't look like this panel was swiped from the panel in the previous strip though.
In the booth is June Lockhart.
MAD #170, October 1974
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Jack Rickard
Bobby Riggs was a tennis player who declared any man could beat any woman at the game, and staged a Battle of the Sexes game against pro Billie Jean King to prove it, which he lost.
Jane Fonda was a sex symbol turned activist, preaching far left causes such as the plight of Native Americans and pulling out of Vietnam.
MISS AMERICA CONTEST
Cracked #90. January 1971
a: John Severin
MIGHTY DORKS 2 1/2
Cracked Collectors' Edition #99, July 1994
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
Though the title takes off on the sequel and was published in anticipation of it, it mainly parodies the first one in flashbacks, since the contents of the sequel wouldn't be known at the time of execution. There were three in all, as well as remakes and an actual hockey team.
The movie is about Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez), a lawyer attested for drunk driving and sentenced to community service by having to coach a little league hockey team.
In this splash page are Tonya Harding, an olympic skating hopeful disqualified for arranging to kneecap her rival, Erik and Lyle Menendez, twins convicted of killing their parents, and Lorena Bobbitt, who made headlines for cutting off her husband's penis. It's strange that Beavis and Butthead are there too since they were always being compared to the Menendez brothers.
Gordon having to coach a hockey team brings back memories of being a child hockey player himself and lost the championship while coping with the loss of his father.
The team Gordon played on as a kid, the Hawks, is now the team the Ducks has to go up against.
The worst player is given a chance and ends up winning the game, a concept that has never been used in any sports movie for kids before or after.
EXODUS (1960)
dir: Otto Preminger
SAL MINEO GOES TO WAR
Sick #5, April 1961
FLAMING STAR (1960)
dir: Don Siegel
STARR FLAME
Sick #5, April 1961
FOUR FOR TEXAS (1963)
dir: Robert Aldrich
FOUR FACES VEST
Sick #27, March 1964
HOW THE WEST WAS WON (1962)
dirs: Henry Hathaway, John Ford, George Marshall HOW THE WEST WAS LOST
Sick #22, August 1963
