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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THE UNWATCHABLES
MAD #276, January 1988
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Angelo Torres
Loosely based on the TV series of the same name, which was loosely based on the true story of Al Capone, though unlike the TV series the movie goes back to the beginning and ended with Capone.
Al Capone (Robert DeNiro) is talking to the press about being an “executive” in Chicago while being waited on, telling how selling liquor during the prohibition is just giving the people what they want. Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) is starting his first day on the job as a treasury agent, being seen off to work by his adoring wife (Patricia Clarkson). He pledges to be virtuous and becomes the laughingstock of his office when his first bust turns out to be a bust. Dejected and on a bridge he's almost arrested for littering and possessing a gun, until telling the cop, Malone (Sean Connery) that he's a treasury agent. Ness later visits Malone to help assemble a group to help bust Al Capone.
The scene of raiding Capone's warehouse only to find crates full of umbrellas mirrors a special later where Geraldo hyped opening Al Capone's vault live on national television only to reveal it was empty.
Malone is reluctant at first but finally gives in. Oscar Wallace (Charles Martin Smith) is an accountant looking at Capone's financial records and figures Capone can be nailed for income tax evasion if only Capone can by linked to any of his businesses. Ness and Malone need another gunman for their group and recruit George Stone (Andy Garcia) from the police academy.
There are all kinds of references to movies that featured Connery and DeNiro throughout. Never Say Never Again was Sean Connery's attempt at making a comeback as James Bond. There must have been some Taxi Driver joke in the last panel but they forgot to paste in the caption. The last panel also has Robert Stack, Elliott Ness in the TV series.
Al Capone vows revenge after reading about Elliott Ness and his men (scenes are taken out of order here). At a board meeting, he gives a speech comparing the teamwork of his syndicate to that of a baseball team. A team needs get rid of the dead weight which he demonstrates by clubbing their weakest link to death with a bat (see clip below). Ness forms a raid on the men who are smuggling liquor in from the Canadian border with the help of their Mounties. They all fight, Stone is shot in the melee, and that makes Wallace really mad. They catch Capone's bookkeeper and get him to become witness, but he and Wallace are killed in an elevator right before the trial.
Ness confronts Capone at the opera house because it's become personal and wants to fight man-to-man without bodyguards (The friend that he says was killed was Malone, who's holding him back in this parody. Al Capone's hitman Frank Nitti [Billy Drago] figures a lot more in the film and is responsible for almost all deaths, but is only drawn here). Another of Capone's bookkeepers (Jack Kehoe), who is about to turn witness, but is placed under protective custody by Capone. Malone has just been murdered and his last dying words are that he knows the bookkeeper will be at the train station. While Ness is looking out for him, he sees a woman struggling with bringing a baby carriage up the stairs and helps her, and while trying to balance a shootout and helping her at the same time, loses control of the carriage which is stopped in the nick of time, in a scene lifted from Battleship Potemkin. While Capone is on trial, Ness finds out everyone is on the take including the judge, and blackmails him with that knowledge.
From Recasting Famous Old Movies With Today's Famous Wrestlers by John Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano.
UNTOUCHY BULLS
Cracked #233, January 1988
w: Mort Todd
a: John Severin
At the beginning, a store that refuses to pay protection is blown up by Frank Nitti, with a girl inside the store. Dan Aykroyd was in Dragnet '87 that year, playing the role originated by Jack Webb.
A Chicago alderman (Del Close) attempts to bribe Elliott Ness and his staff. When Ness comes home one night, Frank Nitti is outside threatening his family.
During the trial, Frank Nitti hands Al Capone a note telling him Malone has been killed and the jury has been bribed. Elliott Ness sees this, knows Nitti is about to open fire, but can't get the bailiff to confiscate the gun because Nitti has a note with permission to carry it from the mayor. Nitti realized he's cornered and runs away. This leads to a fight on the rooftop.
Capone's lawyer is portrayed by Raymond Burr as Perry Mason in this.
UNSOLVED MISERIES
MAD #304, July 1991
w: Andrew J. Schwartzberg
a: Jack Davis
Kind of an updated version of In Search Of while also a precursor to true crime podcasts. It started out as a series of specials that were mini-documentaries, then a regular series hosted by Robert Stack. It dealt mostly with paranormal events like UFOs, ghosts and Bigfoot sightings, with the occasional murder coldcase. Each show began with a disclaimer stating they weren't an actual news program, like in the introduction here.
I don't think they knew how prescient their throwaway joke of “Trump University” (which didn't exist yet) would be.
MAD Australia #316, January 1993
w & a: Steve Lopes
Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) was a soldier in Vietnam in 1969 who disobeyed the orders of his commanding officer Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren), who became psychotic and demanded Luc shoot an innocent couple. During the scuffle, they kill each other, and in the current time of 1992 are re-animated into the perfect soldiers ala Robocop, under the supervision of Col Perry (Ed O'Ross). They have been deployed to handle a hostage situation, which is being covered by TV reporter Victoria Roberts (Ally Walker).
Luc has a clue about who he was and Victoria knows too much, so she's run away to escape the robo-soldiers who are now after her, with Luc also being chased and not far behind. Luc is capable of running the speed of any car and lifting it as well. They check into a hotel room for safety where Luc has overheated and takes off his clothes, recharges h9mself, and packs himself in ice. The soldiers are not far behind and shoot up the hotel.
Victoria's crew has been killed, and she and Luc have been framed for their murder. While they are arrested and put on a prison transfer bus with police escorts, Andrew's memory as a psychotic Vietnam sergeant is re-triggered, he breaks loose, and runs the bus off the road. Luc returns to his parents, who assume he was dead. Andrew finds him and this leads to a climactic fight scene.
Jacko was the Energizer spokesperson during the brief US obsession with Australia in the late eighties. Ivan Drago was Dolph Lundgren's character in Rocky III.
There are a couple of other scenes covered in this next one...
Cracked #277, December 1992
w: Rich Kreigel (Lou Silverstone)
a: Walter Brogan
The hotel here is run by Norman Bates and his dead mother from Psycho. That's what you get when you have a hotel run by a guy and his mother in a movie.
An earlier fight scene ensues when they go to a diner and Luc keeps eating, but doesn't realize it costs money and confronts him, so he beats everyone up and trashes the place. They meet the doctor who developed the universal soldiers (Jerry Orbach) who figure out how he can be deprogrammed.
GUNFORGIVEN
Cracked #278, January 1993
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Walter Brogan
A prostitute's face was slashed when she made mocked a client, Quick Mike, for his small penis. The sheriff of the town, Little Bill (Gene Hackman) takes away his horse and that of his brother Davey Bunting as punishment. Her co-workers don't think this is punishment enough and have offered a bounty on the two of them. He has a strict no-gun policy in his town.
Elsewhere, a bounty hunter who calls himself “The Schofield Kid” (Jaimz Woolvett) aims to bring in the criminals and seeks the aid of Will Munny (Clint Eastwood), a famous bounty hunter, to help. Will is now retired from the game and raising children on his own, but realizes he must go back into it because he needs the money. Ned Logan (Morgan Freeman), another ex-bounty hunter is also recruited, and it is revealed the Kid can't see.
Clint Eastwood's child is supposed to be Macaulay Culkin. It took another reading to get that.
Back in Big Whiskey, the town run by Little Bill, English Bob (Richard Harris) has come in with his biographer W. W. Beauchamp (Saul Rubinek) seeking the bounty and telling tall tales. Little Bill can't tolerate everyone coming in and breaking the no-gun laws of his town, and kicks English Bob out. The trio of bounty hunters is about to enter.S
The L.A. Police joke refers to the Rodney King incident, a police brutality incident easily Googlable.
Our trio goes to the saloon in Big Whiskey. Not realizing Will's identity but correctly guessing that he wants the bounty, Bill confiscates his pistol and beats him. Ned and the Kid escape through a back window and take Will to an unoccupied barn outside of town,. After missing Davey (Rob Campbell) and hitting his horse, Ned falters and Will shoots Davey instead. Ned decides to quit. He's later captured and flogged to death by Little Bill to learn the whereabouts of Will and the Kid.
“Do you pick your feet in Poughkeepsie” was one of the questions used by Gene Hackman's character when gilling suspects in The French Connection
Will takes the Kid with him to the cowboys' ranch, directing him to ambush Quick Mike (David Mucci) in the outhouse and shoot him. After they escape, a distraught Kid drunkenly confesses he had never killed anyone before and hands the revolver over, saying that he no longer wants to be a killer. Will sends him back with the reward. That night, Will finds Ned's corpse displayed in a coffin outside Skinny's saloon as a warning to bounty hunters. Inside, Little Bill and his deputies are organizing a posse. Will walks in alone, brandishing a shotgun and kills Skinny for displaying Ned's corpse. He then takes aim at Little Bill, only for the shotgun to misfire. Will shouts threats as he mounts his horse and rides out of town. Then there's a prophetic title card.
Here's one from the first magazine issue, before Al Feldstein took over as editor and they developed a formula, and their movie parodies evolved into in strip form again. Before that, when Kurtzman was editor, they were reviews or spreads (click on 'Harvey Kurtzman' in sidebar), or in this case a parody of an ad, since their goal was more to look like a magazine than look like a comic.
Underwater! was about a search for buried trasure and, as the poster parody implies, a way to show Jane Russell in a swimsuit.
THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF JACQUES COUSTEAU
1966-1976 BBC/ABC
THE UNDERSEA WORLD OF JERQUE KOOKSTEAU
Sick #100, October 1974
w: Len Herman
a: Jerry Grandenetti
Series of documentaries about underwater marine life featuring French explorer Jacques Cousteau and his sons on his ship the Calypso.
Starfish are Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Liz Taylor.
CAPTAIN CROUTON AND THE MEN OF CHA CHA IN 'GRANT MADNESS'
Harpoon #2, November 1974
w: B. Lopez
a: Neal Adams
Harpoon was a National Lampoon imitator that got a cease and desist letter from them for having too similar a name, so it changed its name to Apple Pie, then became International Insanity.
Marlin Perkins was a zoologist that hosted another documentary nature series on NBC called Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom.
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.
