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.
Updated daily. There's posts besides this one archived in the sidebar on the right, you clods!
if you're at a laptop or desktop, right-click and open link on pages and they'll be clearer and legible in a new window.
WORSTWORLD
Crazy #5, July 1974
w: Marv Wolfman
a: Bob McLeod
Before Michael Crichton created the blockbuster franchise of movies about robot dinosaurs gone rogue with Jurassic Park, he created a movie about robot humans gone rogue with Westworld. This was a science-fiction film about the Delos corporation, the business behind Romanworld, Medievalworld, and Westworld, amusement parks where you can live out your fantasies in one of these worlds that simulated life in the historical past.
The movie begins with a commercial for the Delos corporation hosted by Ed Wren (Robert Hogan) introducing the audience to these parks and interviewing exiting guests for their reactions to visiting these parks. Then we see Peter Martin (Richard Benjamin) and John Blane (James Brolin) flying in to Wetworld and being served by a stewardess who may or may not be a robot, showing how lifelike the simulations at the parks really are.
Everything at Westworld is realistic. The food, the lodgings, the bars, the prostitutes, but only with conveniences up to a hundred years old. You can have gunfights but you can tell the difference between a robot and a real person because the guns are programmed not to work on real people.
Technicians are supervising everything in all the parks to make sure everything goes smoothly and recalling any models that don't work. Things start to go wrong when Peter kills one of their models in a gunfight (Yul Brynner) and it keeps coming back.
Peter shoots the gunslinger yet again and is sent to jail for it. He's able to blast his way out and he and John flee to the desert. (Not shown: Robots start disobeying guests and rebelling in Medievalworld). Peter and John return to town and John is shot and killed by the gunslinger, who chases Peter out into the desert again. We see it from the gunslinger's point of view.
Peter escapes into the laboraratory, then to Medievalworld, where all the guests and technicians have already been killed. Peter destroys the gunslinger by throwing sulfuric acid on him and setting him on fire, which finally defeats him after several attempts to get up.
references are made to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Henry Kissinger.
The Broadway musical that became a movie (and remade a couple years ago) was parodied a few times. The premise, based on Romeo and Juliet, about members of two rival gangs falling in love, lent itself to the issues of other then-current rivalries.
EAST SIDE STORY
MAD #78, April 1963
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Mort Drucker
When Mort Drucker died a few years ago, this was cited as one of the pieces he was the most proud of. Instead of the Sharks and the Jets in a pre-gentrified Upper West Side, the backdrop is the newly-founded United Nations and the leaders of the Western World versus leaders of Eastern bloc countries. Here we have Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia, Wladyslaw Gomolka of Poland, and Fidel Castro of Cuba among other communist nations representing a gang led by Nikita Kruschev. A lot of the world leaders aren't likenesses of anyone in partocular.
The Western nations are a gang led by JFK that included Charles DeGaulle of France and Harold MacMillan of the United Kingdom,
Barry Goldwater is in the Western gang as well.
WEST COAST STORY
MAD #142, April 1971
w: Frank Jacobs
a: Jack Davis
With campus protests in the news just this week, this article is another example of history repeating itself.
CURLYLOCKS AND THE THREE HOODS
Sick #12, March 1962
BEST SIDE STORY
Not Brand Ecch #6, February 1968
w: Gary Friedrich
a: Tom Sutton
This takes on the rivalry between Marvel and DC (or “Distinguished Competition” as Marvel called them). Dr. Strange and Wonder Woman fall in love.
Leonard Bernstein composed the music for West Side Story.
Here are a couple parodies very loosely based on The Untouchables I didn't use before. I posted parodies of the TV show and the movie in March. Both were based on the true story of Prohibition Agent Elliott Ness and his battle against Al Capone.
THE UNMENTIONABLES
Little Dot Dotland #10, January 1964
artist and writer unknown
This was on after the show so it's possible the story was reprinted from somewhere. Little Lotta could be fat-shaming or body-positive depending on how you look at it.
THE UNMENTIONABLES
Help! V2 #7, October 1963
w: Charles Alverson
Help! was about 75% filler, a lot of reprints and stock photos, but among the remaining 25% you can find gems on a par with any of the other projects Harvey Kurtzman worked on. A lot of Robert Crumb's first work appeared there as did that of many of his underground peers. Gloria Steinem and Terry Gilliam were two of Kurtzman's assistants at different times. Early on he did some collaborations with Will Elder. It's not a big deal now that they reprinted Krazy Kat and The Spirit, but its a different perspective when you realize there were no collections of them in the mid-sixties.
Kurtzman had a budget of virtually nothing and instead of hiring artists for some articles did photo fumettis that he directed, based on an idea he'd seen in Italian and Spanish comics, and had actors that worked for free, often lured into it by Steinem. In this fumetti you can spot a young Woody Allen and a young Terry Gilliam among others.
