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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YOU ARE THERE THEN
Humbug #3, October 1957
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Bill Elder
One of the first documentary series, would recreate a famous historical event as if it were a news event they were covering live, with Walter Cronkite at an anchor desk in the studio and a field reporter covering the event live and maybe talking to a participant or two.
Julius Caesar is drawn as Sid Caesar with Caesar's Hour co-star Howard Morris as one of his associates, and Imogene Coca as a citizen. Wally Ballou was the name of a reporter in many Bob and Ray sketches.
MENTL
MAD #248, July 1984
w: Arnie Kogen
a: Mort Drucker
Yentl (Barbara Streisand) is a young Ashkenazi woman living in a shtetl in Europe interested in studying the Talmud. Law and religion forbid woman from doing so, but she does anyway. Booksellers come to town attempting to steer her away from Talmudic texts and encourage her to read picture books instead, refusing to sell her books for men until she lies and says they're for someone else. Others in the community whisper concern among themselves that Yentl does not have a husband.
"בשן" means “in the tooth”. I don't know if that has any significance. “Not So Funny Girl” references Funny Girl, an earlier Striesand movie. An ad campaign for Levy's Jewish Rye had a picture of an American Indian with the slogan “You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's”
Yentl secretly studies the Talmud under her father. When he dies, she decides to travel to a Yeshiva and in order to do so disguises herself as a man.
Victor/Victoria was a comedy about a cross-dresser that came out around the same time
On her way to be accepted to the Yeshiva, Yentl meets Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin) and takes the identity of her brother Anshel. They are both accepted and she moves in with his family. She has to share a bed with Avigdor while living with him, fooling them into thinking he is Anshel while developing feelings for him.
Avigdor is engaged to Hadass (Amy Irving). The guys all skinny dip and invite Yentl/Anshel along which she refuses to do lest she give up her ruse. Hadass's family calls off her marriage to Avigdor and believe “Anshel” to be a better suitor. “Anshel” goes through with it so she can be near Avigdor. She's gone in way over her head and continues to delay consummation of the marriage. It's complicated.
Nicky Arnstein was the name of the husband in Funny Girl. Isaac Bashevis Singer was the author of the story Yentl is based on.
“Anshel” teaches Hadass to be more liberated and gets her to go back to Avigdor. She reveals herself to really be Yentl before going off to the New World.
The song in the panel where Yentl strips down is a parody of the song from The Way We Were
YELLOWSTREAK
MAD UK #247, November 1982
a: Dave Stoten
A lot of TV detective spoofs of the seventies put all the detectives together, usually because the premise was the detective had some kind of gimmick or trait. This is supposed to by about this premise taken to its most absurd conclusion as a detective called Yellowstreak, who's supposed to be Orson Welles as all their traits combined.
This article seems to pre-date right-wing rancor against “woke” by forty years, lamenting how detectives used to be like Sam Spade, then TV made them disabled (Ironside, Raymond Burr), black (Shaft, Richard Roundtree), female (Police Woman, Angie Dickinson), fat (Cannon, William Conrad), streetsmart (Columbo, Peter Falk), and old (Barnaby Jones, Eddie Albert). McCloud is in the background of the splash panel as well.
Winifred Atwell was a jazz/ragtime musician. I have no idea why she's referenced here.
There are appearances by Quincy, Efrem Zimbalist and Roger Smith from 77 Sunset Strip, and Starsky & Hutch. There seems to be a picture of James Garner in Quincy's lab. In the last panel Orson Welles looks more like Tim Curry.
I'm familar with Karl Malden and Michael Douglas from Street of San Francisco and Robert Wagner from Hart to Hart, but I must say I'm stumped by the two in the same panel as with Kojak. They must be the only non-American detectives.
CORN-VOY
Game Volume 4 #9, circa 1978
w & a: Pete Davidson (?)
Not the comedian and Saturday Night Live cast member, unless he went back in time 20 years and moved to England.
As the blog comes to a close, it's inevitable a few odds and ends will trickle in. After I end with ZPG in a few weeks I'll be returning with things like this. First up is something from a British nudie magazine called Game.
Convoy was released at the height of the CB radio craze and the 'good old boy' film genre, and based on an earlier song. The movie is about about Rubber Duck (Kris Kristofferson) on the run from the law, fleeing across the country with Melissa (Ali McGraw) accompanied by an increasingly larger crowd of allies. A convoy, if you will.
You can tell they never saw the movie by how the actors' appearances are drawn from stock shots in other movies. Ali McGraw has short hair in the movie.
Steve McQueen wasn't in this. He was married to Ali McGraw in real life.
Jimmy Carter's mother Lillian a/k/a “Miss Lillian” was prominent in his presidential tenure.
This next one was a parody in Esquire's parody of MAD in their August 1964 issue.
M (1931)
dir: Fritz Lang
There's no byline for this MAD parody. Rumor has it that Harvey Kurtzman wrote it under a pseudonym. While it tracks that he was a frequent contributor to Esquire and upset about what happened to his creation, the angle seems to be that MAD is creating a generation of delinquents with its satire. Kurtzman's take would have been more of “not funny as it once was”, since even if he saw MAD after him as a watered-down version, he'd acknowledge it still had the same intent.
And the film here is about a child predator (Peter Lorre) pursued by police and the public. Alfred Kinsey, Charles DeGaulle, Liberace, Al Capone, and Tom Dewey weren't in it.
YECCH! OR WHAT A WASTE!
MAD #164, January 1974
w: Lou Silverstone
a: Don Martin
MAD's take on what we'd expect to see from monster movies soon. The issue of pollution was much more of a concern them. The EPA had only been around for three years so its impact hadn't fully taken effect yet.
ECCCH-MEN
MAD #327, May 1994
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Sam Viviano
MAD rarely did parodies of Saturday Morning cartoons, but I guess this was one of the cases where they made an exception. X-Men has existed in many forms since, but before the movies, this cartoon based on the comic was the only other one. The main pupils of Charles Xavier's School for the Gifted were Storm, Jubilee, Cyclops, Wolverine, Rogue, Gambit, and Beast, led by Charles Xavier a/k/a Professor X. The students were selected as “gifted children” but are mutants with special powers. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is led by Magneto, Professor X's longtime frenemy. Other enemies are the Sentinels and Morph.
Beast is drawn here as one of Maurice Sendak's Wild Things. Sam Viviano and Dick DeBartolo are in the lower right corner of this splash page, as are MAD staffers Charlie Kadau, Nick Meglin, John Ficarra, and Len Brenner.
Jean Grey/Phoenix was another of the X-Men.
And this was a parody of the earlier comic from the sixties.
THE ECHHS-MEN
Not Brand Ecch #8, June 1968
w: Gary Friedrich
a: Tom Sutton
Jean Grey was originally Marvel Girl, Beast didn't have hair, and other members were The Angel and Iceman. They practiced their powers in the danger room at the academy.
Forbush-Man is a parody of Peter Parker, always desperate to join some superhero group.
Toad was one of the original members of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Quicksiver was a former mutant on the good side who joined the Avengers.
Magneto wore a helmet to shield his magnetic powers. Scarlet Witch was Quicksilver's sister who also became an Avenger.
MMMS was the Merry Marvel Marching Society, a fan club for readers.
This was the cover to some foreign edition, I neglected to note which one.
MAD #335, May 1995
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
Introduced by Rod Serling, a science-fiction series about a unit of the FBI that investigates the supernatural, particularly UFOs. The division is headed by Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson). Walter Skinner (Mitch Pileggi) was the assistant director, and their boss. Mulder became convinced in the existence of alien life when he believed his sister was abducted at an early age.
The splash page, as well as all the panels throughout, are filled with aliens from various science-fiction TV shows, movies, and cartoons.
The first panel has then-New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman. Giants stadium is also located in New Jersey. Go figure.
The last panel features Ray Liotta, Robert DeNiro, and Joe Pesci of Good Fellas.
A couple issues later, on the letters page...
Cover to the Brazilian edition.
A CRACKED LOOK AT THE X-FILES
Cracked #305, January 1996
w: Rob Weske
a: Bruce Bolinger
