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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DOC TARI
MAD #109, March 1967
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Jack Davis
Series based on the film Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion about Dr. Marsh Tracy (Marshall Thompson) and his daughter Paula (Cheryl Miller), a veterinarian in East Africa. Judy the Chimp was a recurring character. Hari Rhodes and Yale Summers were members of his crew. Hedley Mattingly was the district officer.
UPDATE:
From TV Scenes Worth Waiting For in Cracked #74, January 1969, art by Lugoze.
A CRUMMY AFFAIR
Cracked #247, September 1989
w: Joe Catalano
a: Frank Caruso
Beginning of what's known as “tabloid television”, more the equivalent of gossip newspapers like National Enquirer. It began with a seemingly spring-loaded pyramid flying towards the camera and going “Eeeeeooo-WHOOM”.
The show was hosted by Maury Povich. Often they profiled celebrities such as Roseanne Barr.
MAD #283, December 1988
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Mick Dundee (Paul Hogan) and Sue (Linda Kozlowski) have settled down in New York in this movie and Mick has decided it's time to look for a job. He gets one with his friend Leroy (Charles Dutton) delivering stationery. At one drop-off, he looks out and sees someone about to jump off a ledge, comes out and talks to him, walking as if he's just passing by.
Sue has an ex-husband (Dennis Boutsikaris) we didn't know about in the first movie. He's a photojournalist in Colombia who's happened upon some druglords and takes pictures of them before he's found out. He knows he'll be shot so he sends them to Sue. The druglords, headed by Rico (Hechter Ubarry), know he did that and come to New York and kidnap her, demanding to get the photos. She hadn't even been home to get them yet. Mick comes home to find the place trashed and gets a phone call from them telling him he'll see Sue alive if he goes to the subway station with the package. When he gets there, one of Rico's heavies is there pointing a gun at him.
Some Asian tourists come off the train and Mick foils the minion by putting a wastebasket on his head (The subway station has mesh wastebaskets) and they think Mick is Clint Eastwood.
A hitman comes to kill Mick. Mick still doesn't have Sue back, and he gets a plan to recruit a gang (or what the makers of the movie think a gang looks like) to storm the druglords' mansion, with the aid of Leroy.
He rescues her, and the authorities later seek his aid in nabbing the druglords. Then that plotline is somehow forgotten and Mick and Sue go to his land in Australia, as if she didn't know about his lifestyle in the first movie.
The druglords chase him there. He reunites with Walter (John Meillon), his guide, and his old friends first. They set a bunch of traps and distractions to capture Rico and his gang. I guess they go back home and turn him in. They don't make that quite clear. MAD added this ending of Sue asking Mick to marry her, which wasn't in the movie.
In case you were wondering what the introduction was talking about, this was Jacko. Yeah, he was annoying.
Cracked did their version too:
CRACKEDILE DANDEE, TOO!
Cracked #241, December 1988
w: Tony Frank (Lou Silverstone)
a: Gray Morrow
Here Rico is caricatured as Edward G. Robinson
I guess he was meant to say something in the top right.
In the late eighties, the United States was hit with Australia mania. Suddenly pop culture from Australia was all the rage for about two years starting with this movie, followed by commercials with comedian Jacko, and movies with comedians such as Yahoo Serious, sales of Foster's beer, and then suddenly like a lot of fads in the U.S., it all disappeared.
Also in the late eighties, more households had VCRs, and sometimes people waited six months to a year for the release of a movie on video, bypassing seeing the theatrical release altogether. Six months to a year was also the lead time for a MAD movie parody, so that by the time the parody was printed, it was of a movie by then on video. Eventually it was in co-operation with the studios and they would get advance screeners. This is how things were presented until then. CROCK O' DULL DUMMEE
MAD #273, September 1987
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
American reporter Sue Charlton (Linda Kozlowski) has been sent to the wilds of Australia to cover a local celebrity, a crocodile hunter named Mick they call “Crocodile” Dundee (Paul Hogan). He and a guide take her on a tour of the outback. A bull blocks them on the road and he hypnotizes the bull to sleep. She spends the night with him (just to write about him, no funny business happens or is even hinted at). He also saves her life by killing other wild animals.
She goes swimming on her own (an excuse to show cheesecake in the movie) and he keeps an eye on her not thinking she can survive in the wilderness. He saves her life when she's attacked by a crocodile. Later, she watches him in an aboriginal ritual and photographs him.
Though it was advertised as the plot of the movie, the scenes of him in New York City only make up the second half. He's unaccustomed to the ways of the city. He sleeps on the floor of his hotel room, shaves with a bowie knife, climbs a traffic pole to avoid crowds, wards off muggers with his knife (in the oft-quoted line from the trailer that's now usually associated with Australians), meets “ladies of the evening” without realizing what they're there for, beats up their pimp, and almost goes home with a transvestite.
He also uses his throwing skills to knock out a thief in the middle of Times Square. Sue and her boyfriend take him to meet her father, owner of the newspaper she's covering her story about Dundee for, at his mansion. At dinner, the boyfriend proposes to her. Dundee pretends not to be upset, but leaves early.
The next day, he goes on a “walkabout”, deciding to leave the city and embarking on his own. Sue catches up with him at a subway station, tells him he really doesn't love her boyfriend, has broken off the engagement and goes to him. Fade to black.
The jealous man in the foreground at the top was the star of the then-popular cop show called The Equalizer.
The parody didn't make the cover of this particular issue, but did for the British edition.
Same for Mexico.
Cracked didn't directly parody the movie, but did an article about what sequels would be like, in an article that would have even been considered out of date even for 1987.
FUTURE CROCODILE DUNDEE MOVIES
Cracked #228, July 1987
w: George Gladir
a: Gray Morrow
An episode of The Simpsons satirized an event that was controversial at the time, where a tourist in Singapore was forced to stay there and face their punishment, in an episode where the family goes to Australia and Bart can't get sanctuary for crimes has to undergo a public booting, making the show into a fictionalized version of the country.
UPDATE:
Cover for Australian MAD. I'm sure Crocodile Dundee was much more popular over there.
Oh, Woody. If only he'd hung up his hat after this he'd still be a rich man that went out at the top of his game, but he had to continue on and be a wildly inconsistent 85-year-old guerilla filmmaker, and when he passes on will be pariah, with pedophilia as the headline to his obituary with film and comedy not coming up until the third paragraph.
This is only a couple panels from Video Reviews in MAD #296 in July 1990.
Since the panels are by Sam Viviano, one of the few MAD artists I knew, and I have so much space, I guess I should mention this long-winded story that has nothing to do with this movie. Relax, it turns out positive.
In 1990, I was a student at School of Visual Arts majoring in both cartooning and illustration. I was only supposed to major in one but at that time the cartooning department was kind of a joke. To me, anyway. Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner were teachers, and the reason I went to the school, only to find out by the time I went there they were well past their prime and in declining years, and most of their classes were taught by assistants. You weren't even allowed to take any cartooning classes until your second year. The school was trying to steer you towards being a superhero artist with most classes taught by Marvel and DC artists, who I liked but had no interest in following in their footsteps. I pleaded my case with the school and was allowed to be a double major.
I did that mid-year and so changed my schedule accordingly, so many of the classes I entered second semester without taking the first one. I dropped courses I didn't think I needed like Inking 101 or whatever in favor of new ones. One such class was Caricature.
Caricature was taught by Sam Viviano, whose work I remember growing up in Dynamite and Bananas. It was starting to appear in MAD, which I wasn't reading on a regular basis at that point. The first thing he mentioned to me when taking attendance, which it did say specifically in the course manual, was that students were required to take the class first semester before taking it the second semester. He said that, however, even though I didn't read what it said, if he liked me and everyone else liked me by the end of the class, he might let me continue on.
During the first half of the three hour course, I believe we had a model, and he walked around the room giving pointers. When he got to me, he started doing things like mocking the way I held my pencil and rolling his eyes anytime I said anything. When we put our finished work on the wall, he'd point to me say things like “Do we really want this guy in our class?”
What makes Don Rickles funny is that he's an equal opportunity offender. If he singled out only one person while being nice to everyone else you'd feel sorry for the guy and that guy would be pissed off. Like I was. And I was humiliated in front of people I took other classes with. Sam was right though, you weren't supposed to enter mid-year. I still didn't think I deserved to be treated like this and I wasn't going to come back. But we had one more assignment before the class was over, to draw him. This was my opportunity to give back a final “screw you”. I drew his head onto the end of a penis.
I don't know if my doing so had anything to do with it or if the previous few hours were a hazing all students went through the previous semester, but after that he dropped the act, and I continued the rest of the year without what I had gone through. To be sure, everybody underwent some kind of roasting at one time but that was more in an affable comedic way than some kind of mindgame. He was fairly supportive of everyone and even bought mini-comics from students. He said to me once “Your work has kind of a vicious streak... I like that.”
My own work hasn't had as much caricature in it, save for a few movie review illustrations I did for New York Press. But the point of his class was kind of to apply your own style to a caricature. Most cartoonists would draw in their own style, then when confronted with doing a likeness, copy from him or Mort Drucker or Drew Friedman, often with just the head drawn on a body in their own style, making it look even more out of place. Drucker called this the 'lollipop' school of caricature, heads and bodies interchangeable. Viviano taught to draw not just a likeness of the head, but the whole body as well.
I've run into him in the street a couple times, and once at MAD when I was considered as a writer and he was art director, we're friends on Facebook, but I don't think he remembers me, let alone my drawing his head on a penis. There was probably a smart-ass every year. I don't remember much about SVA, even though most of my best friends I still have today come from there, but I remember his class.
Now that you've scrawled past my boring anecdote just like you always did with the introductions to MAD's articles, onto what you came for. Mainly...
THE CRACKED MOVIE
Cracked #178, July 1981
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
This was a recurring feature they did based on the fact that Mad and National Lampoon had movies. This takes place in the office of publisher Bob Sproul, though I've been told their “office” was basically a cubicle, and Sproul handled the business side of things in Florida while the editorial was handled in New York.
Cracked had a few recurring characters such as their janitor/mascot Sylvester P. Smythe (their answer to Alfred E. Neuman), Hang-Ups (two prisoners in a dungeon), Sagebrush (a gold prospector), and something called The Talking Blob.
Nanny Dickering was the reporter they used for the interviews in the back, and originally she looked different depending on who drew her, until they settled on the version drawn by good-girl artist Bill Ward.
THE CRACKED MOVIE II
Cracked #183, December 1981
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
Another caricature of MAD's Bill Gaines at the beginning.
There's a video for 9 to 5 in the 9 to 5 link in the sidebar.
CRACKED MOVIE III
Cracked #189, September 1982
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
THE CRACKED MOVIE IV
Cracked #195, July 1983
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
For a while, Sylvester P. Smythe was given a girlfriend.
In the audience are Arnold, Willis and Kimberly from Diff'rent Strokes.
THE CRACKED MOVIE V
Cracked #211, May 1985
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
Coming into the office are Tom Selleck of Magnum, P. I. and Tyne Daly and Sharon Gless of Cagney & Lacey.
The detectives from Riptide join.
Four parodies of The A-Team and crossovers with The Cosby Show and Diff'rent Strokes in previous issues weren't enough. They had to be included here as well.
And Howard Hunter (James Sikking) from Hill Street Blues also was brought in.
And last but not least, Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote and The Scarecrow & Mrs. King (Bruce Boxleitner and Kate Jackson).
CRACKED MOVIE VI: A NEW BEGINNING
Cracked #222, September 1986
w: Joe Catalano
a: John Severin
The taxi driver is Tony Danza, reprising his character from Taxi, though he'd long left that show by then. The mayor of New York City at that time was Ed Koch.
There was a seventh Cracked Movie in an issue I don't have, but will add it if I get it.
UPDATE:
From #242, January 1989. Cracked had an entirely different editorial staff by then.
