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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HE ROSE TATTOOED
MAD #28, July 1956
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Wallace Wood
Based on a play by Tennessee Williams. This is about Serafina Delle Rose (Anna Magnani), a seamstress who mourns over her husband dying in an accident. A few years pass and she has become a recluse much to the dismay of her daughter Rosa (Marisa Pavan), who is graduating high school, and has started dating a sailor (Ben Cooper) who Serafina only accepts when she finds him to be pure. Later she attends a church bazaar to find out if her husband has been cheating and fights with the priest who told her of his confession. She's driven home by a truck driver, Alvaro Mangiacavallo (Burt Lancaster) and she fixes his shirt, loaning him a temporary one.
Alvaro returns later and shows Serafina he got a rose tattoo like her husband's, he thought she'd like it, but it sends her into a rage. She makes Alvaro taker her to the club where her dead husband's lover Estelle (Virginia Grey) works and she admits their affair, proving it by showing she got a rose tattoo to prove their love. Alvaro gets extremely drunk, shows up at Serafina's house, sees Rosa sleeping, and makes a pass at her thinking it's Serafina, then gets kicked out of the house. The next morning after the daughter has moved on with the sailor, and Alvaro is outside confessing his love, Serafina decides she has had closure and becomes her old self again.
I know you can't see the top panels, but that's not because of bad reproduction. It's the joke. In the background in the last panel is the slogan Maidenform bras used in their print ads.
THE DOPERS
Sick #129, October 1979
a: Jack Sparling
Short-lived sitcom of the landlords from Three's Company moving out and getting their own apartment. Stanley (Norman Fell) and Helen Roper (Audra Lindley) lived next door to Jeffrey (Jeffrey Tambor) and Anne Brookes (Patricia McCormack) and their precocious son David (Evan Cohen).
A running joke throughout the show (and previously in Three's Company) was that Helen was eternally sexually frustrated.
The building's hot tub was the shows excuse for the Ropers and the Brookses to interact.
ROOM 22222ZZZzzzz
MAD #136, July 1970
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres
Sitcom about a history class at Walt Whitman High School taugh by Pete Dixon (Lloyd Haynes). The principal of the school was Mr. Kaufman (Michael Constantine).
Alice Johnson (Karen Valentine) was a student teacher trained by Mr. Dixon. Liz (Denise Nicholas) was a guidance counselor who was Mr. Dixon's girlfriend.
The last panel is Sebastian Cabot of Family Affair.
RUIN 222
Cracked #84, May 1970
a: John Severin
Bill Cosby also had a sitcom around this time in the “caring teacher” genre. Robert Culp, co-star of his previous I Spy series had most recently been in Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice (but sans mustache). Sidney Poitier's head is a pasted-on photo, maybe the only time Severin ever did that.
Now we come to the Sick parody, where they assume all black people are militants and one in a position of authority will automatically demean anyone white, and just mocking race in general.
ROOM TOO TOO PHEW
Sick #77, August 1970
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jack Sparling
THE ROOKERS
MAD #171, December 1974
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Angelo Torres
TV series about three new police officers Mike Danko (Sam Melville), Willie Gillis (Michael Ontkean) and Terry Webster (Georg Stanford Brown). Mike's wife Jill (Kate Jackson) was a registered nurse.
ROOKIE OF THE WEIRD
Cracked #286, December 1993
w: Andy Simmons
a: Walter Brogan
Henry Rowengartner (Thomas Ian Nicholas) is a twelve year old kid in little league who isn't very good at baseball. He has a supportive mother Mary (Amy Morton) who has a boyfriend Jack (Bruce Altman). Henry slips on a baseball during a little league game and breaks his arm for the summer.
When he's in a cast, Henry's arm is stuck in the “heil” position, a joke that wouldn't have been seen as loaded in 1993
When Henry has his cast removed, his tendons turn to have been wound a little too tight, giving him faster reflexes. Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs manager (Dan Hedaya) is looking for something that will save his job and bring more people to games. Henry and his friends attend a game and when the ball gets in the bleachers and he throws it back, it's discovered his newly-healed arm is a superior pitching arm.
Henry is immediately recruited into the Cubs and taken under the wing of his idol, aging pitcher Chet Steadman (Gary Busey), and goofy team manager Phil Brickma (Daniel Stern).
There are all sorts of subplots not covered here like Henry and his friends George and Clark discovering girls, the boyfreind turning evil, Henry fixing his mother up with Chet, etc.
Steadman is being brought back in even though he knows he's aging. There's a sportscaster (John Candy) giving a play-by-play for all the games. Henry falls ago, losing his super-arm, and finishes most of the game by outsmarting pitchers. He wins the last inning all on his own, then he's done.
MAD #181, March 1976
w: Stan Hart
a: Angelo Torres
In the future of five years ago, the planet Earth is controlled by corporations, and their sport is rollerball, a sort of roller derby/hockey/football/skeeball hybrid and Jonathan-E (James Caan) is the star player for the Houston team.
After the latest game, Bartholomew (John Houseman), owner of the team, goes back to Jonathan and players such as Moonpie (John Beck). At home, Jonathan pines for his former wife (Maud Adams) and the corporation is giving him a package to try and convince him to retire little by little, starting with a new wife Daphne (Barbara Trentham). It wouldn't be a futuristic 70s sci-fi movie without some sort of government-sanctioned prostitution.
Jonathan is trying to find out about sports and the world of the past from his trainer Clete (Moses Gunn) and has also been invited to Bartholomew's office. They need to get him to retire, and lavishing him with gifts doesn't seem to be working, so to get him out the board has decided to oust him out by making the game more difficult for him.
The company changes the rules of rollerball during their big game with Tokyo to make it more violent in the hopes of removing Jonathan, but ends up killing many of the players and knocking Moonpie into a coma. Jonathan refuses to have Moonpie taken off life support.
Jonathan tries to find out about the past before the corporations took over. At the library, he finds all the books have been digitized with everything he needs to know erased. He goes to Geneva to ask a supercomputer known as Zero, which breaks down when he asks these questions.
Jonathan's wife Ella (Maud Adams) returns. She had been taken away by the corporation but now has returned to warn him he must quit the game or he will be killed.
In Houston's game against New York City, the game has been rigged to finally kill Jonathan-E off, but he overcomes all obstacles in his way to the chants of the crowd.
THE ROOKS
MAD #97, September 1965
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Series of about a group of retired conmen who worked for hire to scam someone if they really deserved it. They were Alexander and Tony Fleming (David Niven, Gig Young) and Marcel St. Clair (Charles Boyer).
They were assisted by Timmy St. Clair (Robert Coote) and Auntie Margaret (Gladys Cooper), This parody has Broderick Crawford as the guest star, who was a guest star on a real episode as well.
RANDAN
Humbug #11, October 1958
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Bill Elder
One of many movies Toho released in Japan in the fifties predicting the worst case scenarios of the effects of radiation. Shigeru (Kenji Sahara), a safety engineer, is sent down to investigate a death in a coalmine and is attacked by a giant dragonfly and trapped in the mine.
Later, Shigeru is found in a daze and a giant bird-creature is attacking the city. As Shigeru is recovering in the hospital and his girlfriend visits him, she shows the eggs her pet bird has lain, which are the same as the giant eggs he saw in the collapsed mine, and scientists figure out these are the same dormant eggs Rodan hatched from.
