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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TRUE FAT
MAD #133, March 1970
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker
In this western, Mattie Ross (Kim Darby) sees father (John Pickard) killed by Tom Chaney (Jeff Corey) and travels to Fort Smith, Arkansas to seek his capture with the aid of Marshal Rooster Cogburn (John Wayne). To get the money, she sells the property to Col. Stonehill (Strother Martin).
Mattie tracks down Rooster to talk business with him and convinces him with money and her persistence. He initially doesn't want her to join him but she wears him down. At the boarding house where she's staying, she meets LaBoeuf (Glen Campbell) a Texas Ranger who is also after Cheney. He wants to join them, teams up with Rooster, they keep trying to ditch Maddie, but she keeps catching up to them.
They get information about Chaney from members of his gang that are holed up in a shack. LaBoeuf feels Maddie is in the way while they're on Chaney's trail and tries to spank her, but Rooster intervenes. In the morning, when Maddie goes to the river to fetch some water, she falls down a hill, finds Tom Chaney himself, and shoots him with her father's gun that he had with her.
The rest of Chaney's gang comes after them and Rooster kills them off single-handedly. LaBoeuf is killed in the fracas. Tom Chaney is brought back home to justice and Maddie shows Rooster Cogburn her family graveyard, telling him she wants him to be buried in it when he goes. Rooster politely declines and rides off into the sunset. The last panel in this is a commentary on the increasing backlash against John Wayne.
THE TRIAL OF BILLY JERK
Sick #104, June 1975
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jerry Grandenetti
Jean Roberts (Delores Taylor) is in bed recounting the events that happened. The previous one ended with Billy Jack (Tom Laughlin) being arrested and taken away while students at the Freedom School, an alternartive school on an Indian reservation, stood in solidarity. This film is a flashback to the events leading to his trial.
The prosecuting attorney is made to resemble Jackie Gleason wearing a “Whip Inflation Now” button. Jane Fonda was known for being one of the first allies to Native Americans. “Shuffle Off to Buffalo” was a popular song 90 years ago.
When Billy Jack is released he meets martial arts master Han (Bong Soo-Han) and sides with the Natives in their campaign to get their land back from banker Posner (Riley Hill).
David Carradine was star of the TV series Kung Fu.
CRAPPER JOHN, M. D.
MAD #221, March 1981
w: Stan Hart
a: Jack Davis
Dramatic medical TV series about a doctor spun off from the sitcom M*A*S*H taking place in the seventies and eighties after the Korean War, where Dr. John McIntyre (Pernell Roberts) is now head surgeon at San Francisco Memorial Hospital. Roberts' earlier claim to fame was that he had played Adam Cartwright on Bonanza. Fellow nurse was Starsh (Mary McCarty).
In the splash panel, the two other pictures are of Bonanza co-stars Lorne Greene, who was doing commercials for Alpo, and Michael Landon, who starred in Little House on the Prarie. To his right is Dan Blocker.
Trapper's co-worker was Gonzo (Gregory Harrison), who lived in a trailer.
A co-worker was Dr. Riverside (Charles Seibert), and there was a younger nurse named Ripples (Christopher Norris).
CRAPPER JOHN, M. D.
Sick #133, June 1980
a: Jack Sparling
Jackpot (Brian Stokes Mitchell) was another one of the doctors.
Nixon and Carter as go-to characters hadn't expired yet.
In the last panel, he's killed by M*A*S*H co-stars Hawkeye, O'Houlihan, and Klinger.
TRADING RACES
MAD #246, April 1984
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker
Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) is the pampered director at the Duke and Duke brokerage firm, living in a townhouse waited on by his butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott). Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy) is a lowly street hustler. He bumps into Louis one day, Louis thinks he's being robbed, and Louis' bosses Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer Duke (Don Ameche) see this and decide to conduct a wager—switch the lives of the two of them and observe the results. This begins a campaign to set up Louis Winthorpe into a spiral of decline. Billy Ray, meanwhile, is being groomed to be his successor.
More than likely a subversion of the watermelon and fried chicken trope in the next to last panel, especially considering they avoided Aykroyd in blackface later on, though I can't figure out the meta-joke. Boy, were we racist forty years ago.
Louis Winthorpe is framed for dealing drugs, shunned by society, and his engagement is broken off. At the police station, he meets Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), a prostitute, and moves in with her having nowhere to go. Billy Ray overhears the Duke Brothers (not to be confused with Them Duke Boys) talking about their bet while in the bathroom and plots revenge, bringing Louis and Ophelia in on the plot.
Billy Ray is aware that the firm has obtained information about orange crops from the government. A Duke employee is bringing that information in a suitcase on a train and the plot involves secretly switching it with a forgery so the brothers will get the wrong information, sell their stocks, and lose all their money. Louis, Billy Ray, Ophelia, and Coleman go on the train in disguise, and they, with the proper information, are able to buy up all the stocks and become rich.
There's a parody of Risky Business after this, which is what Siskel and Ebert are talking about.
From Recasting Old Movies with Today's Famous Wrestlers by John Prete (John Ficarra) and Sam Viviano, from #285, March 1989.
OY, WHATTA STORY
Cracked #306, March 1996
w: Andy Simmons
a: John Severin
Another parody I suspect was written from press materials before being able to see the movie.
The toys, led by Woody (Tom Hanks), are a piggy bank (John Ratzenberger), a Slinky dog (Jim Varney), Mr. Potato Head (Don Rickles)Bo Peep (Annie Potts), and Rex the Tyrannosaur (Wallace Shawn). They eavesdrop on their owner Andy (John Morris)'s birthday party. The father is not in the movie.
Andy's new toy, an astronaut named Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) fascinates all the other toys. Buzz thinks he's a real person and doesn't realize he's just a toy like the rest of them. Woody is jealous of Buzz's popularity and worried about being shunned, schemes to kill him and sets a trap to get him to fall out a window.
Buzz's catchphrase is “To infinity and beyond”
The other toys get mad at Woody and turn against him, but don't go outside like in this, and there's no teddy bear.
Woody feels bad for what he did and goes out to get Buzz, and now they're lost. They find Andy and his mother at a pizza arcade restaurant but end up in the home of Andy's neighbor Sid (Erik Von Detten), a sadistic kid who takes toys apart and has an even more menacing pit bull. Woody and Buzz, once enemies, reconcile when Buzz realizes he's onlt a toy and gives up.
At Sid's house, examples of his previous toy “experiments” are strewn about the room, and Woody and Buzz fear they'll be next. Sid shows up with plans to destroy them the next day when he wakes up.
Reference is made to Apollo 13, a live-action Tom Hanks movie.
In the real movie, Andy is moving, and Woody and Buzz catch up and their other toy friends in the van using the M-80 Sid planned to torture Buzz with. After everything has now settled down, it ends with Christmas and Andy's new gift, which is even worse competition for them, a puppy.
APPLIANCE STORY
MAD #345, May 1996
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Steve Smallwood
Yesterday we looked at the MAD and Cracked parodies of The Towering Inferno (click on “older post” or one of the several other methods), now here are takes from Crazy and Sick.
THE SOURING INFERNO
Sick #105, August 1975
w: Fred Wolfe (Paul Laikin)
a: Jerry Grandenetti
It's the ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Glass Tower, The world's tallest building, located in San Francisco, designed by Doug Roberts (Paul Newman), developed and owned by James Duncan (William Holden). Harry Jernigan is head of security supervising through monitored rooms up inside.
Frank Sinatra and Don Rickles are not in the movie. Red Skelton, Lawrence Welk, Dean Martin, Danny Thomas, and Phil Silvers appear later on. I guess the artist just wanted to show he could draw them.
Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain), son-in-law of James Duncan, was responsible for construction, and used shoddy wiring when building it. The premiere party has started on the top floor. Among the guests are Harlee Claiborne (Fred Astaire) and Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones). Duncan has invited Senator Parker (Robert Vaughn) in hopes to win favor and have more building contracts approved.
Publicist Dan Bigelow (Robert Wagner) is having an affair with his secretary (Susan Flannery) and they get trapped in his office. Everybody at the party has to leave the room and move to a lower floor, including Doug's girlfriend Susan (Faye Dunaway). Mike O' Halloran (Steve McQueen) is the fire chief called to put out the fire in the building.
The fire has spread out of control and everyone has to evacuate the building, mostly through makeshift ropes and helicopters.
Commercials for Hanes' Beautymist pantyhose with Joe Namath were a big ad campaign in the seventies,
After a lottery of who gets rescued first and everyone is finally saved, Chief O'Halloran gives Doug Roberts a lecture about how skyscrapers are a potential disaster.
THE TOWERING MESS
Crazy #11, June 1975
w: Stu Schwartzberg
a: Vance Rodewalt
This parodies the entire genre. Mostly The Towering Inferno with parts of The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and the Airport series.
Ernest Borgnine and Shelley Winters were in The Poseidon Adventure, Charlton Heston was in Airport '75 and Earthquake. This was years before Airplane was released as a parody of the genre, when they couldn't have been aware Kareem-Abdul Jabbar would have a major part.
Charlton Heston was best known for Moses in The Ten Commandments, so he had to have his crook with him.
A big scene in Poseidon was to have women give up their lingerie so it could be tied together to make ropes for everyone to climb up.
And a few years before Airplane!, the Zucker brothers sent up the genre in The Kentucky Fried Movie.
THE TOWERING STERNO
MAD #177, November 1975
w: Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker
Before the science-fiction genre inspired by Star Wars, then the action movie, then the now-popular superhero genre, the disaster movie was the big-budget all-star summer movie release, soap operas with disaster backdrops. There was the Airport franchise about jet planes malfunctioning, The Poseidon Adventure about a cruise ship malfunctioning, Earthquake. The Towering Inferno was about the world's biggest skyscraper catching fire.
Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) has designed the Glass Tower in San Francisco, and James Duncan (William Holden) is the developer of the building. The Glass Tower is 138 stories tall, part office, and part residential. Harlee Claiborne (Fred Astaire) has arrived, we soon find out he lives there and is some kind of con artist, and there is a premiere party for the building. At the central security office headed by Harry Jernigan (O. J. Simpson), they notice there may be smoke in one of the rooms from faulty wiring. Doug returns to work where his girlfriend Susan (Faye Dunaway) is waiting for him.
James Duncan had his son-in-law, Roger Simmons (Richard Chamberlain) do the electrical engineering, and cut corners that led to the faulty wiring. Everybody's getting ready for the premiere party, including the building's P.R. person Dan Bigelow (Robert Wagner).
Michael O'Halloran (Steve McQueen) is called to put out the little fire while the party is going on above them. Senator Parker (Robert Vaughn) is one of the guests at the party. Duncan is angry at his son-in-law for wiring the building cheaply while Dan Bigelow is having an affair with his secretary Lorrie (Susan Flannery). Dan and Lorrie try to leave his office but can't now that the fire has started raging.
The party has been moved down below so that the fire can be controlled, though the attendees are unaware of its magnitude. Lisolette Mueller (Jennifer Jones) was being wooed by Harlee Claiborne (those scenes aren't used here) and while escaping has to help move out some of the residents, including some children. Doug, having designed the building, knows ways to get out and with Lisolette gets the children through stairwells and elevator shafts. In the movie. Phillip (Mike Lookinland) is awakened while wearing headphones, in this parody, he keeps them on the whole time.
While plans are being made to rescue all the building attendees, Roger tells his wife Patty (Susan Blakely) he's escaping on his own, but finds he can't. Harlee and Lisolette are reuinited and he admits he was being nice to her all along to con her, but she sees that he's an honest man deep inside and doesn't care about all that now.
Everybody is being saved gradually by rappelling on a chair attached to a cable which is attached to a helicopter. It's women and children first, the first twelve through a lottery, and of course there are casualties. (In another scene from the movie not used in this, Roger pushes everyone out of the way and hangs on to the makeshift escape device, then plummets to his death. I can imagine when this played in a theater the crowd all cheered.)
Charlton Heston from Airport '75, which came out roughly around the same time, appears in the next to last panel.
Everyone still trapped in the building is saved from the sprinklers all being turned on and dousing the water out. Henry saved Harlee's cat from his apartment. After everybody's been evacuated, Michael warns Doug about the dangers of building more tall buildings.
Cover for German edition of MAD.
From New Musicals Based on Big Movies in #182, April 1976, by Frank Jacobs, also drawn by Drucker.
Ava Gardner isn't drawn here, but Gloria Swanson, who played herself in Airport '75, is, as well as Karen Black, and George Kennedy, who was the only person in all four Airport movies.
THE TOWERING INFERNAL
Cracked #126, August 1975
a: John Severin
Nitpicking, but Paul Newman and O. J. Simpson worked for the building and weren't fireman, so this cover shows how well people knew about a movie in advance back in pre-internet times.
Charlton Heston also makes an appearance in this parody, the “monkey” quote a reference to Planet of the Apes.
From Cracked #137, November 1976. art by Sururi Gumen
Tune in tomorrow for versions from Crazy and Sick.
