Mad Magazine Movie Parodies of Non-existent Movies

One of the things I loved about the old Mad Magazine, especially in the 1960s, was the way they’d do a “parody” of a movie that didn’t actually exist. But it played off familar cliches, or off a real movie. But they gave it an original cast of famous people, usually drawn by Mort Drucker, their master caricaturist.

Some examples:

Son of Mighty Joe Kong – sort-of parody of the RKO “Ape Trilogy” of King Kong, Son of Kong, and Mighty Joe Young, starring Dick van Dyke, James Garner, and Doris Day. It ends up with Doris Day atop the Empire State Building. Appeared in 1965, which featured a cover painting of gorillas in biplanes trying to shoot a giant Alfred E. Neuman off the Empire State Building, appropriately enough. New York station WWOR was famous for showing the Ape Trilogy on Thanksgiving morning against the fasmous parades on the other networks, but this parody predated that.

The Flying Ace starring the Beatles as WWII pilots, Ed Sullivan as their commanding officer, and Natalie Wood as Ringo’s character’s wife. Also appeared in 1965

My Fair Ad-Man a musical parody, using the songs and outline from Lerner and Loew’s My Fair Lady to tell the story of two advertising executives – Cary Grant and Charles Laughton – who make a bet that Grant’s character can turn a beatnik (Frank Sinatra, with a beret and goatee) into an advertising executive. Features Dean Martin as a singing policeman. From 1960

The Guru of Ours – sort-of parody of The Wizard of Oz, but really parodies modern trends. With Liza Minelli in the Dorothy role (she was Judy Garland’s daughter, of course, and would go on to play Dorothy in the 19754 animated Journey Back to Oz) and Tiny Tim as Aunt Em, Ed Sullivan (again) as the Guru, with what look like George Hamilton and Michael J. Pollard in other roles

Antenna on the Roof – instead of directly parodying the movie, they did this indirect parody of modern trends, with Zero Mostel (who originated the role of Tevye on Broadway) oin the Tevye part. I recognize Woody Allen as one of the suitors, but can’t recall any other obvious caricatures. From 1972

Most other parodies don’t quite fit this mold. I don’t recall celebrity caricatures in 1965’s Crazy Fists (boxing movie parody. 007: The James Bomb Musical deserves to be better known (especially with its “title song” 007, sung to the tune of “Oklahoma!”, or with its parody of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. – “I.C.E.C.U.B.E.”, The International Conspiracy to Eliminate, Contaminate, and Undermine the British Empire), but it only had caricatures of Sean Connery and Bernard Lee (and Mike Hammer), so It’s not really the same thing. There were movie parodies in several of the Mad paperbacks, rather than the magazines, including one with Marlon Brando playing Tarzan. And, of course, there were the political musical parodies, but in those the caricatures were of the people actually portrayed.

I was going to say that they did something like this that was a parody of “Lost Horizon”, but apparently it was a parody of an actual remake.

Yes, and the remake was definitely worth doing a parody of. I showed it at one of my Bad Film Festivals.

Movie Movie was a film equivalent of this, with parodies of two 30s movie genres, the boxing film (Dynamite Hands) and the “All talking, all singing, all dancing” movie musicals (Baxter’s Beauties of 1933). George C. Scott was in it (he loved making it) and gets to kick the bucket twice.

Seems like that bomb of a remake prompted everyone to do their own parody. Johnny Carson even did one, featuring Carol Wayne in the Sally / Gloria role and Johnny as the High Lama / Carnac the Higher Lama.

Even great actors like Peter Finch can make a turkey once in a while. I admired his talent in other films but that movie was dreadful.

“I have never seen it but by all accounts it is terrible. However, I have seen the house that it built and it is terrific.”

Michael Caine, discussing one of his movies.

They had a fake horror movie parody called “Arbor Day”. What I remember most about it was that they patronized a pizza place that used human “meat.”

“Barney Miller” beat them to it a couple of months earlier. A real movie with that title was released in 1990.

I read and liked that – those teenage slasher horror movies needed parodying. IIRC, Jack Davis did the artwork, but he didn’t put caricatures of any celebrities in his art for this one. They were all generic cartoon people.

Even though I grew up in the 80s and 90s I came into a collection of Mad and Cracked magazines from the 1970s, so I remember what you are talking about. The problem is I was too young to get many of the references.

I do remember “The Dip” which parodied 1977 adventure thriller “The Deep.” I read the book on which that movie is based and it was awful. Racist, misogynist crap. I can’t remember if they pointed that out in the parody. I know that as I read it, I was too young to know how bigoted it was, so maybe I had to get that idea from Mad. But from what I recall the book fell heavily into the Savage Black Men trope.

They once did “The Old Gray Line”, which parodied movies like The Long Gray Line and The West Point Story paired with “The New Gray Line”, which imagined a 1970s version starring Jack Nicholson and James Caan.

Are you sure that appeared in Mad?

I don’t recall it, and it’s not listed on the Wikipedia page of Mad Movie satires (which lists the others I mentioned in the OP). It doesn’t turn up in a general Google search, either

Found it – it;'s in Mad #233 from Fall 1981. Wikipedia clearly didn’t think it a proper movie spoof

https://www.comics.org/issue/94023/

I never read the book, but I didn’t get the impression of racism and misogyny from the Mad satire – at least, I don’t recall it.

I can’t believe I found this, but you can read the whole parody, and yes, it makes several comments about the racism of the film… but leans into the sexism, I’m afraid.

https://madcoversite.com/mad198-04.html

One of the previous threads about Mad parodies mentioned “East Side Story”, a parody of “West Side Story” with world figures (Khrushchev, Castro, De Gaulle, etc.) at the U.N. (Mad #78).

I see there was also a parody “It’s A Blunderful Life” from 1996 with Bill Clinton and his guardian angel Richard Nixon.

You’re quite right. It HAS been a long time since I read that one.

Yeah – these are the ones I mentioned in the OP as “political” ones. They did a lot of other political musicals (“A Day with JFK”), but most of the other ones didn’t parody movies.

Jaws: The Revenge