MAD Magazine Movie Parodies

There's an article in the current issue of Film Comment that brought back a lot of fond memories. Written by Grady Hendrix, it's a history and appreciation of MAD Magazine's movie parodies, which were my favorite feature of the magazine, except when they ran Al Jaffee's "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions."

Hendrix covers the entire history of the feature, which began in 1954 with "Ha! Noon!" a parody of High Noon, to the present day. He accurately describes how teens, who were too young to see R-rated movies, could experience them in parody form. This was certainly true of me, as I read the magazine faithfully during the first half of the '70s. Before I ever saw The Godfather, I read "The Oddfather" (and "The Oddfather Part, Too"), the same with A Clockwork Orange and "A Crockwork Lemon," or The French Connection and "What's the Connection?" I also enjoyed the parodies of films I'd seen, such as "The Poopsidedown Adventure."

I was interested to learn that during the '60s and '70s MAD parodied some really obscure movies, like Bunny Lake is Missing, and art-house fare like Blow-Up. These days the parody is not even in every issue, and only covers mass-market films like Twilight and the Harry Potter films.

I was lucky to read MAD parodies at their greatest. They were drawn in those days mostly by Mort Drucker and Angelo Torres (both are still alive and kicking) and though the humor was driven by puns and toilet jokes, there was also a biting satire to them, mostly when they attacked the film and exposed plot holes (I remember they focused on a scene in Barry Lyndon when an actor with a supposedly amputated leg could easily seen to have tucked his leg through a hole in the bed). Much of their satire was on the marketing of films, which brought ire from publicists (film companies have never cooperated with them) but directors were usually honored, as George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have bought original art from the parodies of their films.

I was a huge MAD fan. I bought every issue for four of five years. I remember walking miles throughout Dearborn, Michigan, going from store to store to look for the latest issue. There were other humor magazines, like Cracked and the short-lived Sick, but MAD has continued to endure, although today they take advertising and have color. When I got to high school I discovered National Lampoon and moved on from MAD. I've picked up a couple of issues since then and it just isn't the same. You have to be about twelve to appreciate it. God bless that usual gang of idiots.