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This list of film spoofs in ''Mad'' includes
film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
s spoofed (
parodied A parody, also known as a spoof, a satire, a send-up, a take-off, a lampoon, a play on (something), or a caricature, is a creative work designed to imitate, comment on, and/or mock its subject by means of satiric or ironic imitation. Often its sub ...
) by the American comic magazine '' Mad''. Usually, an issue of ''Mad'' features a spoof of at least one
feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...
or
television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...
. The works selected by the staff of ''Mad'' are typically from
cinema Cinema may refer to: Film * Cinematography, the art of motion-picture photography * Film or movie, a series of still images that create the illusion of a moving image ** Film industry, the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking ...
and
television in the United States Television is one of the Mass media in the United States, major mass media outlets in the United States. , household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, with approximately 114,200,000 American households owning at least one te ...
. The authors parody the original titles with puns or other wordplay. Characters are caricatured, and lampooned with joke names. These articles typically cover five pages or more, and are presented as a sequential storyline with caricatures and word balloons. The opening page or two-page splash usually consists of the cast of the show introducing themselves directly to the reader; in some parodies, the writers sometimes attempt to circumvent this convention by presenting the characters without such direct exposition. This approach was also used for ''Mads television parodies, and came to be identified with the magazine. The style was widely copied by other humor publications. In 1973, the promotional movie poster for
Robert Altman Robert Bernard Altman ( ; February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He was a five-time nominee of the Academy Award for Best Director and is considered an enduring figure from the New ...
's '' The Long Goodbye'' was designed in the introductory manner of a ''Mad'' parody, including the rectangular word balloons with self-referential dialogue; for verisimilitude, the poster was written and drawn by ''Mad'' regulars
Frank Jacobs Franklin Jacobs (May 30, 1929 – April 5, 2021) was an American author of satires, known primarily for his work in ''Mad (magazine), Mad'', to which he contributed from 1957 to 2014. Jacobs wrote a wide variety of lampoons and spoof, but was bes ...
and Jack Davis. Many parodies end with the abrupt ''
deus ex machina ''Deus ex machina'' ( , ; plural: ''dei ex machina''; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function ...
'' appearance of outside characters or pop culture figures who are similar in nature to the film or TV series being parodied, or who comment satirically on the theme. For example,
Dr. Phil Phillip Calvin McGraw (born September 1, 1950), better known as Dr. Phil, is an American television personality and author best known for hosting the talk show '' Dr. Phil''. He holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, though he ceased rene ...
arrives to counsel the ''
Desperate Housewives ''Desperate Housewives'' is an American comedy-drama soap opera television series created by Marc Cherry and produced by ABC Studios and Cherry Productions. It aired for eight seasons on ABC from October 3, 2004, until May 13, 2012, for a t ...
'', or the cast of ''
Sex and the City ''Sex and the City'' is an American romantic comedy-drama television series created by Darren Star for HBO. An adaptation of Candace Bushnell's newspaper column and 1996 book anthology of the same name, the series premiered in the United Stat ...
'' show up as the new hookers on '' Deadwood''. The parodies frequently make comedic use of the
fourth wall The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th cen ...
,
breaking character In theatre (especially in the illusionistic Western tradition), breaking character occurs when an actor ceases to maintain the illusion that they are identical with the character they are portraying. This is a more acceptable occurrence while in ...
, and
meta-reference Meta-reference is a special type of self-reference that can occur in all media or media artifacts, for instance literature, film, painting, TV series, comic strips, or video games. It includes all references to, or comments on, a specific medium, ...
s. Within an ostensibly self-contained storyline, the characters may refer to the technical aspects of filmmaking, the publicity, hype, or box office surrounding their project, their own past roles, any
cliché A cliché ( or ) is an element of an artistic work, saying, or idea that has become overused to the point of losing its original meaning or effect, even to the point of being weird or irritating, especially when at some earlier time it was consi ...
s being used, and so on. In 2013, ''
Film Comment ''Film Comment'' is the official publication of Film at Lincoln Center. It features reviews and analysis of mainstream, art-house, and avant-garde filmmaking from around the world. Founded in 1962 and originally released as a quarterly, ''Film Co ...
'' wrote, "While film studies majors gasp over the deconstruction of genre in the works of
David Lynch David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946) is an American filmmaker, visual artist and actor. A recipient of an Academy Honorary Award in 2019, Lynch has received three Academy Award nominations for Best Director, and the César Award for Be ...
and the meta-movies of
Charlie Kaufman Charles Stuart Kaufman (; born November 19, 1958) is an American filmmaker and novelist. He wrote the films '' Being John Malkovich'' (1999), '' Adaptation'' (2002), and '' Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004). He made his directorial ...
, 'the usual gang of idiots' over at MAD have been deconstructing, meta-narrativing, and postmodernizing motion pictures since the very first movie parody ('' Hah! Noon!'') appeared in 1954."Hendrix 2013 (However, that was actually ''Mads second movie parody; the first had been '' Ping Pong'' three issues earlier.) Almost all of the parodies are of a single, particular film. However, ''Mad'' has occasionally done omnibus parodies of film series, such as the ''
James Bond The ''James Bond'' series focuses on a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors hav ...
'' movies, the 1970s ''
Planet of the Apes ''Planet of the Apes'' is an American science fiction media franchise consisting of films, books, television series, comics, and other media about a world in which humans and intelligent apes clash for control. The franchise is based on Frenc ...
'' sequels, and the '' Twilight Saga'' movies. It has also combined multiple mini-parodies of unrelated films into a single article. Some actors and directors have said that they regarded ridicule by ''Mad'' as an indication of major success in their careers. In recent years, the parodies and their creators have been available outside the pages of the regular magazine. The March/April 2013 issue of ''Film Comment'' (Film Society of the Lincoln Center) carried Grady Hendrix's historical survey of ''Mads film parodies, titled '' Cahiers du CinéMAD''. In August 2016, four of ''Mad''s longtime contributors—editor/artist Sam Viviano, writers
Dick DeBartolo Dick DeBartolo (born October 19, 1945) is an American writer, most famous for writing for '' Mad''. He is occasionally referred to as "''Mads Maddest Writer," this being a twist on Don Martin's former status as "''Mads Maddest Artist." De ...
and
Desmond Devlin Desmond Devlin is an American comedy writer. His work has appeared in '' Mad'' since 1984, and with more than 450 bylined articles, he ranks as one of the magazine's three most frequent non-illustrating writers. Devlin's recurring features have i ...
, and artist Tom Richmond—appeared at a public symposium in Nebraska to discuss their work in this particular medium. ''Mad'' has also published thematic collections of their past spoofs, from Oscar-winning films to superhero movies to gangster films. In September 2020, with ''Mad'' having been reduced to a primarily reprint format, Tom Richmond and Desmond Devlin announced that they were crowdfunding a book of newly created movie parodies called ''Claptrap''. They launched the campaign with the completed two-page opening spread for '' Star Worse: Plagiarizing Skywalker'', a spoof of the ninth film in the ''Star Wars'' saga. The book will include twelve full parodies of older popular or iconic films that ''Mad'' had for various reasons opted not to parody at the time.


Film spoofs list


1950s


1960s


1970s


1980s


1990s


2000s


2010s


2020s


2023 (Claptrap)


See also

* List of television show spoofs in ''Mad'' * ''Mad'' (magazine)


Notes


References

*Hendrix, Grady
"Cahiers du CinéMAD"
''Film Comment'', Film Society of the Lincoln Center, March/April 2013


External links



{{DISPLAYTITLE:List of film spoofs in ''Mad'' Film spoofs Parodies of films