As a diehard fan of MAD magazine during its heyday, I was elated to see that one of the extra features included in the new two-disc special edition DVD of the 1966 epic The Sand Pebbles was a reproduction of the MAD satire (“The Sam Pebbles”) that the venerable rag printed after the film’s original release. MAD has always been known for its humorous movie and television parodies, and this brainstorm on the part of the film’s DVD distributor, 20th Century Fox’s home entertainment branch, had me wishing that MAD movie parodies had always been included as extra disc features on hit titles.
Thus, on the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid DVD, we could have gotten “Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid.” On Apocalypse Now, we could have witnessed “A Crock O’ Blip Now.” And on Star Wars, we could have chortled through “Star Roars” (featuring such characters as Ham Yoyo and Oldie Von Moldie).
And let’s not forget “Rockhead” on Rocky, “201 M. of a Space Idiocy” on 2001: A Space Odyssey, “Balmy and Clod” on Bonnie and Clyde, “Saturday Night Feeble” on Saturday Night Fever, and hundreds more.
Let’s hope that The Sand Pebbles DVD leads to a MAD future for the format.
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2007.
