The Mad Magazine TV Special

TV Movie
1974
22m

IMDb RATING

5.9/10

122

YOUR RATING

Parody Satire Animation Comedy

An animated adaptation of the notorious satire comic magazine. The skits include a look at a modern American car factory, the inner workings of a hospital, a spoof of The Godfather (1972), M... Read allAn animated adaptation of the notorious satire comic magazine. The skits include a look at a modern American car factory, the inner workings of a hospital, a spoof of The Godfather (1972), Mad Magazine's X-Ray vision and Spy vs. Spy.An animated adaptation of the notorious satire comic magazine. The skits include a look at a modern American car factory, the inner workings of a hospital, a spoof of The Godfather (1972), Mad Magazine's X-Ray vision and Spy vs. Spy.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.9/10

122

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

Photos10

+ 4

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Storyline

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Did you know

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Trivia
This was a pilot that never aired. Network executives deemed the humor too crude and adult to air on television.

Crazy credits
Inspired By MAD Magazine's Usual Gang Of Idiots

Connections
Followed by Mad TV (1995)

User reviews3

Review

Featured review

3/10

Great on paper--lousy in execution

This was a prime-time cartoon pilot for a potential series. I was just into MAD magazine at the time, and became a voracious collector. Great idea for a show, huh? Certainly preferable to what was on prime-time TV at the time.

But the pilot was victim of the wrong animation studio--Format Films, run by producer Herb Klynn. They specialized in low-budget animation; their past work included the original "Alvin & the Chipmunks," the inferior low-budget mid-60s Looney Tunes, and animated links fot the "Hee Haw" variety show.

The scripts used the actual texts from mainly 1971-72 issues of MAD, though drastically edited--hurting the program already. There are reasonable attempts to duplicate the art styles of the zanier MAD artists Don Martin and Sergio Aragones; but sophisticated, detailed drawing from George Woodbridge and Mort Drucker is another matter; the chintzy budgets and scrappy animation/design of Klynn's uncreative forces do it all in.

No wonder the networks didn't pick it up.