MAD: "Stalag 18"

[jlroberson]

From Kurtzman & Wood in MAD #18, for comparison to the later "Hokum's Heroes."





(c)1954 EC Publications.

suggested tags: publication: MAD, creator: harvey kurtzman, creator: wallace wood, genre: satire, subject: nazis

Comments

[From: espanolbot]

Yeah, that's pretty much how the movie went. *nods* Including the part about the women Soviet POWs... I think. I remember seeing a black and white movie that ended up with female POWs anyways.

[From: jlroberson]

Of course, the idea of anyone wanting to go to a German camp for Soviet POWs is like imagining someone wanting to break into Treblinka.

[From: cmic]

I like Stalag 17, one of my favorite WWII movies. It has an unusual tone for the subject, which is why it translates so well here to satire. Me, I'd love to see a really nasty satire on Schindler's List, but that would be really politically dicey.

The comic is really good, in any case, and the caricatures look just like William Holden and Otto Preminger. Thanks for sharing this, I hadn't seen it.

[From: jlroberson]

Hooray for Wally Wood! Yes, the art is great. Personally I prefer his humor work to any of his other stuff. People always forget he was just as much a creator of this style that later formed the basis of undergrounds as Elder.

I don't think a satire of SL is necessary. the film does it all by itself. How could you improve on the somewhat cringy end, where Schindler says there's so many more he could have saved and all that? A film purportedly about the Holocaust which is really about the redemption of a gentile. The MISSISSIPPI BURNING or CRY FREEDOM of Holocaust films.

[From: cmic]

Heh. Good call, although I think SL is even more insidious than that. It's really a story about how cheap slave labor is the answer to everything. Arbeit macht frei, after all -- and in this case, literally. (The idea of that sort of base capitalism defeating the Nazis is . . . curious, considering the big red elephant in the room.)

[From: jlroberson]

I wrote a much-vilified takedown of SL some time ago. I still stand by it.

http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=286&reviewer=151

Typical response:

"you're an idiot and someone should shoot you."

I love my public. Truly.

Mod note

[From: kingrockwell]

It looks like you have a complete story posted here. Please trim it in accordance with the 1/3 rule.

Stalag 17

[From: steverodgers5]

Hmm, was Stalag 17 the one where *SPOILER ALERT* George Peppard turns out to be a spy/bad guy?

If so, then I believe I did see it years ago. So weird to see a MAD satire on it, as I got so used to them just doing whatever was the cinema movie of the week..

Nice to see that they weren't adverse to doing some of the older movies..

Re: Stalag 17

[From: jlroberson]

At the time it was a current movie; this is from the 50s.

What was odd about it was that at the time, MAD didn't do as many movie parodies as they were later known for, and when they did they weren't the straight point-by-point ones we know(essentially summary reviews with jokes commenting on the movie) but more absurd, like one of "Julius Caesar" that Kurtzman used as a vehicle to satirize the cliches that MAD had already started to fall into--and also their imitators' imitation of same. This is one of their first parodies in the formula they would use for films later on.

Re: Stalag 17

[From: steverodgers5]

Also never realised that MAD did any movie parodies that far back. Thanks for the info.

Re: Stalag 17

[From: steverodgers5]

Arggh! Just realised today that it wasn't George Peppard. It was Peter Graves..
who scarily enough actually just passed away yesterday. Feel really bad about that now. (Not crediting him for one of his best roles, on the day that the man died..)

Loved him in Mission Impossible, (And of course the Airplane films..)
R.I.P Mr Phelps..