Back in the day MAD MAGAZINE ran a regular feature called ‘scenes we’d like to see’ containing entertaining comedy spoofs based on scenes from classic movies.
As Hollywood is no longer making movies worth satirizing (if the recent Prometheus or Dark Shadows are anything to go by) then I would suggest that it is now the responsibility of all sentient members of the movie-going audience to imagine better, or at least more amusing, product for the Hollywood machine. Here are my suggestions, but this is a game anyone can play. Please join in.
DESPOTS AND TOSSPOTS.
A ‘last man survives’ movie where Robert Mugabe, Sepp Blatter, Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama and President Assad of Syria are kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (CRISPIN GLOVER), taken to a tropical island and forced to fight each other to the death with a fine selection of hand tools.
THE CAPTAIN BEEFHEART STORY
Starring JACK BLACK as the lovable surrealist blues singer Don Van Vliet in a delightfully eccentric comedy/musical directed by TIM BURTON.
DOG BREATH AFTERNOON
A cool thriller directed by DAVID CRONENBURG and starring VIGGO MORTENSEN as a handsome psycho with halitosis who lures young women to his upscale apartment where he French kisses them to death.
KATHY AND KATHY
A romantic comedy in which two girls with the same name, same dress sense and similar features fall in and out of love with each other for a couple of hours in a variety of similar locations.
JUMBO GOES MAD (horror)
A retired circus elephant meditates on the indignities he has suffered during his career and decides to take revenge on his enemies by barging into their places of work and crushing them to death.
THE EYEBROW MAN
A science fiction thriller directed by ROLAND EMMERICH in which JIMMY CARR makes a dynamic comeback playing a retired comedy entertainer who must use his considerable blank- faced charm to prevent an alien invasion.
YOUNG SUPERCHRIST
Inspired by a true story. J. J. ABRAMS directs the previously untold origin tale of the archetypal superhero as he turns his back on carpentry to utilise his God given talents for raising the dead and supplying magical comestibles for Jewish weddings. The film contains bloody violence and a special guest appearance by CLIFF RICHARD as Jehovah.
Sidebar Image: Alfred E. Neuman/Mad Magazine
Having completed principal photography on phase one of the Sharks revival SWP is now preparing to edit the One Last Thrill feature documentary. Sharks themselves are ‘dropping a big one’ by releasing a double album Dark Beatles/White Temptations in April 2018.
In his spare time the author kayaks the muddy river Ouse and walks the South Downs which gently enfold his home town of Lewes.
