Jack Davis in the 1970s

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Among its many highlights, Mad magazine’s movie parodies were generally pretty funny — as were their kooky titles: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was spoofed as Botch Casually and the Somedunce Kid; On a Clear Day You Can See Forever became On a Clear Day You Can See a Funny Girl Singing ‘Hello Dolly’ Forever; The Poseidon Adventure was The Poopsidedown Adventure; The Great Gatsby became The Great Gasbag, etc. Jack Davis illustrated many of them, stuffing panels with wacky non sequiturs, overlapping dialogue and abrupt shifts in location and action. In a remote way, they were the comic strip equivalent of 1970s Robert Altman movies. United Artists apparently recognized the similarities and commissioned Davis to render one of three posters for Altman’s The Long Goodbye (1973). Unsure of how to market the picture, UA also sent out this one by an unknown artist; and this poster by Richard Amsel, whose neo-art deco approach was the antithesis of Davis’s work. Me? I prefer Davis’s — it’s an exact replica of a Mad parody — and suggest you click the above image and read the word balloons!

Davis was also an excellent choice to render the frantic aura of pre-Annie Hall Woody Allen — “back when his movies were funny,” as they’d say in Stardust Memories. Bananas (1971) made a boatload of cash, and this caricature of Allen (flanked by Natividad Abascal and former Mrs. Allen/future Mary Hartman Louise Lasser) was something of an icon in its day. Only one other Woody Allen picture in the ‘70s would use portrait illustration in its promotion (Robert McGinnis’s ad for Sleeper), as mounting critical praise (especially for Annie Hall and Manhattan) had distributors using lofty, sedate and ‘respectable’ photographs and silhouettes in their marketing.

Well, you see, I, uh… you know, it was, well… OK! OK! I’ll admit it: I had the hots for Tatum O’Neal. When The Bad News Bears came out in 1976, she was 13-years-old and I was 18. Five years really isn’t that much of a difference when you think about it… at least if it doesn’t involve statutory rape or anything. And far be it for me to fess up to that same horny longing today, where she’s still 13 in the movie while I’m doughy and balding and well into my fifties. I mean, that would be just plain wrong, right? Hmmm. Before I dig myself in deeper: the film was a hit, prompting two less-profitable sequels (The Bad News Bears Breaking Training and The Bad News Bears Go to Japan) and an equally unmemorable (and largely forgotten) 2005 remake whose Ritalin-laced ad art by Phil Roberts lacked all the exuberant punch of Jack Davis’s original. As for Tatum, it’s high time I catch up with Little Darlings (1980), in which my sweet little nubbins vies with 18-year-old Kristy McNichol to see who can lose their virginity first in summer sleepaway camp!

Will future generations give a whit of consideration for George C. Scott? Cults keep the flames burning for Dr. Strangelove and Petulia, and there’s an audience willing to view Patton as an epic of excellence, though, with clear vision, time has eroded much of it to bombast and self parody. That was his signature picture; before and after were blurs of irregularity, bursts of brilliance colliding with mediocrity, the actor apparently willing to do anything to keep busy or pay off debt and alimony. (He was married five times, twice to Colleen Dewhurst.) The first and only time I ever saw Bank Shot (1974), or ‘B.S.,’ a rare directorial outing for former hoofer Gower Champion, was when it came out, an experience I haven’t been moved to repeat ever since. I’d like to think Scott did it to help finance The Savage Is Loose (1974), that disastrously expensive gamble which he produced, directed, starred in and personally marketed and distributed through his short-lived Campbell Devon Films. Making movies is one thing; distributing them is something else entirely. Suffice it to say, Campbell Devon Films went under shortly after, and the movie, a spin on Oedipus, has been swept under the rug — some would say deservedly so. On the other hand, Bank Shot is readily available on DVD. An unofficial sequel to The Hot Rock (“Afghanistan banana stand”) via Donald Westlake, it has gruff Scott in the role essayed earlier by a pre-sun damaged Robert Redford.

You can visit my previous posts about Jack Davis here, here and here.