Mark Bosselman writes…
I know how much you enjoy Four Mad World but are there any films that tried to replicate Mad World that you kinda of enjoyed?
Depends on what you mean by "replicate." There have been a couple of movies that "borrowed" the idea from It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of someone setting a mob off on a grand chase and then that mob — full of familiar faces and growing — goes off on a big find-the-treasure hunt. The only one of those I've seen was The Million Dollar Mystery from 1987…
…and I didn't like it very much, though I have trouble really disliking any film with Eddie Deezen in it. One friend of mine was one of its screenwriters and another guy I knew died doing stuntwork on the film. I don't think either one of them liked it very much either. The film ran a contest with a million-dollar prize and it was won by a 14-year-old girl from Bakersfield. I would imagine she thought it was the greatest movie ever made.
If you're talking about all-star "gang" comedies, there were a few that seem to have been green-lit by studios because they wanted to replicate the success (not the plot) of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I liked The Great Race and I liked Who's Minding the Mint? and I sorta liked Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines but I don't see any of them as being on the same tier as Mad World. I suspect that the main element of Mad World that was most imitated was hiring Jack Davis to draw a big crowd scene for the poster.
