Ballad of The Green Berets - Parodies

Parodies

• In 1968, The Beach Bums, an ad hoc group featuring a young Bob Seger, recorded "The Ballad of the Yellow Beret". The song was a send-up of "The Ballad of the Green Berets", chronicling the adventures of a draft dodger. The record was withdrawn after a cease and desist letter from Sadler.
• The Residents parodied the song on their Third Reich & Roll album.
• Another parody was used on the episode of Saturday Night Live William Shatner hosted in 1986, called "Ollie North, The Mute Marine." Shatner participated in the sketch, outfitted in a USMC Class A uniform, which was a satire of Oliver North and his refusal at that point to speak up about his participation in the Iran-Contra Affair, and in which he had no lines.
• The song is used to humorous effect in Michael Moore's film Canadian Bacon as ill-informed Americans prepare for an invasion by Canada.
• In the movie Wag the Dog, the fictitious unit 303 Special Forces has a song created titled "The Men of the 303" that is played to a deliberately similar but original tune written by Huey Lewis for the film.
• In the film Caddyshack, Carl Spackler, played by Bill Murray, mumbles the song under his breath while he is connecting the wires to the plunger as he prepares for his final battle with his gopher nemesis.
• Comedian Paul Shanklin parodied the song with "Ballad of the Black Beret", referring to the Clinton sex scandal, on his 1999 album Simply Reprehensible.
• Though its usage here is not a parody, in an episode of Cheers, Cliff aborts his plans to emigrate to Canada with his love interest when Sam, Woody, and Frasier appeal to his patriotic side by singing this song.