The Muppets' iconic 'Mah Nà Mah Nà' song originated in a steamy softcore Italian film, here's how Jim Henson found it

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Originally published at: The Muppets' iconic 'Mah Nà Mah Nà' song originated in a steamy softcore Italian film, here's how Jim Henson found it | Boing Boing

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the tune was originally written by italian composer Piero Umiliani

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We were JUST talking about how in the 60s, boom - random boobs in your movie for no reason.

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I don’t really think the boobs are random in a softcore porn film.

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It doesn’t sound like it was a porn film, but a documentary? Though one meant to be salacious, so yeah, not so random.

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This sounds like some single-handed research.

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Is it a mystery how an adult man sees softcore porn? He goes to see it. Sure the guy happens to work in a child-centered field, but that doesn’t make him some kind of weird man-child innocent…

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Well, a mondo film. Mondo films are technically documentaries, although faked footage is not at all uncommon, but their main purpose is to be sensational and outrageous. I’ve never seen this particular film, but based on the description as “softcore,” I presumed it was heavily sex focused.

Admittedly, perhaps its salacious reputation has been accidentally inflated as this Muppets anecdote gets repeatedly retold.

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Doot doot doot-doo!

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I remember it being used - the original version - in The Benny Hill Show in UK (he of Yakety Sax use, too) in the late 1960s.

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Also: “it was shown in a new york movie theater” – I was hoping to learn about how the film was not officially distributed outside of italy but there was a pre-VHS underground network of foreign film copying network.

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The same could be said for many movies today, in which you often see gratuitous partial nudity, usually of the female topless variety. Hmmm, I wonder why, do you think it has to do with a male-dominated industry or something?

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Best use of the song in a movie is probably this 2 minute short from 2011.

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the documentary is on archive.org: Sweden Heaven And Hell or Svezia, inferno e paradiso (1968) : Luigi Scattini : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
the song is at about the 50 minute mark

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Literal trigger warning needed.

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FEMALE SCIENTIST: Now that the garbage is in space, doctor, perhaps you can help me with my sexual inhibitions?
MALE SCIENTIST: with Gusto!

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In the '70s the border between regular comedy or softcore comedy films was quite blurred. In some cases, gettig a VM14 rating(‘R’ for mpaa) was a boost to get people to see the movie.

Another example with Piero Umiliani soundtrack is in “La ragazza fuoristrada” , that was a drama with some sexy hints

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Came here for this, not disappointed.

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It seems like HBO has a lot of gratuitous nudity, but American movies almost never seem to have it. In the 80’s you had boobs in PG films. Now it’s an automatic R and they usually don’t want to bother. Violence, on the other hand…

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