Of Muppets and Porn

This story has been floating around the interwebs lately.  According to reports, the Mahna Mahna song from the Muppets came from an old school, softcore Swedish porno.  But this isn't entirely true.

The song came from a sauna scene from the 1968 film Sweden: Heaven and Hell, and while the movie does show a lot of Scandinavian skin, it's not porn.  It's a mondo.  For those who don't spend their free time watching poorly produced films of antiquity, a mondo is an exploitation film subgenre where the movie is presented as a documentary or pseudo-documentary about controversial subject matter like sex or drugs or violence. The educational aspect of the film is really not important and the "documentary" angle is just an excuse to showcase sex or drugs or violence and get asses in the theatre seats, or in the 1980s, to get people to buy videos.  The Faces of Death Collection is perhaps the most famous example of mondo films.  I didn't watch those to be educated.  I watched them for the gore. 

Sweden: Heaven and Hell is supposed to highlight the seedy underbelly of 1960s Sweden by showcasing contraception and teen pregnancy, biker gangs, wife swapping, lesbians, etc., but really it's just an excuse to show busty Swedish blondes frolicking in the snow.  And there's nothing wrong with that.

Anyway, back to the Muppets.  It is true that Jim Henson "borrowed" the Mahna Mahna song from a raunchy Swedish movie, but the movie is an exploitation film and not porn....  Bork!  Bork!  Bork!

Here's the song in Sweden: Heaven and Hell.

And here's the Muppet version.

If you want to see some puppet boobies, look here...

Or here...

The Candy Snatchers (1973)

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Conquest (1983)

He is a hunter from a future world trapped in prehistoric times.

Conquest

This is Lucio Fulci's hazy, never ending, sword and sorcery piece of shit.  If there's one thing the Italian directors of the '70s and '80s were good at it was copying successful American films to make a buck.  This is Fulci's surreal imitation of films like Conan and The Beastmaster, and it is terrible.  I know this is a work by one of the great Italian exploitation directors so I'm supposed to say how misunderstood this film is and how the use of fog and color evokes a dreamlike quality and that the limited and stilted dialogue conveys the coarse, primitive nature of the characters, etc.  But no, this film is just a pile of festering poo.  After the first twenty minutes I just wanted the damn thing to end.  But it didn't end.  It went on forever like some sort of incoherent, low-budget hell.

An archer with a glowing blue bow and a guy with fur covered nunchuks battle a sorceress who is naked all the time but wears a golden mask.  That's the plot.

The one redeeming feature that I can think of is the gore.  This movie obviously isn't just a fantasy epic, it also contains more than a little psychedelia and Fulci's trademark gore.  There are decapitations, and exposed brains, and blood spattered bodies and best of all, a girl gets ripped in half by some furries.   But still, I cannot with a good conscience recommend this film.  Hell, the film was so blurry that most of the time I didn't know what was going on.  I had to assume that when the blurs were moving faster it was an action sequence.

Maybe somebody can explain why this is a masterpiece.

Violence Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 2.5 out of 5

"If you tighten the string too much, it will snap. And if you leave it too slack, it won’t play."

 

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Conquest at TLACult

The Beast in Heat (1977)

Your Days Are Numbered

The Beast in Heat/S.S. Hell Camp

Where the hell do I even begin with this cinematic gem.  This is a movie about how the Italians were in the wrong during WWII, but the Germans were just batshit crazy and pure evil.  It seems to have two parts that are haphazardly put together to make a simultaneously boring and entertaining exploitation film.  Let me explain.  The Beast in Heat or S.S. Hell Camp is actually composed of scenes from several films which have been pilfered and combined to make this cinematic masterpiece; most of which is stock war footage or fragments from legitimate war movies.  Those are the boring parts.  The new stuff - the exploitation stuff - is the entertaining part, and not because it's good but because it is so bad that it's comical.

There is an incredibly hot Nazi scientist (Macha Magall) who is trying to create a German super-soldier through genetic experimentation.  This seems to be the basis for just about every Nazisploitation film but I'm not complaining.  Who needs plot when you have hot Nazi scientists?  Anyhoo, the result of these experiments is not a chiseled, blond super-soldier but a mutant monkey-man (Salvatore Baccaro) with a huge libido and no manners whatsoever.  Naturally, the Nazis satiate his horny blood-lust by tossing captured local girls into his cage periodically.

Meanwhile, Italian partisans scheme to rid their village of these Nazi devils because, as I mentioned before, the Germans are pure evil.  They (the Germans, not the partisans) rape the local ladies and shoot their babies!  Evil!  It's easy to spot the partisans from the general population because they have moustaches and wear berets.  So yeah, they fight the Germans, gain the upper hand and eventually toss the incredibly hot Nazi doctor into the cage with her mutant creation where she gets a taste of her own medicine, and by "her own medicine" I mean she gets raped to death.  The end.

The Beast in Heat is certainly worth watching, although those living in the UK may have trouble finding a copy because this movie is banned there.  I take that as an indication of exploitation quality.  If you want to see a freak rip the pubic hair off his victims or watch prisoners get their guts ripped out by cute little guinea pigs that are supposed to be rats, then this is your film.  The dialogue is so horrendous that it becomes humorous so that's a selling point, as well.  I must warn you however that in addition to the gratuitous female nudity, there's also a significant amount of wang in this movie.  Penises, they're everywhere!  And the partisan/war parts of the film are pretty damn boring but the rest of the film makes up for it.






Violence Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Booby Rating: 4.5 out of 5

"And the raven was called sin. Say it, the raven was called sin."

Get it at TLACult