Salon Kitty (1977)

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Absolutely brilliant

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

With the opening credits, I knew that this was going to be something different. A "two faced" man/woman dances and sings in a cabaret entertaining the crowd in fine fashion. We then have naked, exercising Nazis showing off their Arian "superiorities" in unfortunately, flaccid form. So begins our film. This film finds a Grande Dame in charge of a Cabaret at the beginning of WWII. Miss Kitty is forced to turn her club into a Nazi controlled brothel where women are trained to handle most any type of customer. Unbeknownst to her, The Nazis have planted hidden microphones in the rooms to listen in to every secret/conspiracy that their German Officers might be hiding. The kicker comes in when she learns of this and decides to turn the tables on our Nazi "baddies" recording everything.This a very well made film. The sets are first class, the actors are incredibly well dressed and the makeup is applied both on and off camera with splendid effect. Yes, the acting's a bit over the top, but that's always the "norm" with Italian productions. That's just something that you'll never get away from in the "boot country" (and take it from someone who lived there for 7 years). One could easily compare Fosse's "Cabaret"(1972) and "Salon Kitty", due to their period and musical numbers alone, but Brass employed some much needed nudity for his particular feature (and we certainly thank him for it).All in all, some excellent Nazisploitation fun with good production values. We have a generous quantity of naked women simultaneously "Sieg Heiling", pigs being slaughtered, a naked midget hunchback about to perform coitus (on one of our trainees) and a legless chap about to get lucky with yet another trainee. Damn fun stuff, indeed. Single "X" mind you, but fun all the same.I highly recommend this one, but be sure to have some time as the uncut version goes on for some 2 hours and 15 minutes, credits included.Charlie.

What i like in tinto brass's films is the nudity of beautiful women.CHEEKY,ALL LADIES DO IT,PAPRIKA and FRIVOLOUS LOLA, just to name a few,really delivers the merchandise.But not every film by brass delivers the scenes lovers of the female form crave for.Sometimes the nude scenes are too few and the actress's look is pretty dull like in THE KEY,MIRANDA or many of the TINTO BRASS PRESENTS segments.Other times, there is too much bloody violence like in CALIGULA or in SALON KITTY.And sometimes Brass puts too much male genitalia or gay characters in his films. (Zero gay characters is pretty much what would be acceptable to me!)PAPRIKA had a strong storyline and plenty of female nudity but the scene where a younger man has sexual intercourse with an older man made me want to throw up!Some of the excessive violence in SALON KITTY consists of slaughtered pigs,a scene featuring a woman who died of a self induced abortion and a blood stained mirror after the shooting of a man.The producers thought the blood stained mirror was so beautiful that this scene is even featured in the trailer!Normally my thoughts are that male genitalia should only be featured when a man is about to make love to a woman.Here there's the dancing men with women 's dress lifting their skirts and a dildo made of bread. None of this was appealing to me.The main female star in this film is Theresa ann savoy. She's pretty and steals every scene in which she's in. I also liked the scene where about 15 women are standing naked side by side after getting undressed. I don't remember seeing a shot like this in any other films & i've seem a lot!When you strip this overlong film of it's gore, it's cabaret singing & dance scenes,it's ugly people having sex scenes and concentrate on the Theresa ann savoy story which involves the killing of a man she loved and her plan for revenge, there 's a good story here somewhere for sure but you've got to watch a lot of unappealing stuff to get there!

Salon Kitty is a rather disturbing film. It shows what can happen to a country when filth take over. There are many facets to this film especially the Nazi German notion of the pure aryan master race vs. the Jewish question. One of the most powerful sections of this film is where a terrified Jewish family come into contact with a group of revolting League of German Girls group. The little innocent child has accidentally dropped his toy. The League of German Girls leader rather than helping the child sees the terror in its eyes and with one foul stomp of her foot destroys the toy with her shoe, obtaining pleasure in the process, and the smugly walks on. This is a metaphor for what the Nazi German criminal regime has in store for the Jewish people of not only their own country but the rest of Europe. Ingrid Thulin is absolutely brilliant in this film as Madam Kitty, operator of the brothel, Salon Kitty. Helmut Berger is also very good in his role as the SS Officer who is charged with taking over Salon Kitty and turning it into a state run spying agency where specially trained aryan prostitutes submit reports after being with their clients on any betrayal of the Nazi regime. Downstairs in the cellars all conversations are being recorded. Madam Kitty is forced under pain of death to convert her brothel into an arm of the SS. The full horror of the lack of humanity of the SS is shown in the audition process the potential prostitutes go through where they are group tested with young SS officers. This is not a film for the light hearted. It treats human life as something not worth very much in the hands of a criminal regime.

Kitty Kellermann (Ingrid Thulin) runs a bordello for the Nazis in WW2 where numerous atrocities are committed. An army official has bugged the place hoping to usurp power from Hitler. It has amputee sex, midget sex, and hunchback coupling. Bothed home made abortions and it's not a straight out exploitation film, nope not when Tinto "over-rated hack" Brass is concerned. Nope this is an art-house flick through and through. It's also excruciatingly long, impossably tedious and mundane, hopelessly dreary, and given to subject matter, deathly dull. Of course a few years later, Tinto would prove that he could fail on a much bigger global scale with "Caligola" My Grade: D- DVD Extras: Disc 1) Tinto Brass Bio; International and US theatrical Trailers Disc 2) Interviews with Tinto Brass,and Production Designer Ken Adam; 3 radio spots; Poster & stills gallery; Production & Costume designs DVD-Rom: Complete book "the Story of Madame Kitty"