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Salon Kitty (1976)
Dir. Tinto Brass
Stars: Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, Teresa Ann Savoy, John Steiner, Sara Sperati, Maria Michi, Rosemarie Lindt, Paola Senatore, John Ireland
Genre: Drama, Porn
Pixelsurgeon Verdict
Reviewer
Marty Drury
External Links
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Salon Kitty The Second World War has just begun and SS Officer Helmut Wallenberg (Helmut Berger) has received a order from the upper echelons the National Socialist party. He is instructed to train twenty of the most beautiful, staunch young Nazi women as prostitutes and put them to work in the brothel of Madame Kitty (Ingrid Thulin). The perverted pleasures of the Third Reich are catered for and every whim is satisfied. But the brothel is bugged and Wallenberg listens in to everything and everyone in a frantic attempt to fuel his addiction for blackmail and domination.
The corruption of power is the power of corruption, and Salon Kitty is a 133 minute illustration of what happens when the worst traits of human nature rise to the surface while morality sinks to a new low. Within a few minutes of watching the film, the viewer can expect to be treated to explicit sex, opulent scenery and torrents of black pigs' blood draining from slaughtered animals.
The picture quality of the DVD is superb and the film is revitalised in the new digital format, containing 21 minutes of never-seen-before footage. However, the dubbing into English leaves a lot to be desired, and on many occasions characters simply cough and somehow manage to splurt out lengthy sentences. The words do not match the characters' lip movements and it is often necessary to fiddle frantically with the volume control until all the clichéd mumblings can be clearly deciphered.
Over the decades, Hitler's army has drifted from being a poignant and timely reminder of the human capacity for wickedness to a rather hazy collective recollection. We remember those who fell on the battlefield but don't remember the genuine threat of the Nazi war machine as clearly as we should. Salon Kitty illustrates the madness of the Nazis' belief in their genetic and moral superiority, reminding us of their obsession with ethnic cleansing and disregard for human life. This movie from 1976 presents a more uncomfortable picture of the realities behind the German oppression than most War movies before or since.
However, plot and momentum are sacrificed in favour of hardcore scenes of depravity leaving the viewer wondering whether Brass is merely indulging his own fetish for the disgusting rather than mocking the Nazi's own desire for unbridled debauchery. Given Tinto Brass' ouvre, the former seems most likely.
The DVD Extras are merely for fans of the original film and include an interview with director Tinto Brass. Salon Kitty is a feast for the fetishists, but for the rest of us, it's a sumptuous waste of time.
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