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Salon Kitty (1976)

Posted By: Someonelse
Date: 17 May 2011 13:11:46
Salon Kitty (1976)

Salon Kitty (1976, Director's Cut)
A Film by Tinto Brass
DVD9 + DVD5 (VIDEO_TS) | NTSC 16:9 (720 x 480) Anamorphic | 02:13:04 | 7,75 Gb + 2,21 Gb
Audio: English and Italian - AC3 2.0 @ 192 Kbps (each) | Subs: English
Genre: Drama | Blue Underground Limited Edition

Tinto Brass scored his first major international success with this shocking but stylish tale of decadence in the Third Reich, inspired by a true story. Madame Kitty (Ingrid Thulin) is the proprietor of one of Berlin's most luxurious brothels, where many members of the Nazi high command are her regular customers. Kitty is approached by Helmut Wallenberg (Helmut Berger), an S.S. official who orders her to shut down her business and act as his partner as he founds a new bordello, which will exclusively cater to the elite of the Nazi Party and the German military. Unknown to Kitty, Wallenberg's brothel has been staffed entirely by women recruited by the S.S. for their loyalty to the Reich, and each room has been equipped with secret recording devices, which will allow Wallenberg and his staff to not only gather blackmail material against troublesome officers, but to discover who might be expressing disloyal thoughts about Hitler's regime when their guard is down. Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy), a pretty young prostitute working for Kitty, is especially devoted to both her job and her country, but when she falls in love with Biondo (John Steiner), a German officer and frequent customer who has grown disillusioned with both the war and National Socialism, she discovers the true purpose of "Salon Kitty," and sets out to destroy the operation, with Kitty's help. Both a scandal and a success in Europe, Salon Kitty initially played the exploitation circuit in the United States in an edited version titled Madame Kitty, though the shorter version still earned an X rating.

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Love it or hate it, there's no arguing that Salon Kitty is not your standard-issue exploitation movie about the kinky underside of Nazi Germany. Produced on a lavish budget, and featuring several reasonably well-respected actors (most notably Helmut Berger and Ingrid Thulin), Salon Kitty is several noticeable steps up on the food chain from grind-house efforts such as Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS or S.S. Love Camp No. 27, but at the same time director Tinto Brass was clearly unafraid to push the kink level and gross-out factors as far as he could. Beyond the expected cross-dressing and S & M diversions, Salon Kitty includes onscreen animal slaughter, women forced to have sex with hunchbacked dwarves and subhuman giants, and a chorus line of naked prostitutes "seig heil"-ing en masse before being put to the test by a gang of randy S.S. officers. While the film stops just short of hardcore, the near-constant nudity (both male and female) and continual parade of sexual and emotional perversity insures this movie would never get an R rating, at least not in its uncut form.

Salon Kitty (1976)

While based on a true story, Salon Kitty is for the most part played so over the top that it's hard to read as anything but a fantastic worst-case scenario of Third Reich deviance on parade (embodied by the icy hysteria of Berger's Officer Wallenberg). However, Brass makes occasional efforts to humanize the proceedings, most notably through the romance between jaded soldier Biondo (John Steiner) and semi-idealistic call girl Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy) and the relentless good cheer of Madame Kitty (Thulin) (whose obvious similarities to Marlene Dietrich are played up by Annie Ross' Blue Angel-inspired vocals in the English-dubbed version). Salon Kitty is difficult to take seriously as history, and it's too grim in its sadism and thematic implications to enjoy as a glossy slice of softcore porn; it's an undeniably well-crafted bit of feel-bad entertainment, but for every moment where it sets itself up as a cautionary tale, there's another where Brass rubs our nose in this elegant sleaze seemingly just for the hell of it. If nothing else, Salon Kitty gave Brass the ideal dry run for his next project, the infamous Caligula.
Mark Deming, Rovi
Salon Kitty (1976)

SALON KITTY is a film of some notoriety simply because it is yet another classic exploitation film directed by Tinto Brass. But SALON KITTY is better than your average midnight movie. It's a classy piece that rivals CALIGULA in it's beautiful scenes of utter decadence.

I suppose it's not very ironic then that Director Tinto Brass went on several years later to direct that infamous classic. In fact some critics claim that he used some of the very same styles and designs that he created for this film first. At the very least, he took the beautiful Teresa Ann Savoy and cast her again in CALIGULA.

SALON KITTY did a decent box office overseas upon it's original release but the version that played there was trimmed before it ever played in the states and the resulting film MADAM KITTY lost over twenty minutes of footage that was considered too racy and shocking for the time.

Salon Kitty (1976)

I'm sure you can guess where the story goes from here. The Director lost track of his film because the producers cut it too severely and he lost interest in it while preferring to take on the next project instead which was one that would take him three years to direct.

At any rate, you can see a lot of the same things in SALON KITTY and you can see some better ones as well. First of all, the film values are much better. The cast seems to be more reigned in (if that's even possible) and there is less plot to cover and therefore more explanation.
––––
Included in this new version of the film from Blue Underground are twenty minutes of restored footage and they include some bizarre sexual antics and these antics go well past the nude aerobics that we see in the beginning of the film. They also include sex with some "impure" men to test the women's mettle and the scenes are both fascinating and horrifying at the same time.

Salon Kitty (1976)

The film is presented in a handsomely restored 1.85:1 anamorphic ratio which comes from a fairly decent print. The colors and the black levels are strong and the nice print gives more weight to the stylish aspects of the film. The same nice things can be said of the soundtracks because both the original Italian and English dubbed soundtracks are well done with minimal interference and the dialogue shines through. Disc one also includes a theatrical trailer and a expansive Tinto Brass biography.

The disc also includes a second disc with special features that are pretty spectacular. First and foremost is a twenty minute interview with Tinto Brass on the making of the film. It's translated from his native language and he speaks with great reverence of the film. The second disc also features an 18 minute interview with the production designer Ken Adam as well as a incredible gallery of radio spots, posters & still frames, Production design sketches and costume design sketches (including a look at my favorite of the film which has Madam Kitty dressing in a half man/half woman costume while performing a duet with herself.)
D.W.Pritchett, DVD Empire

Salon Kitty (1976)

DISC ONE
*The film
European Theatrical Trailer (4 mins)
US Theatrical Trailer (2 mins)
Biography of director/co-writer/editor Tinto Brass (12 pages)

DISC TWO
"Inside Salon Kitty": Interview with director/co-writer/editor Tinto Brass (15 mins)
"Designing Salon Kitty": Interview with production designer Ken Adam (18 mins)
3 Photo Galleries:
- "Posters & Stills" (123 images)
- "Ken Adam’s Production Designs" (13 images)
- "Jost Jakob’s Costume Designs" (13 images)
3 Radio Spots (3 mins)
DVD-ROM: "The Story of Salon Kitty": Illustrated, 74-page supplement of history of the real "Salon Kitty" with English translation
Salon Kitty (1976)

Notes:
- Limited to 15,000 units. When you choose the English-language version, some added scenes are in Italian with auto-enabled English subtitles.
- Screenshots are jpeg compressed, so there is a loss in details.
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