Salon Kitty (1976)
Salon Kitty from 1976 is an nazsploitation movie from Italian director Tinto Brass who also directed Caligula (1979). The story covers the Salon Kitty operation based on true events, under which the Nazis took over an expensive brothel in Berlin and replaced all the prostitutes with trained spies. Starling Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin and Teresa Ann Savoy.
Plot
SS commandant Wallenberg (Helmut Berger) has a a plan to select a special group of female informants and plant them as prostitutes in a high class brothel named Salon Kitty to collect information on members of the Nazi party. The brothel is led by Kitty (Ingrid Thulin).
When one of the informants named Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy) discovers that the
surveillance project resulted in the execution of her lover, Luftwaffe pilot, Hans Reiter she enlists Kitty to help her take down Wallenberg.
Notable scenes
The selection of the nude informants
the brothel scenes
Making of Salon Kitty
After George Cosmatos was let go as director, producers ended up talking to Tinto Brass, who had just released L’urlo (1974). It took him five years to get it released. It was a financial failure but garnered critical raves. Tinto for the first time in almost a decade was a marketable commodity. Producers approached him to direct the film for a mere $30,000, a bargain-basement price. He said no at first, but then changed his mind because he was living in an undesirable part of Rome and desperately needed income. Tinto Brass said that the actresses who play the prostitutes in Salon Kitty were all enthusiastic about their roles. They told him they liked to discover that kind of personality in their roles.
Set designer Ken Adam began work on this film immediately after Barry Lyndon (1975) from Stanley Kubrik. He found working with Kubrick suffocating due to Kubrick’s obsessive attention to detail. He was happy to create the sometimes quite stylized sets seen in this film.
.Tinto Brass considers himself ‘the King of Mirrors’ as he knows how to film mirrors without the camera being seen on film. This is why the movie is thoroughly infused with frequent mirror images of Kitty and the other actresses as well.
Tinto Brass said in a 2008 interview that the success of Deep Throat (1972) opened new opportunities which helped green light Salon Kitty. He said “Out of the blue, one could get a big budget and sponsorship deals for explicit material. That helped immensely. Salon Kitty would have otherwise never been made, at least not in that form.”
Our view on Salon Kitty
Salon Kitty is one of the first examples of Nazi exploitation film. Tinto Brass is a master in showing just enough without going over the boundary. The scene where the SS girls are viewed with a variety of sexual partners as a test to see how they react is dark.
The sets afe made by Ken Adam, famous for his Bond creations. They give extra atmosphere to the film. Exploitflix recommended!
Trailer
Where to buy
Dvd/VHS/Betamax/VCC
Where to stream public domain
/
Details
Genre: nazsploitation
Released in: 1976
Era: seventies
Actors: Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, Teresa Ann Savoy
Director: Tinto Brass
Country: Italy
Poster artist: unknown
