Cult Films: Salon Kitty (1976) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Cult Films

Cult Films is a British boutique label and film distribution company which started out with distribution for a number of high-profile directors including Gillo Pontecorvo, Dario Argento, Liliana Cavani, Sergio Corbucci and Federico Fellini.  Curating films around the world largely from Italy and releasing them on Blu-ray, 4K UHD and to online streaming platforms, they’ve also sponsored a number of elite film events including the restoration of The Battle of Algiers which was shown at the Venice Film Festival and prepared a 3-disc 4K edition of Suspiria which sold out very quickly.  Though this is my first brush with the boutique releasing label, at first I thought they were related to the boutique releasing label Cult Epics primarily for one sole reason: rolling out the red carpet for Tinto Brass.
 
A noted Italian provocateur behind Frivolous Lola, All Ladies Do It and Cheeky, a good name for the cigar smoking maestro should be Tinto Grabass.  Honestly, his films wave more swaths of pubic hair and genitalia of both genders than most actual porno films.  However, some of his work I’ve liked such as Frivolous Lola which chronicled a kind of epicurean hedonism within a young woman in the throes of sexual awakening and wanting to loudly express it freely openly to the world.  There’s an impetus behind those aforementioned movies that makes you kind of root for the free spirited sexually hungry female protagonists in his bawdy but celebratory works comprised of boobs and butts.  While never exactly the best cameraman, sometimes hastily pointing downward to catch some nubile flesh onscreen, you know you’re watching a Tinto Brass movie.  There’s just an unmistakable filthy dirty patina his films have even when they’re sumptuously cleaned up for 4K UHD disc.
 
Which brings us to his 1976 Nazisploitation shock wallow bore Salon Kitty, a film with all the ingredients for appalment and outrage that doesn’t muster up much more than kitschy fetishized sexualization of Nazi regalia and iconography.  Based on a true account by Peter Norden involving the Salon Kitty Operation where the Nazis overtook a brothel and replaced all of the prostitutes with trained spies intent on digging up dirt on fellow Nazis and foreign leaders, its a tawdry offending sexploitation flick starring Helmet Berger as Wallenberg the nefarious mastermind of the Salon Kitty operation.  After purging and replacing her prostitutes with spies, the middle-aged madam Kitty (Ingrid Thulin) hastily complies in training the new nude Nazi girls while the building itself is rigged with wiretaps and surveillance equipment.  As the girls drop out unable to take on prostituting themselves including getting impregnated, one of the informants Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy) an initially small and meek woman soon becomes one of the key players in exposing fellow Nazis’ skeletons in the closet resulting in the deaths of a few key commanders, all leading up to the last minute of the Berlin bombing.

 
Spanning 133 minutes with reportedly 20 minutes or more reinstated after being cut by censors and transferred from Tinto Brass’ personal 35mm print, Salon Kitty is a bit like Cabaret by way of Caligula which Brass was also involved with.  Featuring arresting set pieces by Barry Lyndon’s production designer Ken Adam who suffered a nervous breakdown working for Kubrick but readjusted working for Brass, I found myself getting frustrated with Brass’ aesthete and eventual Caligula cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti’s panning tilting camerawork which seemed to undermine Adam’s work.  While nowhere near as frustrating visually as, say, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Kinetta which was filmed entirely in telephoto zoom, it comes close.  The original orchestral score by The Adventures of Pinocchio composer Fiorenzo Carpi gets the job done though it takes a backseat to historical rerecorded songs of the period performed largely by the Madam Kitty herself.

 
The most accomplished actor in the whole thing is Helmet Berger, best known for his works with Luchino Visconti such as Ludwig and The Damned also costarring Ingrid Thulin which was also about the Nazi party.  While the film was given an X rating for its sexual content, the film went on to win numerous awards including a Golden Globe Nomination for Berger.  Given his time spent in The Damned, he was an obvious choice to plug into this netherworld of sex, kink and fascist power.  Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin as the titular Madam of the brothel Salon Kitty is another accomplished industry veteral having won the Guldbagge Award for The Silence followed by her Best Supporting Actress nomination for Ingmar Bergman’s still searing Cries and Whispers.  Teresa Ann Savoy, while playing one of fearless girls who will have sex with you one minute and turn you over to the Nazis the next, sadly didn’t have much of an acting career outside of television and starring in the notorious Caligula opposite Malcolm McDowell.  Most of the rest of the scattered nudes give their all in mostly softcore porn setups with a couple that sometimes teeter on the hardcore and you can almost smell the cigar smoke emanating from behind the camera during these scenes.

 
Previously released in the UK as an extended director’s cut before making the jump to a limited numbered US release featuring a twenty-minute English language interview with Tinto Brass, two trailers, double-sided card art and a mini reprint of the original American poster labeled Madam Kitty, the new Cult Films disc of Salon Kitty is a bit inconsistent quality wise.  Some shots look very clean while other inserts show a noticeable disparity, something you’re warned of before the film even starts.  Given the content and drive behind it, the quality problems are a small concession to make.  While a fan of more than a few Italian fascist takedowns, including the aforementioned Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Salo and Marco Ferreri’s thoroughly disgusting La Grande Bouffe, Salon Kitty was just kind of boring smut wrapped up in a historical drama.

 
Some of it is designed to shock or horrify much in the way something like Men Behind the Sun would years later but mostly its Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS involving kinky sadomasochistic eroticization of Nazi regalia.  Tinto Brass’ cinema has every right to exist as provocative bawdy life affirming stuff but Salon Kitty for all of its curved flesh and hair on display isn’t particularly shocking or memorable.  Though the film ends (spoiler) with the bombing of Berlin as the Salon Kitty operation crumbles from within in one last croaking gasp, we feel a sense of triumph in having made it through to the bitter end if we can stay awake through the vulgar incendiary boredom.  I’ll go to the mat for Frivolous Lola but so far Tinto Grabass still isn’t for me.

--Andrew Kotwicki