Salon Kitty (1977) - Film Review - Naziexploitation

I was watching American Pickers earlier and there was a segment of the programme about sexploitation book artwork from the fifties a favourite interest of mine and other art of the time along the same kind. A google search lead me to the 1977 film Salon Kitty that a few friends and me watched in the Prince of Wales when it became a movie cinema showing soft-core films. So I found myself revisiting the film.

It is regarded a classic piece of Nazi exploitation and a rather disturbing film. Salon Kitty is actually based on a true story of a brothel madam, Kitty Kellermann who is forced into working for the Nazis when she is arrested for helping Jews escape from Germany using fake passports. The Gestapo decide to use her brothel, Salon Kitty, by placing listening devices in every room listening in to conversations of the army elite while being entertain by the handpicked working girls.

Firstly, the film is unsettling in places and in one scene, where the prostitutes have an orgy with a group of dwarfs, is unnecessary and not based on fact just added for titillation. The lack of humanity of the Gestapo is shown in the audition process the potential prostitutes go through where they are group tested with young officers. Also, be prepared not just for conventional sex, but also lesbianism, transvestism and sado masochism, as the brothel catered for the kinkier tastes of its guests. However, once you get over this, Salon Kitty is a good film and based on true events. Many of the sex scenes are tastefully shot and everything is made on location.

Also a good sub plot when a prostitute, who is a Nazi, falls for a Luftwaffe officer who hates the Nazis and wants to defect to Britain and she gradually comes round to his way of thinking, although tragically he is found out by the bug in the prostitute's bedroom and shot by the Gestapo.

There is a scene where a terrified Jewish family encounter a group of revolting League of German Girls. The little innocent child has accidentally dropped his toy. The leader of the League of German Girls rather than helping the child on seeing 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 arrogantly walks on.

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.

Downstairs in the cellars all conversations are being recorded. The full horror debauchery are limited but interesting. I'm not easily shocked but this really pushes barriers of taste and censorship. This is not a film for the lighthearted. It treats human life as something not worth very much in the hands of a criminal regime.