Salon Kitty – Cult Films (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Italy/West Germany/France, 1976
Director: Tinto Brass
Writers: Ennio De Concini, Maria Pia Fusco, Tinto Brass
Cast: Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, Teresa Ann Savoy, John Steiner, Sara Sperati, Maria Michi, Rosemarie Lindt, Paola Senatore, John Ireland, Tina Aumont, Alexandra Bogojevic, Stefano Satta Flores, Bekim Fehmiu

Release Date: November 10th, 2026
Approximate Running Time: 133 Minutes 9 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Mono Italian, DTS-HD Mono English
Subtitles: English, English SDH
Region Coding: Region Free
Retail Price: $34.95

"Berlin, in the final years of the Third Reich. Salon Kitty is an elegant, high-class brothel where officers, diplomats and party officials come to unwind far from the pressures of the war. What none of them know is that the whole place has been quietly turned into a trap. Wallenberg (Helmut Berger, The Damned, The Godfather Part III, an ambitious and ruthless SS officer, has had hidden microphones installed in every room and has replaced Madame Kitty's girls with party-loyalist women he personally selected and trained to seduce, listen and report. His plan is coldly simple: gather every secret, every doubt and every disloyal word spoken in those beds, then use that mountain of compromising material to blackmail his way to the very top, even above Hitler himself.

Among the new recruits is Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy, Caligula), an idealistic young woman who genuinely believes she is serving the Reich by giving herself to its soldiers. Little by little she begins to notice the strange details around her, and she uncovers the truth behind the salon and the man pulling the strings. Her faith collapses into disgust, and disgust hardens into a need for revenge.

Working carefully alongside Madame Kitty (frequent Bergman collaborator, Ingrid Thulin, Wild Strawberries, The Silence), who has her own reasons to want Wallendorf destroyed, Margherita sets out on a dangerous game of double deception." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 3.5/5

Here’s the information provided about this release's transfer, "Global first Hi-Definition Blu-ray Release."

Salon Kitty comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 43.6 GB

Feature: 36.5 GB

Cult Films' transfer is comparable to their 2011 Blu-ray release and Blue Underground’s Blu-ray release. That said, the result is a transfer that leaves a lot of room for improvement.

Audio: 4/5 (DTS-HD Mono Italian), 3.5/5 (DTS-HD Mono English)

This release comes with two audio options, a DTS-HD mono mix in Italian and a DTS-HD mono mix in English. While both tracks sound clean, clear, and balanced, the Italian-language track sounds more robust. Included are removable English subtitles for the Italian-language track and removable English SDH for the English-language track. It should be noted that when watching the English-language track, there is some dialogue in German, Italian, and Spanish, and there are removable English subtitles for these moments.

Extras:

Extras for this release include a U.S. theatrical trailer (1 minute 48 seconds, LPCM mono English, no subtitles), an international theatrical trailer (3 minutes 55 seconds, LPCM mono English, no subtitles), an archival interview with director Tinto Brass (23 minutes 48 seconds, LPCM stereo English, no subtitles), reversible cover art, a poster, and a slipcover.

Other extras are trailers for Miranda and The Night Porter.

Summary:

A power-hungry Nazi SS commandant uses a brothel to blackmail those he sees as traitors. 

The cinema of Tinto Brass can be broken down into two distinct periods. The films Tinto Brass made before Salon Kitty were avant-garde, while everything that followed marked his transition into erotica, which still retained elements of his earlier experimentation. Although Salon Kitty is the film that started Tinto Brass’ shift into erotica, the result is more of a straight-up exploitation film that makes no attempt to titillate.

The earliest examples of Nazisploitation can be traced back to Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City, and Germany, Year Zero. The defining moment for Nazisploitation was Luchino Visconti’s The Damned. Some Nazisploitation films, like The Damned and The Night Porter, were more arthouse than exploitation, while the bulk of the genre was down-and-dirty exploitation films that pushed depravity to its limits. That said, Salon Kitty is a rarer example of a Nazisploitation film that balances arthouse and exploitation.

While there are many things that Salon Kitty does extremely well, notably its exemplary production design, its most challenging aspect is its duration. At 133 minutes in length, the narrative has many stretches where things move slowly, disrupting any momentum. That said, what the narrative lacks, it more than makes up for in pure spectacle, where style takes precedence over substance.

Another area where Salon Kitty excels is its outstanding cast, who all deliver deliriously over-the-top performances where they fully embrace the madness. The most memorable performance is Helmut Berger (Beast with a Gun) in the role of a power-hungry Nazi SS commandant named Helmut Wallenberg. The standout performance is Teresa Ann Savoy’s portrayal of Margherita, a woman Helmut becomes infatuated with. Other notable cast members are John Steiner (Shock), Tina Aumont (Torso), and Ingrid Thulin (Persona) in the role of Madame Kitty.

When it comes to the visuals, this is the area where Salon Kitty is most impactful. Tinto Brass’ direction is pitch-perfect; every inch of every frame is exploited for maximum effect. Besides taking full advantage of Ken Adams' opportunity sets, there are an abundance of visually arresting moments that greatly enhance the mood. Some of the most striking moments are a montage where women are having sex with deformed men and a scene where Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda film The Triumph of the Will is being projected off a nude woman’s body, while a Nazi soldier is masturbating. Ultimately, Salon Kitty is a film that’s geared more towards fans of exploitation cinema than Tinto Brass’ erotic films.

Salon Kitty gets a strong audio/video presentation and an insightful interview with Tinto Brass.

Written by Michael Den Boer