.jpg)
SALON KITTY (1976)
50th Anniversary Collector's Edition Blu-ray
Label: Cult Epics
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 133 Minutes 9 Seconds
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Tinto Brass
Cast: Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin, Teresa Ann Savoy, John Steiner, John Ireland, Tina Aumont
Salon Kitty (1976), directed by erotic maestro Tinto Brass (The Key), is set in Berlin, in the final years of the Third Reich at Salon Kitty, a high-class brothel where Nazi officers, diplomats and party officials come to unwind and partake in carnal pleasures. It's in this setting that SS Officer Wallenberg (Helmut Berger, Dorian Gray) has deported the regular prostitutes and replaced them with secretly trained and very attractive informants, trained in the ways of all seduction, sexual pleasures and total submission, and hidden microphones in every room in an effort to root out anyone who may not be a party-loyalist, and to use that information for his own ends.
The main characters here are a party-loyalist named Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy, Caligula) who recognizes that Wallenberg's motives are self-serving and corrupt, and when she falls in love with brothel regular Luftwaffe pilot Hans Reiter (Bekim Fehmiu, Black Sunday), who is doomed after expressing his own doubts about the war, she teams up with the brothel madame Kitty Kellermann (Ingrid Thulin, Short Night of the Glass Dolls) to plot their revenge on Wallenberg.
The film is front-loaded with oodles of male and female nudity and depraved sex acts and nudity, made all the more perverse by the morally corrupt backdrop of Nazi Germany and brothel intrigue. The early montages of the female informers made to strip nude and degrade themselves to prove their loyalty to the Nazi party are depraved, and while the sex is not hardcore, only simulated, it does gets pretty sleazy, and lacks the fun eroticism of later Tinto Brass flicks. While the film certainly offers a look at the power of corruption and the moral corruption of the Nazi regime, this is just a well-dressed exploitation flick, but well-dressed indeed, with stunning sets and high production value, looking terrific, with elaborate large-scale orgies and cabaret numbers, plus we get a really terrific cast, including John Steiner (Tenebrae) as Wallenberg's superior officer.
Audio/Video: Cult Films' region-free Blu-ray of Salon Kitty (1976) is presented in 1080p HD framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, sourced from Tinto Brass' own archival print of the film, with 21 minutes of previously censored footage reinstated, offering the film in it's uncut form. The image looks good, the source is in good shape, film grain is presents throughout, offering some nice period detail and texture in the close-ups. Skin tones look warm and natural, reds have a nice pop to them, but this does look like an older HD masters, and I thought the contrast, depth and clarity were not quite up to modern standards, with less refined grain than a newer scan would have provided. The camera work from cinematographer Silvano Ippoliti (The Great Silence) looks quite fetching in HD though. Audio comes by way of Italian or English DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles. The tracks are clean and nicely balances, dialogue and the Fiorenzo Carpi (Eugenio) score both fare well, and there are no issues with hiss or distortion.
Extras include an archival 24-min Making Salon Kitty - unique English-language Tinto Brass interview, in which Brass discusses the film and it 's themes of power and corruption, as well as censorship issues, plus we get a pair of U.S. and International Trailers, plus the 2-min Trailer for Tinto Brass' Miranda, which has also been simultaneously released on Blu-ray by Cult Films.
The single-disc release arrives in a clear keepcase with a Reversible Wrap, plus we get a Slipcover with unique artwork. Inside there's a Two-sided Art Card, plus a Fold-Out Poster of the Original Madam Kitty American Release Poster.
Special Features:
- Making Salon Kitty - unique English-language Tinto Brass interview (23:34)
- International Theatrical Trailer (3:55)
- USA Trailer (1:48)
- Trailer: Miranda (2:16)
- Two-sided Art Card
- Original Madam Kitty American release poster, reproduced to celebrate the film’s 50th anniversary
- Collector’s Reversible Wrap
Screenshots from the Cult Films Blu-ray:
Buy it!
#ad
