Salon Kitty (1976)

Kitty Kellermann (Ingrid Thulin) runs a brothel in Nazi Germany – the Salon Kitty – where the soldiers of the Third Reich come to relax. Recording devices have been installed in each room by scheming power-hungry SS officer Captain Wallenberg (Helmut Berger), who plans to spy on the military officer clientele.

A bunch of intelligent girls committed to Nazism are in the pay of the SS and have been trained to be whores *and* encourage their clients to talk so their conversations can be recorded and reports sent to HQ.

One girl, Margherita (Teresa Ann Savoy), falls in love with a veteran from the Polish front and sets out to work against the organisation.

The film is not pornographic. and rarely erotic despite a sprinkling of full-frontal nudity (both male and female) and lots of shots of people having sex. But it is an interesting – and at times skilful – examination of sexual blackmail in Nazi Germany, centred around a Berlin brothel that apparently did really exist.

Many of those who become powerful couldn’t care less about National Socialism, but it’s a creed that enables them to carry out their wildest fantasies in secrecy and surrounded by respectability.

There are some scenes early in the film (involving sex and deformity) that invoked the wrath of the censors but the bad and distasteful sequences are balanced out by good scenes such as the one involving a Nazi officer who carries a phallic prop made of pastry and requires the girls to cavort with him while films of Hitler’s finest moments are projected on the wall.

Captain Helmut Wallenberg
Helmut Berger
Kitty Kellermann
Ingrid Thulin
Margherita
Teresa Ann Savoy
Biondo
John Steiner
Helga
Sara Sperati
Hilde
Maria Michi
Susan
Rosemarie Lindt
Marika
Paola Senatore
Cliff
John Ireland
Herta Wallenberg
Tina Aumont
Gloria
Alexandra Bogojevich
Rauss
Dan van Husen
Dino
Stefano Satta Flores
Hans Reiter
Bekim Fehmiu
Wolff
Gianfranco Bullo
Frank
Tito Leduc
Gerarca
Giancarlo Badessi
Margherita’s Father
Claus Ruhle
Margherita’s Mother
Margherita Horowitz
Ulrich Haupt
Alena Penz

Director
Tinto Brass