If your taste in movies is like mine, there’s no way a film featuring naked Nazis having all kinds of kinky sex can fail. That very description means it can’t be a bad movie. Nude Nazi women having sex with hunchbacked midgets?
Nope. Can’t fail.
If you’ve seen “Salon Kitty,” you know I’m wrong. For years I have been reading about how Tinto Brass’ ‘˜70s docudrama/musical was the bee’s knees of Nazi sex films. It was strange, depraved and twisted beyond mere words, making it just the kind of film I wanted to see. After finally renting the director’s cut from my neighborhood video store (Video Experience in Eureka, California for the three of you who care about that sort of thing), I came to the realization that nobody who wrote about that film actually saw the damn thing. They just wrote their reviews and opinions after reading other people’s articles on the film.
I should’ve known better when it came to “Salon Kitty,” but the DVD box looked so intriguing — a pair of female lips waiting for lipstick from a swastika adorned tube. That had to count for something. Now I realize it was bait. I was like a large-mouth bass seeing the grape-scented artificial worm. Hook, line and sinker, baby. Hook, line and sinker.
A lot of people were pissed off after they saw “The Blair Witch Project.” Their ire was nothing compared to what I was feeling ninety-minutes into “Salon Kitty.” The sound was off, the dubbing (and I’m not even positive it was dubbed) left a lot to be desired. And the sex? I’m pretty sure my parents have a more imaginative sex life than the characters on the screen. Yeah, my mom probably never screwed a gypsy or a double amputee, but those scenes actually made any given episode of “The Golden Girls” seem erotic. And as for the plot — don’t ask.
Before writing this column, I went through my extensive archives to find articles pertaining to the film that I could quote. I couldn’t find a single one, which made me think I was going crazy. Maybe I never read any articles on this film. Maybe my mind told me I had because my subconscious wanted to see a naked Nazi movie. After ten minutes of some serious introspection I realized I really had read pieces on the film, but just couldn’t find them. I wasn’t going crazy. It was just residual damage from witnessing the atrocity called “Salon Kitty.”
I don’t think I’ll believe any movie hype ever again. If some writer says a film is the sickest thing he has ever witnessed, I’ll remember that I have something in my collection I call “Six Hours of Filth,” and I’ve seen nothing to compare to that piece of amateur disease. If some reviewer claims a movie has the most lurid sex scenes ever put on film, I’ll recall the visually impaired woman from “Blonde Lust & Blind Trust.” I won’t believe a single bit of hype from now until the end of time.
And to think Brass made “Caligula.” For shame.
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