We remember, in the mid '70s, seeing stills from Salon Kitty, one featuring a long line of naked blonde babes giving their best "Sieg Heil" with giant swastika-bearing German banners in the background, and another with the gals attempting to seduce uniformed SS troops amid exercise equipment – and of course we were fascinated.

Now, Blue Underground has released the definitive DVD, with the uncensored version of the movie (including the pig-butchering scene), along with interviews with the director – Tinto Brass, the guy responsible for Penthouse's Caligula and a lot of other Italian near-porn – and scenarist Ken Adam, who was recovering from a Kubrick-induced nervous breakdown when he undertook this challenge.

And one hell of a challenge it was: to depict the (more or less) true story of Madam Kitty (Ingrid Thulin) who ran the only legal brothel in Berlin to cater to Nazi troops, featuring the cream of Germany's Aryan beauties, all of whom were trained to satisfy whatever desires, twisted or otherwise, the "boys in brown" wanted performed – and to report to the men's superior (Helmut Berger) on any disloyalties the men might reveal in bed. The story focuses on one whore, played by Teresa Ann Savoy, in her journey from prim upper-class patriotism to calculated sluttiness to her inevitable treason for love, all of it against the background of 1939 Nazi Germany.

With all the XXX DVDs available, this opus (if it were hardcore, it would be an Editor's Choice) is the disc customers should be renting, if they want to get some idea of what lengths those in power may sink – did sink! – in order to maintain that power. It's an amazing political statement – and a highly entertaining story.