COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Another World Entertainment has released a new DVD of the celebrity porn chestnut The Italian Stallion that purports to contain hardcore footage of Sylvester Stallone...but the fact is that Stallone never performed any hardcore scenes for the movie.
AWE's new special edition of the soft X feature originally filmed as The Party At Kitty and Stud's includes a bonus disc with an alternate German cut of the movie. This version contains hardcore inserts reportedly spliced in from a 1976 Herschel Savage feature called White Fire.
The Party At Kitty And Stud's was shot in New York circa 1969 while Stallone was still a struggling actor looking for gigs to make ends meet. The movie became infamous when '70s porn director Gail Palmer re-edited and re-released the movie to cash in on the actor's success with Rocky.
Palmer, whose other XXX credits include the racially charged Hot Summer in the City, shot a new introduction to the movie and also recut the picture and soundtrack (which originally featured borrowed tracks from guitarist Harvey Mandel's first LP Cristo Redentor.)
The Party At Kitty And Stud's was shot at a time when many aspiring actors dabbled in sex films - but hardcore production was still an underground enterprise confined to 8mm loops. While the movie is unavailable on video in its original form, AVN recently examined a private collector's print that contains no hardcore scenes and clearly shows the uncut film as a soft X.
Given the ongoing and exaggerated "controversy" over The Party At Kitty and Stud's, Stallone has remarked that in retrospect he wishes he had done hardcore.
Stallone's only other adult-oriented credit from the period was an early stage production of Score, later adapted as a groundbreaking XXX feature by Radley Metzger.
AWE's release of The Italian Stallion follows a recent DVD and theatrical reissue of the movie through the resurrected Bryanston Distribution. The original Bryanston operated as a mob front in the '70s, famed for distributing Deep Throat and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but the new venture is an arm of Ray Pistol's Las Vegas-based Arrow Productions.
Rocky director John G. Avildsen (recently misidentified as 'John Appleton' on one adult website) directed the X-rated Cry Uncle and other sex films early in his career - but as with Stallone, no evidence exists that he ever crossed the line into hardcore.
