Stallone Did Porn? No way!

I would argue with [anyone] who claims that Stallone's "A Party at Kitty and Stud's" was originally a hardcore film.

First of all, it is very typical of the kind of film that was being made for theatrical release in those days before the hardcore explosion--lots of humping and huffing and puffing, but no erections and no insertions. Hundreds of such films were made at that time. Also, getting back to my comments above, it is beyond all rational belief that someone possessing a genuine hardcore film of a major star like Stallone would snip out the hardcore stuff and release the rest!

The 'Italian Stallion' version of this film, as I saw it shown in an X-rated theater in the late 1970's, had a prologue by Gail Palmer. It was a simple narration, filmed with Palmer sitting in a seat in an empty movie theater. This prologue was also used separately as a 'Coming Attractions' trailer.

Palmer did seem to imply that there were a lot of things edited out. I remember, though, that when I saw the movie, I wondered if that were really true. It seemed more likely to me that it was a sort of venal attempt to take advantage of the success of 'Rocky' (released in 1976; 'Rocky II' in 1979) by taking an old softcore film that happened to have Stallone in it, and speciously trumping it up as a hardcore flick with the (perhaps non-existent anyway) explicit sex "edited out".

I recently rented a video of 'The Italian Stallion', and this narration was not present.

However, I did notice a promotional advertisement at the beginning of two "Gail Palmer" videos that I recently rented, 'California Gigolo' and 'The Best of Gail Palmer' (I say "Gail Palmer" with quotation marks because Peter v. A. states that Palmer may not have actually directed these films). The ad is an animation sequence consisting of the box covers of Palmer films assembling themselves into rows on the screen. One of the boxes is 'The Italian Stallion', and it has the same title art as the Stallone film.

Given that Palmer worked with/for the Mitchell Bros. in San Francisco during the late 70's, it seems possible that they're 'Stallion Enterprises'. They may have used that name as a dodge to give Stallone's lawyers a moving target.

One other interesting note on this film. When I rented 'The Italian Stallion', the video store clerk mentioned to me that in the mid-80's he'd gotten a letter from a law firm in New York, offering to buy his copies of the film, and asking him to name a price. His guess was that Stallone was trying to remove as many copies of the film from the market as possible.