Back in 1970, Sylvester Stallone was in a shitty softcore flick called The Party at Kitty and Stud’s, which, post-Stallone fame, was given the more recognisable retitling of Italian Stallion. It was a piece of cinema history I’d all but forgotten about until Sly’s face popped up in my Facebook newsfeed in a post from Westgate Gallery sharing the glorious painted Italian poster for Italian Stallion. I contacted Christian from Westgate for a scan of the poster and he had this to say about it…
Now Italian Stallion is a particularly intriguing if not totally bat-shit choice! And not just because the artist was probably paid more for the painting than the entire budget of scummy 16mm The Party at Kitty and Stud’s. For some reason, when it came to adult films, both hard and softcore, whoever added credits to Italian posters made mistakes almost 100% of the time — misspellings (Raci Lords on Another Roll in the Hay, for example), wrong surnames, wrong directors (Gerard Damiano was often credited), totally made up names, etc. Maybe they did this because they were afraid of legal or church prosecution and thought this would confound the issue. Maybe it was sabotage by some religious employees who resented having to advertise “porn”. Who knows?
But rarely were things as cocked up as they are on the Italian Stallion posters, which somehow mashed up the credits and imagery of both that film and a 1978 XXX cheapie called China DeSade starring the late Asian vixen Linda Wong (Oriental Babysitter, Easy Alice, Femmes DeSade)!
Westgate’s Italian Stallion poster is available to purchase either from their online store or, if you’re lucky enough to be in LA at the moment, at the Lethal Amounts Gallery, 1226 West 7th Street, downtown Los Angeles 90017. Head over to Westgate’s site for more details.
Source: Westgate Gallery
