Sylvester Stallone’s Feature Debut Finally Reaches Theaters as Its Director Intended — Over 50 Years After Filming

Sylvester Stallone’s Feature Debut Finally Reaches Theaters as Its Director Intended — Over 50 Years After Filming

In 1971, 21-year old independent filmmaker Robert Schnitzer financed his first micro-budget feature the way Robert Townsend, Kevin Smith, and other maverick directors would decades later: by putting it all on his credit card. He couldn’t afford SAG actors and saw over 500 newcomers for the lead role of Jerry Savage, an anti-war activist who plots to bomb a cookware company that makes “tiger cages” used to drown, torture, and imprison people in V…