Originally posted on May 13, 2025 @ 1:51 pm
Rebel: Director’s Cut Sneak Peek
Rebel: Director’s Cut traces its history to 1971, when Robert Schnitzer wrote an original
film treatment entitled Seize the Time!. Later that same year, he hired writer Larry
Beinhart to co-write a screenplay based on that treatment. At the time, Beinhart was unpublished, but decades later wrote the novel Wag the Dog (later made into a film starrnig Robert DeNiro and Dustin Hoffman).
Seize the Time! was produced in 1971 in New York City with Sylvester Stallone starring
in the leading role. Schnitzer self-financed the film on a micro-budget. It was
completed and released in 1973 under a new title, No Place to Hide. The film
premiered at the Atlanta Film Festival and was released on home video cassettes. It
also was broadcast on several local television stations in the U.S.
When Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky became a box office success in 1976, Schnitzer recut
No Place to Hide and re-titled it Rebel. It was re-issued on home video cassette and
was licensed to domestic U.S. television markets and various overseas distributors.
In the year 2000, Schnitzer discontinued all distribution of the film, allowing existing
licenses to expire. He planned to re-issue the film at some point in the future when all
worldwide rights would become available.
By 2023, Schnitzer, through his company Movicorp, re-mastered the film in 4K high definition and re-mixed the monaural single channel soundtrack into stereo. This also gave him the opportunity to add some new music and “polish” the new edition with various touches to correct small things that always bothered him.
This new edition, now entitled Rebel: Director’s Cut, the closest version to his original vision, and he has no intention of making future editions.
Directed by: Robert Allen Schnitzer
Screenplay by: Robert Allen Schnitzer and Larry Beinhart; additional dialogue by LouisPastore
Produced by: David Appleton, Robert Allen Schnitzer
Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Tony Page, Vickie Lancaster, Dennis Tate, Barbara Lee Govan, Rebecca Grimes, Roy White, Henry G. Sanders, Jed Mills
Country: USA
Language: English
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