Cat Chaser (1989) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski) and Tuna

You can get excellent summaries of this film in Tuna's notes below, and from the TV Guide review linked below.

I don't want to talk about that, because the big story here is not what is on the DVD, but what isn't. This film started as a 180 minute X-rated film of an Elmore Leonard story, as directed by cinema bad boy Abel Ferrara, auteur of such timeless cinema masterpieces as Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy. The DVD ended up with only an R-rated 90 minute film, in 4:3 aspect ratio, with a mediocre transfer, and no features.

No features? What?

No director's cut? You mean Ferrara didn't want to present a director's cut? According to insiders, he has a private "rough cut" copy of the three hour version, which he screens for visitors now and then. According to IMDb, Ferrara has even lent it out on occasion. I, for one, would like to see an arty three hour porn film starring Kelly McGillis. Of course, I also would like to be the first to welcome our new arty pornographic overlords.

No commentary? You mean Ferrara didn't want to talk about how people took away his film? There were all sorts of juicy stories to share. To start with, Ferrara was having trouble adapting Elmore's novel to a script. In Ferrara’s original script, the first ten minutes consisted of two guys talking, and that scene was a verbatim transcription of the novel. He realized that such a scene can make for good exposition in a book, but gets audiences sleeping quickly in a theater. Ferrara wanted to make some changes, but wasn't sure what to do. His problems were complicated by his star, Peter Weller, who had script approval and didn't want any of Elmore's sharp dialogue altered. In desperation, Ferrara sent the script to Elmore himself, and asked him to help out with the first twenty pages. Elmore got the script and, being a typical author, re-wrote the entire thing. Ferrara got the script back and, being a typical director, didn't use what Elmore had written. 

At some point in the muddled process, the backers realized they weren't going to make a lot of money from Ferrara's arty, confusing, violent, slow, three hour porn flick, so they took control of the film from Ferrara, and cut it. The producer's version, which was only released theatrically in England, was 98 minutes long, and still included a daring scene in which Kelly McGillis spread her legs on camera. (This version was once available on VHS, but is now out of print. Here is a small capture from the controversial scene.)

There were even more cuts made to produce a third version of the movie with an MPAA rating of "R". The additional cuts included the McGillis beaver shot, and most of a violent, bloody massacre of two naked men in a shower.

The most irritating thing about the final version is that so much of the essential narrative has been cut from the original version that they had to add a hollow-sounding voice-over narration to make the thing comprehensible. The narration is so obviously "tagged on" that the mysterious voice is not even a character in the film, but an omniscient literary narrator!

This could have been a major DVD, a contribution to cinema lore and scholarship. Instead, "it's got nuthin'". Not only is there no commentary and no director's cut, but they couldn't even come up with a widescreen version, or even with the deleted footage that resulted in the film's promotion or demotion from X to R.