those tempestuous movie stars in Bombay." Post-production Two test screenings in Santa Barbara and San Diego in late January-early February 1975 went badly; the Santa Barbara preview audience consisting mostly of University of California students reported liking the orgy and fight scenes but hated Perry King and the new "serious" Raquel Welch, while the San Diego audience of mainly middle-class people had the exact opposite reaction. Unsure about how to handle the contradictory results, AIP heavily re-edited the film. "They did more than recut it", said Ivory. "They turned it upside down and they distributed two versions. I never knew which is being shown." There was talk within the company of showing one version in cities and the other in small towns. Ivory said the main changes were softening Coco's character, adding discarded sex scenes, and introducing flashbacks and flashforwards. Ivory wrote that the "patched-together remnants" of the film "proves once more that you cannot effectively re-edit a picture and change its character in order to 'save' it." While Lansbury, Beruh and Marks approved the re-cut, Welch hated it. Stanzas from the source poem are read in a narrative voice-over by actor David Dukes during the film. "It's a simple, linear story but I think the poem adds a dimension to it", said Lansbury. "It is literary and it has the various textures of a mosaic." Release and reception Contrary to Ivory's wishes to get a New York City premiere (where he expected it to gain a following) as quickly as possible, the film instead premiered in Washington, D.C. and then made its way to Denver and Boston. Reviews in the early cities were terrible and box office performance poor, and the film didn't get a theatrical release in New York until 1981. Variety published a fairly positive review, calling the film "overly talky" but "a magnificent showpiece for Coco's talents. He successfully covers a spectrum from silly comedy, warm humor, sober anger, maddening frustration and drunken psychosis. Holding her own as his mistress is Raquel Welch, registering very strongly." Other reviews were much more negative. Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote, "The movie often looks very good ... but the script is, I think, really terrible. Never do Mr. Ivory, Mr. Coco, Miss Welch and the others discover the proper way to play it, probably because it's unplayable." Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times stated, "It