Forty years ago next month, the Sex Pistols started their first tour of the United States. It was also, famously, their last. After seven electrifying, antagonistic performances, the band broke up.

Without permission from the group or its record label, Warner Bros., the filmmaker Lech Kowalski captured as many of the shows as he could for what would become the documentary “D.O.A.: A Right of Passage.” He then flew to England, interviewed the bassist Sid Vicious and filmed more punk bands, including Generation X and Sham 69. But Sid Vicious and the movie’s financier both died before its completion, and by the time the film’s distributors secured the Waverly Theater in Greenwich Village for its 1981 premiere, every other band featured in it had broken up, too.

“D.O.A.” has since existed as a cult totem, popularized by word of mouth and circulated illicitly in degenerated quality. The film briefly appeared on videotape, issued by HarmonyVision in 1983, before separate clearances for home video were de rigueur, but it quickly went out of circulation. This month, almost four decades after filming began, it finally got an official home video release from MVD Rewind, but Mr. Kowalski, 65, is reluctant to speak about it.

“There are things I’ll talk about ‘D.O.A.’ with you, and other things that I will not talk about, because I don’t want to promote this DVD release,” he said in a telephone interview from France. Because of licensing issues, two Iggy Pop recordings on the soundtrack have been replaced with alternate versions, and it’s a change Mr. Kowalski can’t abide. It destroys, he said, “a special film that I’ve been protecting.”