The chaotic filming wrapped 19 days over schedule and $3 million over budget, terminating Sam Peckinpah's tenure with Warner Bros./Seven Arts, and caused permanent damage to his career. The critical and box office hits Délivrance (1972) and Jeremiah Johnson (1972) were in development at the time, and Peckinpah was considered the first choice to direct them. His departure from Warner Brothers left him with a limited number of directing jobs. Peckinpah was forced to do a 180-degree turn from this film, and travelled to England to direct Les Chiens de paille (1971), one of his darkest and most psychologically disturbing films.
This was the favorite film of the director. Often, when asked to speak about his work, he brought a print of this film to show, instead of one of his more famous works.
Production on the film fell weeks behind schedule due to bad weather. When filming was suspended, director Sam Peckinpah, along with cast and crew, would drink. When filming finally wrapped, the bar bill came to over $70,000 (equivalent to over $580,000 in 2025).
According to David Weddle, author of "If They Move, Kill 'Em: The Life And Times Of Sam Peckinpah", in August 1969 Warner Brothers showed its distributors a 2½ hour rough cut of the film without the knowledge of either Peckinpah or producer Phil Feldman. The director had urged the studio to hold off on their judgment (which was generally negative towards this rough cut) until he could cut another half hour from it. The studio allowed him to do so, but it was more out of apathy than respect for his talent. Despite positive audience reactions of seventy percent at its previews in January and February 1970, the film was dumped onto the market in the spring with hardly any promotion behind it. According to Stella Stevens, "Warner Brothers didn't release it, they flushed it."