The screenplay and story, written by Richard Carr, was based on a portion of the 1947 novel, The Perfect Round, by Henry Morton Robinson.

By this time he has found, to his displeasure, that Mike's favorite pastime is to officiate the weekly cock fights, and the two have a falling-out.

Mike refuses to make good on a promise of a much needed part for the carousel, unless the soldier agrees to fight a dog.

After installing the last piece that completes the carousel's restoration, he lays the dog's body inside it, starts it up and walks away, while the townspeople look on.

In addition to those previously mentioned, the film also featured Dan Haggerty, who starred in the television series, The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams.

[1] Fran Ryan, whom Carradine met while they both worked on The Long Riders (1980), played a colonel in a scene that was shot several years after the main body of footage.

Claire Townsend, a United Artists (UA) executive who had helped finance the film, played a lieutenant.

[6][7] In 1969, David Carradine and Barbara Hershey met, and began a romantic relationship, on the set of Heaven with a Gun (1969).

[9] A few years later, after Carradine had experienced financial success with Kung Fu, he decided he wanted to make the story into a film.

"[10] He acquired a broken-down carousel in a junk yard in Los Angeles, and some broken horses in Kansas City.

A few weeks later he submitted it again and received the "PG" (parental guidance suggested) rating he wanted, without having changed a thing.

It is designed to make the festival a less than totally establishment affair and it offers Third World, independent and frequently angry films on social themes.

[2] Honeycutt's profile was planned to coincide with the film's opening at the Embassy 72d Street theater and the East Side Cinema, in New York City.

Carradine commented that when he arrived at the premiere to promote the film, he noticed that the poster and advertisement that he had made for the occasion had been replaced with "inferior ones".

[23] However, negative reviews, like the one from New York Times film critic, Janet Maslin, killed the publication of Honeycutt's piece.

[2] Maslin said of the final scene of the film, "Anything this moment reveals about Vietnam and about America, not to mention about dogs and merry-go-rounds, has been said better elsewhere.

"[6] Critic Richard Freeman found Barbara Hershey's character "moronic", and referred to the film as "twaddle."

'"[2] "The symbolism of a man wanting to build something joyful after being part of the carnage and destruction of war," surmised film critic, Charles Champlin.