The film was bundled in the 2008 "Movies That Matter – 70's Classics" DVD set with Deliverance and Dog Day Afternoon.

Despite this, the release was given a five-star review in Empire, where it was described as "one of the best British films of the 70s". Originally announced in 1997, Tarsem Singh and Samuel Bayer were considered to direct the film before Stephen Kay signed on, with David McKenna writing the script. A devout Roman Catholic, Mosley was concerned about taking part in such a violent film with depictions of criminal behaviour, and consulted his priest over the moral implications. In South Africa the censor cut out Britt Ekland's phone sex scene, shortening her already brief role; her name was still left on the poster, leaving filmgoers to wonder why she was advertised as appearing. In this, his second novel (his first one being the sorrowful, art-school love affair story entitled "All the Way Home and All the Night Through"), author Ted Lewis crafts a powerful crime drama in which there are no heroes.There are four simultaneous conversations, with a lot of plot exposition and the introduction of two important characters, Kinnear and Glenda. Since then the smelters whose bricks stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess.

Carl Howard's character of the assassin, "J", is only identified by the initial on his ring, in his only film role, and an appropriate mystery surrounds his real identity. However, later on things changed for Jack, possibly in response to Frank’s gentler nature: Jack idolised his older brother, but as they grew older, Jack came to revile Frank’s habit of turning the other cheek, feeling increasingy betrayed by it. His son brought him a DVD of the film back from Hong Kong and he tried to watch it, but the region format was incompatible "so we put it in the dustbin".As a young man Bindon had been in and out of borstal, and spent most of his adult life associating with criminals, so he was ideally suited to play a gangland boss, despite being young, having intimate knowledge of that world. He can really lay it on and lay it on well but in the movie I felt it got confused with aggressive sex appeal. Giving his reasons for wanting to be involved with the film, the actor said "One of the reasons I wanted to make that picture was my background. Add to that, at the midst of its story, it contained the unspoken dirty secret of the pornography trade. The book was one of many violent pulp thrillers written in the sixties and seventies that capitalised on the increasing promiscuity of the time.

She tells him the film was Kinnear's and that she thinks Doreen was pulled into the production by Eric. Not to mention the men who run things in Doncaster, who aren’t happy with Jack’s little holiday at home. And it’s porn of the sordid, seedy, homegrown variety, in which desperate, cash-strapped actors participate for peanuts, especially the women, and in which almost no age restriction is put on them – in fact, the younger the better. In contrast, Nigel Andrews found the characters to be clichéd archetypes of the criminal underworld, such as the "homosexual chauffeur, bloated tycoon, glamorous mistress", describing the film as "perfunctory".

S., we were just leaving winter (and the 60s weren’t that far off in the rearview) and happily expecting better forecasts in our future. And Hodges’ film very much embodied that unique decade — and it sure went out of its way to say the Age of Aquarius was definitely over, didn’t it? At the time of its release, the only recognition the film received was a 1972 BAFTA Awards nomination for Ian Hendry as Best Supporting Actor.