 Corman wanted Peter Fonda to play the lead, but he was unavailable, so David Carradine was cast instead.Carradine was paid 10% of the film's gross — he and Ron Howard were the only stars of Roger Corman Productions to ever get a percentage of the gross.Bartel later recalled "We had terrible script problems; David had to finish his 'Kung Fu' series before starting and we had bad weather.