Although subsequently forgotten, this film was widely and successfully released in the US in the late 1950s and early 60s by Janus Films. It played in at least 100 places including several small towns in Texas.
Upon its first US release in the 1950s, this film was temporarily banned by the city of Chicago.
The story is a sermon about the sensual joy. The depiction of "The Horse Trader's Girls" has a distinct, fresh scent of sensualism: a place for a lush, noisy joy of life, where the horse affairs are settled by a drink , the maidens roar and howl and the men always have time to fool themselves into the always willing women. In this world, the two motherless girls live in the solitude of one's mind. Their hunger for tenderness first brought them to each other. Then they split: one finds the man and the other driven in the despair of his loneliness to the Pentecostal chapel's abundance of tears and emotion.
After the film was rejected by the British Board of Film Censors in 1959, UK distributors Gala secured a local "X" certificate from London County Council. The original title translated as Horse Dealer Girls, but Gala decided The Time of Desire (similar to the US release title) was likely to be more popular. Indeed, when it opened at the Cinephone in London's West End on 2 July 1959, it ran a profitable ten weeks. Returning to the West End on 16 October 1962 the film ran a further four weeks at the Berkeley, still carrying an "X" (London) certificate.