Did You Know?

Randy Quaid's film debut.

Drive-in scenes were shot at the since-closed Reseda Drive-In Theatre in Reseda, CA, as clearly shown on the marquee and screen tower. Early in the movie, the Sepulveda Drive-In in Van Nuys is briefly shown in the background as Bobby drives down the highway. On the DVD commentary, Peter Bogdanovich incorrectly credits this as being the Reseda Drive-In.

Peter Bogdanovich named his own character "Sammy Michaels" after Samuel Fuller (whose middle name is "Michael") in gratitude for the work Fuller did on the script.

By the time this film was made, 80-year-old Boris Karloff was in very poor health with emphysema along with rheumatoid arthritis, and had only one-half of one lung left and spent the time between takes in a wheelchair with an oxygen mask on. He also had braces on both legs, and had difficulty standing or walking without his cane; the weakness of his legs is visible in some scenes.

When film cameras, which run at 24 frames per second, film directly off the screen of US televisions, which run at 30 fps, the result is a dark or light bar across the image, rolling from top to bottom. To avoid this effect in the scene when Sammy and Orlok are watching The Criminal Code, in most shots a film picture was matted in over the TV screen, giving a steady picture with no bar. However, according to Peter Bogdanovich's DVD commentary, they couldn't afford to use a matte for the establishing shot for the scene, which pans across the TV's screen, so the bar appears in that shot and only that shot (in Europe, where the TV frame rate is 25 fps, often they simply run the film camera at 25 fps also, for shots with a TV picture in them).

Aside from background music played on a car radio, there is no musical soundtrack for the movie.

Voices of Joey Bishop and announcer Regis Philbin can be heard in background, excerpted from Bishop's late night ABC TV talk show of late Sixties.

The sequence with Bobby Thompson shooting people in cars driving on a freeway from the top of an oil storage tank was loosely inspired by the Highway 101 sniper attack where on April 25, 1965, a 16-year-old alienated youth, named Michael Andrew Clark, shot at motorists from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Orcutt, California, killing three and injuring 10 others before committing suicide. Prior to the shooting spree, Clark left behind a note vowing to make his parents "die a thousand times in court" for his actions, and he was right; a lawsuit was brought against Clark's parents by two of the victim's families for mistreating and not raising their son well, and negligence for allowing Clark access to the hunting rifle used for the shooting spree.

The sniping scene at the oil tank was shot without a sound technician. All the noises were added in post.