After the crew was thrown out of East Prairie, MO, by the chief of police (for allegedly being "communists"), Roger Corman realized that he needed one more wide shot of the high school. He and an assistant went back into the town and hurriedly filmed the shot. The chief must have gotten wind of his being there, as he was seen by Corman arriving in the distance. Corman and his assistant quickly threw the camera and equipment into their car, and sped away in the opposite direction, unscathed.
After William Shatner performed Cramer's big racist speech on the courthouse steps, a local newspaperman told him that a tree in the courthouse yard had been used for lynchings.
Roger Corman said this film changed a lot of his feelings about filmmaking. It went to festivals and got really great reviews, but it was the first movie he made that lost money. After analyzing why, he realized it had too much of lesson it was trying to teach the audience. From that point on, he focused more on entertaining them instead. He said he always tried to put a moral in his films after that, he just kept it subtle without pounding it into the audience because that isn't why they go to movies.
Shot entirely on location in southeast Missouri with locals acting as extras. Knowing how incendiary the script was, Roger Corman made a point of not showing them the full screenplay, for fear of being run out of town.
Producer/director Roger Corman allegedly blamed star William Shatner's performance for the film's box-office failure; it was the only one of 300+ films made by Corman that lost money. Shatner jokingly suggested years later that the re-release title "I Hate Your Guts!" was probably aimed at him.