Roger Corman and Gene Corman partly chose their filming location in the Black Hills because they were encouraged to come by the Chamber of Commerce in South Dakota. The Chamber of Commerce offered financial incentives in order to ensure that this, and future Corman films, would be shot in their state.
Immediately following production of this film, Ski Troop Attack (1960) was filmed on the same location in the South Dakota Black Hills. Both films featured much of the same cast and crew.
The cave in the film was actually an abandoned mine in Deadwood, South Dakota.
According to Chris Robinson, the actor who portrayed the monster, he added aluminum stripping to a plywood base, then covered the frame with chicken wire before wrapping it in sheets and muslin in order to create the monster's skeletal base. He then soaked the frame in vinyl paint in order to waterproof the design, since it had to be used in the snow. The creature's head was fashioned out of quarter-inch aluminum wire, which was then encased in steel wire and wrapped in muslin. The creature's fangs and teeth were also constructed with aluminum wire. Robinson then placed putty and patches of crepe hair onto the design before adding spun glass in order to give it a cobwebby appearance.
The Corman brothers, Roger Corman and Gene Corman, had grown tired of making films in Bronson Canyon and the Los Angeles Arboretum (frequent shoot locations for their films) so they moved to South Dakota's Black Hills to shoot this film and Ski Troop Attack (1960).