Co-story writer Jimmy Sangster had originally planned for this to be a more serious addition to the horror genre to be made for Hammer studio in England. The movie was intended to star Vincent Price starring and the title would have been "The Fairytale Man".
During post-production, Elliott Gould complained about having to loop dialogue on ADR machines that were almost 40 years out of date compared to other major studios.
During the UK 'video nasty' scare of the 1980's anti-censorship journalist Liam T. Sanford wrote a false letter petitioning against this film to the Police Watch Committee, claiming the movie to be 'sick and horrific', in an attempt to discredit local police forces and expose their lack of film knowledge. Sure enough the film was briefly seized by officers from video retailers before being hastily returned to the shelves.
The first scenes which depict hell are taken from Disney's recent picture The Black Hole (1979). The image of Max Devlin (Elliott Gould)'s falling body was added to the fire-red backdrop that includes marching slaves in dark hooded cloaks.
Bill Cosby took the role of Barney Satin after the studio had made several unsuccessful attempts to cast him in earlier projects and despite his wife's objections to the idea of him playing the Devil. He believed it would be a step forward for a black actor to play a role usually played by white actors.