Gunnar Hansen was hired because his name alone would guarantee a video release. According to the director, Hansen worked for a "very reasonable price" as well.
Screenplay was written in 1987.
Paul Talbot said he and Bill Cooke filmed a horror short in college. Once completed, they decided to make it the first segment of an anthology feature called Campfire Tales. They wrote three more stories and tied them all together with framing segments set around a campfire. Over the next few years, they shot the rest of the stories one by one. They financed the shorts by earning money as crew members on commercials and industrials, working day jobs, and getting a few grant awards from two National Endowment for the Arts organizations.
According to Bill Talbot, the film took three and a half years to make.
The Overtoke segment was based on a true story about two guys Paul Tolbert knew who spent their lives driving around looking for marijuana and virtually lived the same lifestyle as the characters in the film.