Director Dennis Devine said the pivotal scene where a woman in a bikini is killed by drowning was shot with three different women. It was the coldest February in recorded history where they were filming outdoors and the water was just above freezing. The actress playing the victim did one take and was so cold she turned blue. She refused to do any more, but Devine needed to shoot from several angles. So he talked a female assistant make up artist into putting on the bikini and doing a take. But then she refused to do another one, so he had to talk another actress on the set into doing one more.
The film was loosely inspired by the 1984 suicide of John David McCollum in Riverside, California, which spurred a lawsuit from McCollum's parents against singer Ozzy Osbourne, whose song "Suicide Solution" they claimed influenced his decision to end his life.