The producers wanted to fire Trevor Howard from this movie, due to his alcoholism, but Sarah Miles insisted he should stay.
The BBC television drama, The Happy Valley (1986), covering the same subject matter, was broadcast on September 6, 1987, within the same year of this movie debuting in theaters.
The closing credits legal disclaimer reads: "The story of this film is inspired by events which took place in Kenya in 1940 and 1941. The film does not purport to be an accurate representation of either the characters concerned, or the events that took place."
Many movie posters featured a long blurb that read: "In England they were the elite, but bound by rules of society. In Kenya there were no rules, only glamour, decadence . . . and murder."
This was Director Michael Radford's first theatrical movie in three years, his last having been 1984 (1984), and was his last for seven years, until The Postman (1994).