Enforced Method Acting: On the day that his death scene was shot, Luke Askew was seriously ill with food poisoning, but insisted on going ahead anyway. The director later stated it helped his performance.
20th Century Fox was set to distribute the film, but pulled out after a negative test screening. They asked producer Lawrence Gordon to reduce the film's violence, but he refused.
The torture scene was originally much more graphic. The filmmakers were told by producers to make the scene where the criminals torture Rane as bloody as "open heart surgery", with his hand being shown being mangled and ripped up with a huge amount of gore. They expected the MPAA to demand edits and were prepared to appeal a potential X rating, but to their surprise the ratings board gave the film an R rating and did not make any requests for changes. After the aforementioned test screening, the director cut the close-up shots of Rane's hand being mangled.
by Paul Schrader was even more of a Spiritual Successor to his earlier film Taxi Driver, with an additional exploration of nationalist racism. It even included a cameo by Travis Bickle.