A young Bill Paxton worked on the sets as a carpenter and painter in between jobs on the recommendation of good friend, art director and future collaborator James Cameron.
New World Pictures was known for low-budget adventure movies. When Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) was released and set a new standard, Roger Corman realized he had to up his game. Production for this film cost $2 million, making it New World's most expensive feature at the time. Most of the budget was spent on salaries for Robert Vaughn and George Peppard. Corman approached several companies to do the special effects, but none would do it for less than $2 million. Corman then decided to create his own in-house special effects department, which would employ a young James Cameron.
James Cameron, who worked as a model maker and art director on this movie, was actually fired and re-hired twice during production. He began to notice that producer Roger Corman would always be displeased with the sets when he came to inspect and found set decorators still working on them, and started firing people; however, if Corman arrived on a half-finished set without anyone working on it, he would always like them anyway. So finally, Cameron had someone on the lookout for Corman's car, and whenever it was spotted, he would clear the set of crew members, no matter what state it was in. Corman would come in, and invariably like what he saw.
According to an interview with star Richard Thomas, the wardrobe department had a difficult time keeping the top of Sybil Danning's costume on and had to resort to using band aids to prevent said top from slipping off.
This is considered to be the first "major" theatrical film to be scored by James Horner, and his breakthrough into the sci-fi/adventure blockbusters he would become known for in the 1980s and 1990s.
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