This film is based on a true story. While she was living in Hollywood with her husband, writer Romain Gary, actress Jean Seberg brought home a large white dog she had found on the street that seemed friendly and playful. However, when the animal saw her Black gardener, it attacked him viciously, injuring him. Afterward, the couple kept it in the backyard, but one day, it got out and attacked another Black man on the street, but no one else. After this happened a third time, they realized that someone had trained the dog to attack and injure only Black people. Gary wrote a short piece about it for "Life" magazine in 1970, which eventually became a full-length fiction novel.
Director Samuel Fuller has said of this film: "Shelve the film without letting anyone see it? I was dumbfounded. It's difficult to express the hurt of having a finished film locked away in a vault, never to be screened for an audience. It's like someone putting your newborn baby in a god-damned maximum-security prison forever...Moving to France for a while would alleviate some of the pain and doubt that I had to live with because of 'White Dog'."
The major reason the release of this film was buried by Paramount was due to the criticism by the NAACP, stating the film was trying to push a racist message across in its depictions of the dog's actions while the film was in pre-production. Once a release date was set, the NAACP then threatened Paramount with boycotts, which soon scared off executives largely due to the film's subject matter. The film was then limited to a series of limited screenings throughout 1982 in cities such as Seattle, Denver and Detroit, after which Paramount finally aborted its release in the U.S. and shelved the film soon afterward. Paramount then tried to bury it and denied its existence for over 25 years; however, the film was seen sporadically during this time, appearing on cable TV and even having a very brief, enjoyable run in art houses around the U.S. Paramount finally acknowledged that the film existed and lifted its studio-imposed ban by officially releasing the film as part of The Criterion Collection which released it on DVD in 2008, more than 25 years after its intended and aborted release.
It was Samuel Fuller's wife, Christa Lang's idea to hire composer Ennio Morricone to write the music for the film.
After the distribution problems on Die weisse Bestie - Ein Tier als Waffe (1982), this proved to be the last film that director Samuel Fuller would ever direct in the U.S. and he moved to France soon afterward. Fuller said "Moving to France for a while would alleviate some of the pain and doubt that I had to live with because of 'White Dog'."