Draws on the plot of William Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Hamlet's plot involves a Danish Prince who tries to exact revenge against his uncle, who has murdered the Prince's father in order to seize his throne and marry his mother. While Strange Illusion is by no means completely faithful to the original Shakespeare story-line - the character Ophelia doesn't exist here, and the tragic finale is replaced with a happy ending. In any case, Ulmer's film remains a fascinating attempt at re-imagining Shakespeare's Hamlet. Here, he is young Paul who lives in bucolic Southern California next to exclusive private schools and toney country clubs. To this, the plot adds a bit more - the protagonist admits himself into an insane asylum. This allows time for our scheming director Edgar G. Ulmer to amp up the cinematic tension, with added touches and moody lighting effects.
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second- or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
The film was also reviewed by some sources as "Out of the Night," the title under which the film was copyrighted. According to HR news items, Fritz Rotter was paid $10,000 for the original story upon which the film is based.
Director Edgar G. Ulmer and cinematographer Eugen Schüfftan (uncredited here) worked together in Germany on Robert Siodmak's documentary-styled drama "Menschen am Sonntag, ein Film ohne Schauspieler" (or "People on Sunday: A Film Without Actors"), the last silent film in the Weimar Republic before the dawn of the Nazi era, shot entirely in Berlin.
This film's earliest documented telecasts occurred Thursday 9 October 1947 both in New York City on the DuMont Television Network's WABD (Channel 5), and in Washington DC on WTTG (Channel 5); re-titled Out of the Night, it was first aired in Los Angeles Monday 13 March 1950 on KTTV (Channel 11).