Back in 1980, AVCO Embassy Pictures asked John Carpenter, who served as an executive producer on this film, to write and direct this film after the successes of Halloween (1978) and The Fog (1980). However, Carpenter showed them Escape from New York (1981) (which he wrote years earlier), and they did that instead.
At the time of its release, it had the fastest theatrical-to-video window in film history (it opened in August and was released on video by late October).
Although John Carpenter is listed as executive producer on this film, he and director Stewart Raffill never met in person.
This film is widely believed to be based on a real-life and ill-fated experiment with invisibility and force fields in the 1940s. However, to the best of any factual knowledge, no such experiment ever occurred, and the story was the work of an eccentric loner, Carl Allen, who sent notes on the "experiment" to the government in the 1950s, and whose story was later leaked. Despite the lack of any factual evidence, the story has become an urban legend, and favorite of conspiracy theorists, who point to the lack of evidence as proof that it's being covered up.
The town showing the destruction of buildings was shot in Utah. The city needed funds to help pay for a new sewage system, so Stewart Raffill purchased a block of run-down, abandoned buildings and had his special effects team blow it up for the film.
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