The recurrences of the number 92 throughout the film (the number of VUE victims, the number of artificial languages, etc.) was partly intended as a homage to composer John Cage's "Indeterminacy", which Greenaway believed contained 92 stories. Cage later informed the director that there were only 90 sections and was much amused by Greenaway's error.
Some of the location work for this film was done in the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales, and Peter Greenaway received extensive help at this time from members of the local Film Society. In gratitude, he offered to allow them to give the film its first-ever public screening as the first offering of their new season. The fact that it was a world premiere received extensive publicity, as did Greenaway's presence on the evening, and the committee of the society made it a members-only event to bolster their finances. As a result, on the night of the showing, the Lleyn Film Society had more members than ever before, but the actual showing of the film proved something of a disaster - audience members began walking out after only twenty minutes or so, and by the last half-hour of the film (which is over three hours long), the only people left in the auditorium were Greenaway and the committee members. Subsequent showings of the society were poorly attended.
Fragments of director Peter Greenaway's short films A Walk Through H (1979) and Vertical Features Remake (1978) appear in the film.
Lucy Skeaping's debut.
The acronym VUE stood for ''Violent Unexplained Event''.