Was originally proposed as an unofficial finale to Dario Argento's then-incomplete 'Three Mothers' trilogy.
Originally a script draft was written by Dario Argento's ex-wife Daria Nicolodi, but producer Dino De Laurentiis (who she gave the script to) wasn't interested, and Argento (who originally was supposed to direct) moved away from the project and focused on his next movie 'Tenebrae'.
A few years later, Nicolodi gave the script to her friend Luigi Cozzi, wanting him to turn it into a movie. Cozzi decided to do it but didn't want to make a straight sequel to Argento's 'Suspiria' and 'Inferno', so he re-wrote the script into something that is more of a tribute to the two Argento movies. Nicolodi (who originally was supposed to star in it) realized that Cozzi's version was not what she had in mind, and so she left the project.
The film originally had no connection to Edgar Allen Poe's short story 'The Black Cat' but after 21st Century acquired the distribution rights, CEO Menahem Golan asked director Luigi Cozzi to, among other things, add new footage of black cats. Golan had already pre-sold the film as a Poe adaptation, one of many Golan had produced/acquired at that time.
Florence Guerin replaced Daria Nicoladi after the latter quit the project.
Caroline Munro said she shot a scene where she stripped to her underwear. Originally they handed her very revealing see-through bra and panties that would have shown everything, but she refused to wear them. Instead, she went out and bought a more modest set with much darker material. After shooting the scene, a producer wanted her to pose for publicity photos wearing them, but she said no. After all that, they ended up cutting the scene because the producer felt it wasn't sexy enough.