The role of Joe Huff was originally offered to Arnold Schwarzenegger, but the studio couldn't afford to pay his $20 million fee.
In a Q&A with the audience after a special screening of the film in Austin's Alamo Drafthouse in 2014, Brian Bosworth talked about how original director Bruce Malmuth was fired due to some "personal issues that he couldn't control which poured out on set", and his firing caused all the original backstory for Bosworth's character to be removed and changed after Craig R. Baxley was hired to direct. About four weeks was spent filming scenes with Bosworth's character and his family (wife, child and sister), which in the end were completely axed out after $4 million was spent shooting them. Bosworth elaborated that Malmuth's personality was difficult inferring the two had a fallout, joking, "(Malmuth) was the director of 'Hard to Watch'- I mean, Hard to Kill (1990)."
The film suffered cuts to gain an R rating in the US after the MPAA rated the first cut NC-17.
William Forsythe was also working on the film Out for Justice (1991) at the same time as this film. To avoid a schedule conflict, Forsythe would alternate between each film during the week.