Jim Wynorski talked about the movie being a disaster and how Talisa Soto was totally wrong for the role in a 2017 interview: "My take on Vampirella is that it's a mess. The last time I watched it was to do the commentary which was awhile ago. It's a film I cannot watch. Everything went wrong. Everything! I like Talisa Sota as a human being. She's very pretty and she's very sexy. But she's not Vampirella. They forced me to use her. She just didn't have the body for the costume. Roger Daltry was great. But, yeah, it was in Vegas. There was embezzlement on the set. It was really a nasty, nasty picture to work on. And it came out badly, too. So, I'm just saying that's one that I look at and say, it could have been and it wasn't...I should have had Julie Strain. But they didn't think Julie Strain meant anything. So they put somebody wrong in the role. I should have stopped and said let's just not do this. But, I was going to lose the rights in 6 months, so I did what I had to do. At least, I got the film made. But I should have said no."
The closing credits promise a sequel, Death's Dark Avenger. It never materialised.
The character "Forry Ackerman" is a tribute to the film's associate producer, Forrest J. Ackerman, who also was the Editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine (and also coined the title characters nickname - "Vampi").
A Vampirella film project had been in development for a number of years with Hammer Films came close to making one in the 1970s starring Barbara Leigh. Caroline Munro was offered the role but she said no because she refused to do nudity. In the early 1980s Peter Guber and Jon Peters had the rights when they were at Polygram. Film rights passed to Roger Corman and Jim Wynorski. Leigh says that Wynorski wanted to cast Paula Abdul in the title role.
Jim Wynorski wanted Julie Strain for the role of Vampirella but Talisa Soto was cast instead because producers felt she had a higher name at the time. Wynorski felt Soto's breasts were too small for the costume.