To save money, the Cannon Movie Tales were shot two or three at a time. This movie was shot simultaneously with Beauty and the Beast (1987). This wasn't the best of situations in that often the two crews would be competing for limited equipment, costumes, and sets.
The snow is a mixture of Dead Sea salt and falling paper.
Despite the German setting, this movie occasionally features geishas, with the queen's disguise and Snow White's doll as a kid.
Part of the "Cannon Movie Tales" series, nine feature films based on classic fairy tales that were produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus for the Cannon Group in the mid 1980s. All of the films featured well-known actors from the U.S. and U.K. and were shot on-location in Israel. Although the series was originally conceived to have sixteen films, production stopped at nine when Rumpelstiltskin (1987) flopped at the box office, and the remaining films were sent directly to video. Despite their commercial failure, the Movie Tales garnered a cult following after the Disney Channel began airing them as "Storybook Cinema" in 1988. The nine films in the series are: The Frog Prince (1986), Sleeping Beauty (1987), The Emperor's New Clothes (1987), Rumpelstiltskin (1987), Snow White (1987), Beauty and the Beast (1987), Hansel and Gretel (1987), Puss in Boots (1988), and Red Riding Hood (1987).
In 2008, composer Arik Rudich sued MGM for 1.9 million dollars, claiming that they ignored his copyright and failed to negotiate any royalties for the use of his score on the 2005 DVD. The case was dismissed in 2009 when Rudich and MGM failed to conduct a court-ordered settlement conference.