Michael Berryman also had issues with Director Ruggero Deodato as he had to stay in the water for a particular scene for five hours straight in which the local people were stating that Berryman was "crazy" for being in the river for that long period of time. Berryman had asked Deodato prior to the scene in question, questions if there was anything in the water that would be dangerous to him physically and Deodato stated "No". Berryman discovered after getting out of the water after that long period of time that there were electric eels in the river and he then angrily grabbed and threw the director off the pier and into the water and telling him "Now you stand in it now".
Based on an unmade Wes Craven script called "Marimba". The story goes that after financing for that film fell through, the producers refused to give Craven his script back and this film was what resulted.
The scene in which Willie Aames finds his abductor tied up and is eventually ripped apart by the two trees splitting in half had the props crew throw the pig guts that had been sitting there for two to three days after Aames had warned Ruggero Deodato not to throw anything at him during this scene. It hit Aames in the face around his mouth, he then angrily went after Deodato to beat the crap out of him and literally chased him into the jungle before the cast and crew had to subdue and calm Aames down.
Willie Aames bought and paid for six pairs of the Mickey Mouse shirt that he wears in the film. The reason he wore the shirt was because he felt his character needed something to remind him of back home and surprisingly, was never told anything by Disney in regards to the shirt.
This was originally filmed in direct-sound English. This was very rare for Italian movies at that time, but necessary due to the large number of American actors. When Anchor Bay released the uncut version on DVD, the scenes were dubbed into Italian with English subtitles. Apparently the original soundtrack could not be located. The scenes are in Italian because the English-export edition and the Italian edition were edited with different shots. The English-export edition (released in theaters in the US) used "cleaner" versions shot at the same time as the "gorier" versions. It was not a matter of cutting down the gorier shots to make them less gory, as the producers actually filmed two different versions of the same scenes. Anchor Bay was a bit sloppy putting together its release, as one shot with Karen Black dubbed into Italian can be found in English on earlier VHS releases.
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