Trivia: During the course of the story, the Vette goes from being red, then painted gold, and finally back to red again. The producers actually had two cars, one red and the other gold, custom made before production began. This was to help speed up the filming. During the course of filming, both cars were stolen, and two more, another red one and another gold one were hastily made to finish production. The original two were shortly recovered, and all four were used as displays at various movie theaters across the country when the film premiered.
Trivia: The Chetniks were not one coherent group, as portrayed in the movie. There were in fact two opposing fractions: the first fought alongside the partisans, the others - founded by Kosta Pecanac (the featured group) cooperated with the Germans. Despite their public enmity, though, they still maintained good relations with each other, one of the facts which led to great confusion about the Chetniks among the Allies - probably the reason why they are portrayed here solely as 'bad guys'.
Trivia: Tony Lo Bianco plays Richard Gere's father in the movie, even though in real life he's only 13 years older than Gere.
Trivia: Longtime Hollywood film composer Leonard Rosenman scored the soundtrack of this 1978 Ralph Bakshi animated film, which was not a particular box office success. Seven years later, Leonard Rosenman recycled portions of the Lord of the Rings soundtrack when he also scored the soundtrack of "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home"; in fact, Star Trek IV's stirring title theme music is the same music as Lord of the Ring's final battle fanfare, note-for-note.
Trivia: During production, Burt Kwouk (Kato) was arrested by the police in Hong Kong after they saw him run out of a hotel and jump on a scooter to pursue the criminals. It took him several hours to convince the police that he was only doing it for a movie.
Trivia: The film's music score used French horns to create the sound of bees humming.
Trivia: Sandy Duncan has a fear of real cats, so fake cats had to be used when she handles Jake in the film.
Trivia: Kenneth Williams initially turned down the role of Emile Prevert as he considered the script "offensive." But after numerous rewrites, he changed his mind.
Trivia: Shelley Winters and Annie Potts appeared together on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson several years after making this film, and Winters had no recollection of filming the graveyard scene with Potts despite spending 7-10 days on it. Potts had to describe the scene to Winters in order to trigger her memory.
Trivia: In this film Gregory Peck is attacked by large vicious dogs, dogs that can be trained to attack and kill; and in the film "The Omen", again Gregory Peck is attacked by very (or the same) vicious dogs.
Trivia: Dick Miller plays the Mayor Buck Gardner, who serves much the same plot purpose as the Mayor Larry Vaughn in the first two JAWS films, in that he insists on keeping the beaches open and dismisses all danger signs. Dick Miller would go on to appear in every single movie ever directed by Joe Dante, right up until Miller's death in 2019.