The production's obsession with authenticity extended right down to the same barber who used to shave Benito Mussolini's head being hired to shave Rod Steiger's, the actor who played him.
The movie was banned in Italy in 1982. Then Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti said of this that this movie was "damaging to the honor of the (Italian) Army." It has also been alleged that it was banned in Italy because the Italian Government maintained that this movie was defamatory. This movie was first broadcast on Italian television by Sky Italy on June 11, 2009 during the official state visit of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, who had financed this movie.
The Gaddafi regime in Libya loaned the production 5,000 military personnel to portray Bedouin fighters and Italian soldiers. It also provided this movie with its complete cooperation.
This movie cost approximately $35,000,000, but only managed to gross about $1,000,000, making it one of the largest financial disasters in movie history. It was notorious within the movie industry for the sheer magnitude of the amount of money it lost. It sits alongside several other big money losers of the early 1980s, such as Heaven's Gate - Das Tor zum Himmel (1980), Inchon (1981), Tanz in den Wolken (1981), and Hebt die Titanic (1980).
Research for this movie, which took a year and a half, was made a little easier by the fact that Benito Mussolini, who was obsessed with propaganda, had virtually every aspect of his Libyan campaign captured on film.