The character of the corrupt Inspector Truscott is generally regarded as playwright Joe Orton's revenge on the police force. He had once served a short prison sentence for defacing library books. The character was, as he conceded, also based to an extent on the notorious Detective Sergeant Harold Challenor, whom he never met, but who had been at the center of a great scandal in 1963. Challenor was found to have planted evidence to ensure a conviction in several cases, including those of innocent people. The fictitious Truscott even uses a catchphrase of Challenor's.
This was the first movie to be re-edited by the BBC for television showings because of bad language. Its first television airing was in the summer of 1976.
When Joe Orton's original play was first staged in London in 1967, it was subjected to many alterations by order of Lord Chamberlain's Office, the British theatrical censorship body of the day (abolished the following year). Several lines were cut or re-written, and the censors also insisted that the dead body of "Mrs. McLeavy", who is never seen alive in the play, should be represented by a dummy rather than an actress, an odd request, as using a dummy would have been standard anyway, and, indeed, several productions of the play have avoided actually showing the body at all. When this movie was made, the adapters took great pleasure in restoring all of the deleted or altered lines, without exception, and "Mrs. McLeavy", as a special credit announces at the end of the movie, was played by June Marlow, the ex-wife of Spike Milligan.
The Broadway production of "Loot" written by Joe Orton opened at the Biltmore Theater in New York City on March 18, 1968, and ran for twenty-two performances.
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