Was added to the video nasty list and remained there throughout the panic. The banned video gained attention due to its pre-cert video cover featuring bloody surgeon's hands holding a scalpel, with the caption "Warning: this film contains scenes of extreme and explicit violence." The film is, today, now uncut in the UK. It is very, very tame by modern standards, and, ironically, pretty mild even for the early 1980's when it when banned.
Features footage of an actual human heart transplant operation in two separate scenes.
The film is a remake of director René Cardona's Las luchadoras contra el médico asesino (1963) ("The Wrestling Women vs. the Killer Doctor", U.S. title: "Doctor of Doom"), the first in a series of films blending elements of the "lucha libre" and horror genres.
Norma Lazareno's first nude scenes and the only time she shows her breasts onscreen. Both shower scenes were shot in the same day and then edited into different points of the film. Lazareno said years later that she agreed to film the nudity in order to be cast in a major role. She was nervous enough when it came time to strip, but to make matters worse, suddenly there were a lot more male "crew" on set than normal watching her. They shot her first shower scene that takes place before she answers the door to talk to her boyfriend. Then the director came to her and said he wanted to shoot her again where she is showering, steps out, and lies on a table to talk on a phone. That would replace a scene later in the script where she's dressed and talking on the phone. She ended up spending half a day naked on set surrounded by men. The director also talked her into filming both scenes with full frontal nudity without using a towel to cover herself so her pubic hair was showing. She didn't want to, but agreed anyway because she felt she had no choice. Later she learned from someone else that there was no way they would use the full frontal shots because censors wouldn't allow it. That meant the director probably just wanted to see her walking around stark naked for his own enjoyment. She always worried that that footage would show up somewhere but it never did.
Anna Thomson's debut.