The cyclops was given satyr-like legs so audiences would know it was not a man in a costume.
This was the first feature using stop-motion animation effects to be completely shot in color.
Initially, Ray Harryhausen wanted Miklós Rózsa or Max Steiner to score this film. Charles H. Schneer persuaded Harryhausen to hire Bernard Herrmann instead. Herrmann's score was so well received, and he worked so well with Schneer and Harryhausen, he ended up scoring three more of their films: I viaggi di Gulliver (1960), L'isola misteriosa (1961), and Gli Argonauti (1963). Rózsa scored Il viaggio fantastico di Sinbad (1973).
With one scene left to shoot, Kerwin Mathews came down with a 107-degree fever. Producer Charles H. Schneer kindly asked him, "Would you come and do this one shot?" Kerwin agreed to do the scene, in which Sinbad steers his ship through a storm (with everyone else on board in agony from the sounds of screaming demons on a nearby island). In the middle of the day, he was propped up against the ship's wheel, and the fire department siphoned water from the local harbor, pelting him and the rest of the cast on the ship with water, dead rats and other things. A still from this scene was on the cover of the film's original 1958 Colpix Records LP soundtrack by Bernard Herrmann, something Kerwin was very proud of. Varese Sarabande Records reissued the album with the same cover in 1980, in stereo.
The single skeleton which duels Sinbad in this film was the prototype for the half dozen skeleton warriors fought by the crew of the Argo in Jason and the Argonauts.