Actor David Hemmings once said of this film during filming: "This crew is the best I've worked with in five years. What is happening out here in Australia is very exciting and I plan to become involved...I thought the script for 'Thirst ' was very commercial and had the potential for international success".
Actor Henry Silva once said of being cast in this movie: "I love traveling. That and the script were the reasons I decided to come to Australia".
This film was Australia's first serious vampire movie of the modern Australian cinema. However, it should be noted that vampire characters did actually appear in Bruce Beresford's Barry McKenzie Holds His Own (1974) where Donald Pleasence starred as Count Erich von Plasma. Moreover, Ânsia (1979) is not the only ever modern Australian vampire movie as Outback Vampires (1987) was later made and released.
The national Australian government agency, the Department of Civil Aviation, banned a stunt where one of the film's villains falls to his death from a helicopter, landing on a number of stobey-pole electric cable wires whereupon he is vividly electrocuted. However, this scene still appears in the film.
The estate premises of the headquarters of the secret vampire cult the Hyma Brotherhood was portrayed by an artists' colony north of Melbourne in Victoria known as Montsalvat.