When Joey Lawrence came in to read for the lead role in the film, his parents suggested to writer/director Paul Golding that he should consider casting Lawrence's younger brother Matthew Lawrence in the smaller part of neighbor Stevie. Matthew was cast as Stevie after he nailed Stevie's curbside speech at his audition.
The original rough cut of this film was two hours long. Writer/director Paul Golding thought it dragged on for too long and cut multiple scenes from it to tighten up the run time to a much shorter one hour and 35 minutes. Deleted scenes included David in Colorado with his mother before heading to Los Angeles and David and Ellen in a conversation near some electronic transmission lines; Ellen relates a story from her childhood about how the tract housing cropped up in her neighborhood once these big power lines were put in.
The film was completed one day early on principal shooting and $1,000,000.00 under its budget of $6,000,000.00.
Earlier titles for this film were "House," "Tract" and "Currents."
A test screening of this film for Columbia executives went well. After the screening, David Picker told writer/director Paul Golding to feel his hands, which were covered with sweat from the tension. Picker intended to release Pulse as a 70mm print for the New York and Los Angeles markets to build momentum before rolling it out nationwide as Columbia's big summer 1988 release. However, Picker and Puttnam were soon out the door at Columbia, and incoming head Dawn Steel ordered the release of whatever they had ready to go into theaters between January and March 1988. A dispute erupted from the producers of Pulse, claiming that Columbia Pictures had dumped their film. Rather than a national release, Columbia gave Pulse a regional release in March of 1988 in 125 theaters in Oklahoma and Texas without much push for advertising. Golding, along with executive producer William McEuen and producer Patricia Stallone, accused new president Dawn Steel of having a bias against the remaining releases put into the Columbia slate under outgoing president David Puttnam.