The film was screened at the 1984 London Film Festival. At the time, Lauri Törhönen and Riitta Viiperi planned to make another film together in the following summer. The film, described as "Finnish Bonnie and Clyde", never materialized.
The story is set in a fictional Kaihola Hospital in the fictional municipality of the same name. The psychiatric ward was built entirely on a vacant barrack in Katajanokka, Helsinki. The principal photography lasted 50 days from August to early November of 1983. The film premiered in February 17, 1984, the same day as the Finnish premiere of Gorky Park (1983) (where Lauri Törhönen worked as a second assistant director in the Finnish sequences).
The first feature film by director Lauri Törhönen. Before "Palava enkeli", he spent ten years making films and documentaries for Finnish television.
The story is inspired by a letter sent by psychologist Hannele Törrönen to director Lauri Törhönen while Törrönen was working in the psychiatric hospital in Kellokoski, Tuusula.