As in some of his other films, Franju wanted to show the 'insolite' in this film, in his words the fascination for the 'non-event', 'the perception of the unusual that emerges from the everyday'.
Franju described this Spotlight on a Murderer (1961) as 'a film without tenderness', which 'doesn't go very far in terms of violence, because there's no real victim, or even a murderer!'.
The film had a lukewarm reception, and also director Franju was not completely satisfied with the final result. In Cahiers du cinéma, he complained about the meddling of producers, who introduced 'comic elements that made no one laugh' and added irrelevant extra characters to the story.
Franju had envisioned scenes of a group of young horsewomen riding double, yet the producers rejected this idea, allegedly stating 'The public doesn't like lesbians' as reason.