 The film is based on the 1922 Broadway melodrama of the same name by Thomas F. Fallon, which in turn was based on the story "House of Fear" by Wadsworth Camp, the father of the writer Madeleine L'Engle.Conceived as a followup to Leni's wildly successful 1927 production "The Cat and the Canary" (also starring La Plante), the film was produced by Universal Pictures under Carl Laemmle.Principal photography took place in Los Angeles in the summer of 1928 on sets recycled from Universal's "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925).