The film marked Maxwell Shane's directorial debut, and the feature film debut of DeForest Kelley (1920--1999), a prolific character actor in both motion pictures and television who was best known for his role as "Dr. Leonard 'Bones' McCoy" on the television series Star Trek and its subsequent feature film adaptations.
Director Maxwell Shane wrote the screenplay for and directed a 1956 remake of his story, "Nightmare", in which a murder takes place under hypnosis and the framed murderer thinks he was dreaming. That film was released by United Artists and starred Edward G. Robinson playing the cop, with Kevin McCarthy and Connie Russell. Frank Paul Sylos, who did the art direction for "Fear in the Night," also handled the art direction for "Nightmare".
The failure of the original copyright holder to renew the film's copyright resulted in it falling into public domain, meaning that virtually anyone could duplicate and sell a VHS/DVD copy of the film. Therefore, many of the versions of this film available on the market are either severely (and usually badly) edited and/or of extremely poor quality, having been duped from second - or third-generation (or more) copies of the film.
The film's original title was "Nightmare". It was shot in ten days. It was also known as "Dead of Night". Although the title of Cornell Woolrich's story is shown as "Nightmare" on the screen, it was first published in 1941 as "And So to Death." It was published as "Nightmare" in Woolrich's 1943 collection "I Wouldn't Be in Your Shoes". William Irish, the onscreen literary name, was Woolrich's pseudonym.
The Hotel Commodore in Los Angeles is still in business in 2024 as the Commodore Regency apartment building. The external fire escape ladders were removed many years ago.