Trivia

Oscar Homolka replaced Jack Hawkins in the role of General Golitsyn that was originally intended for Hawkins before his sudden death in 1973; ironically, this is Homolka's final film

This movie was nominated for a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress for Sylvia Syms, but lost out to Ingrid Bergman for Murder on the Orient Express (1974).

Dame Julie Andrews once said of this movie in mid 1973: "This is a nice film. It's just right for my comeback."

The old black-and-white espionage movie seen playing on the television was Sir Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). Dame Julie Andrews worked with Sir Alfred on Torn Curtain (1966).

This espionage movie utilized two key major creative personnel who had been synonymous with the official James Bond film franchise: John Barry, who composed the score, was a composer of many of the Bond movie's scores up until The Living Daylights (1987), while Maurice Binder, who designed the opening titles sequence, had done the same for most of the Bond movies up until Licence to Kill (1989). Also, Terence Plummer, who played a K.G.B. Agent in this movie, portrayed a Beirut thug in the same year's Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), and later, one of Elliot Carver's thugs in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997), both parts uncredited. About seven other crew members worked on this movie and The Man with the Golden Gun.