The second Australian film to be based on the real-life British criminal John Babbacombe Lee, whose attempted execution by hanging failed three times, before his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
This version is a re-make of Philip Lytton's 1912 film, The Life Story of John Lee: or, the Man They Could Not Hang, for which Arthur Sterry and fellow producer Frederick Haldane had held the distribution rights.
Contemporary reports indicate that this version of the story included additional scenes of John Lee's childhood and was significantly more pious than Lytton's original.
The story of John Babbacombe Lee was filmed again in 1934 by Raymond Longford.
