The faces of most of the cast were not visible on screen, for many of the actors wore costumes with full head coverings sculpted to resemble various species of birds, including a sparrow, eagle, dove, owl, wren, stork, bluebird, robin, linnet, and crow.

While the short was identified upon its release as a comedy, it was also characterized in several contemporary reviews as a morality lesson and ideal photoplay for "juvenile" audiences.

[6] According to reviews in 1911 trade publications, the film began with scenes of a group of boys fishing by a pond in a wooded area known as "Boyland".

A flock of birds now forms a "death march" to escort the condemned boy to the chopping block, where the Crow, Birdland's executioner, is holding a large axe.

[6][7] Not one of the performers is credited in reviews of the film, in plot summaries, or in Powers' advertisements for the production published in trade journals and papers in 1911.

In September 1911, when Powers Moving Picture Company distributed its split-reel copies of Lost in a Hotel and An Old-Time Nightmare, this comedy-fantasy comprised the latter half of all the shared reels released.

There is a great field for pictures of child life and the supply of them is all too scarce...Juvenile productions have been done before, but we find it incumbent upon us to applaud the novelty of the film in question.

Powers Moving Picture Company continued producing films as a single, independent studio for only seven months after the release of An Old-Time Nightmare.

[13][e] It is more likely, however, that subsequent studio managers deemed this short and its split-reel companion Lost in a Hotel to be inconsequential releases by a short-lived, secondary production company and were discarded or perhaps were simply left unattended and allowed to decay and disintegrate over time.