The film was produced by Thomas Clyde and Gareth Wigan with cinematography by Michael Reed and Larry Pizer.

In the seventeenth century,[1] pirate captain Ras Mohammed, accompanied by his incompetent Irish cook Dick Scratcher and three crewmen, buries three chests of treasure on an unnamed island.

After seeing off the British Navy by posing as Portuguese fishermen suffering the "red plague", the pirates sail to Algiers, where Jeremiah is taken prisoner.

The film ends with Scratcher buried up to his neck in sand, while Billy Bombay is tied to a tree, and the two shout insults at each other.

[6] Sellers' onetime Goon Show colleague Spike Milligan appears halfway through the film and worked on revisions to the script.

"[12] Peter Sellers arrived on location displaying strange behaviour, attributed to the end of his relationship with Liza Minnelli.

[14] Milligan rewrote the script, but Sellers did not turn up for the first day of filming the new scenes, claiming he was too ill to work.

On one occasion he was rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack, only for Medak to spot newspaper photographs of Sellers dining with Princess Margaret in London two days later.

[15][16] Sellers had personally invited British cinematographer Larry Pizer to shoot the film, only to later fire him after a party once production had commenced.

"[9] After the final scene was filmed, involving Sellers and Milligan both being physically restrained, the crew forced them to listen to a song detailing the production's woes.

[17] Medak says after he attended a private screening with Sellers and Milligan: “We all just wanted to kill ourselves.”[1] The film was shot in 1973 and has a copyright notice in the opening credits for 1974.

Variety wrote: "Ghost In The Noonday Sun arrives as a genuine surprise release (albeit on pay TV) not because of its quality but rather because of its very existence.

However, perhaps because of pay's hunger for product, it now surfaces as an unpretentious comedy of modest merits unlikely to stir cries of revival or mainstream playoff.

...The original script by Evan Jones appears to be quite thin on tension and one imagines both Sellers and Spike Milligan (credited with additional dialog), as a rival bumbling pirate chief, camping and padding the antics during filming.

...Filmed in Cyprus, the location work is quite handsome and remaining technical credits outshine the artistic components of the picture.

Acting is largely uninspired and frantic with the story finally running out of steam rather than reaching a satisfying conclusion.

The film originated with Paul Iacovou, Managing Director of Vegas Media in Cyprus, who got Medak involved.