Who’s That Knocking at My Door? marked the feature film debuts of writer-director Martin Scorsese and actor Harvey Keitel. The project was originated when Martin Scorsese, then a student at New York University, submitted the script to his professor, Haig Manoogian, as a potential producing project. An article in the 28 Aug 1968 Var noted that producer Joseph Weill, a practicing lawyer, was also one of Manoogian’s students. Manoogian reportedly provided $5,000 in seed money before raising the additional $65,000 needed from independent investors. Most cast and crew members agreed to work for deferred salaries on the low-budget effort, and Var stated that, aside from the three producers, no one who worked on the picture was over the age of twenty-five. Shooting took place over a two-year period in New York City and Copake, NY.
       Under the title I Call First, the film was initially screened on 15 Nov 1967 at the Chicago International Film Festival, as noted in Roger Ebert’s review in the 17 Nov 1967 Chicago Sun-Times. Some eight months later, a 24 Jul 1968 Var news brief announced that Joseph Brenner Associates had acquired distribution rights for the U.S. and Canada, and a Sep 1969 release was planned. However, on 26 Mar 1969, a Var item reported that the picture, now titled Who’s That Knocking at My Door?, had recently premiered on 14 Mar 1969 at Chicago, IL’s 3 Penny Cinema. It opened without a rating from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), as it had not yet been submitted to the organization. By the time it was released in New York City on 8 Sep 1969, the MPAA had rated the picture “R” (barring anyone under sixteen-years-old unless accompanied by a parent or guardian).
       Critical reception was largely positive, although the 10 Sep 1968 DV described Scorsese’s debut “as more of a class exercise than a commercially sound accomplishment” and criticized an “extended sex scene” as exploitative. The scene had reportedly been added since the picture’s Nov 1967 unveiling at the Chicago International Film Festival. In the Chicago Sun-Times review following that first screening, Roger Ebert praised the film as “a great moment in American movies” and stated that one bar scene and another party scene were “among the most evocative descriptions of American life I have ever seen.” The picture was re-titled to J.R. for its opening in Los Angeles, CA, on 11 Feb 1970. The 10 Feb 1970 LAT review likened it to Delbert Mann’s Marty (1955, see entry), and stated, “We can welcome Martin Scorsese to the ranks of genuinely promising young talents.”
       Although the onscreen credits contain a 1968 copyright statement for Trimod Films, Inc., the picture was not registered with the copyright office.