The following acknowledgments appear at the end of the film: “Ithaca Productions owes a special debt of gratitude to The Mexican Film Institute; Prof. Lauro Ortega, Governor of the State of Morelos; Prof. Moisé Ortíz, Mayor of Yautepec, Morelos; the Hotel Hacienda Cocoyoc for the use of its facilities in the filming of the Red Cross Ball; the people of Yautepec, Emetepec, and Cuernavaca, Morelos. Under the Volcano was shot entirely in the state of Morelos, Mexico.”
       A 23 Aug 1983 NYT article reported that author Malcolm Lowry was employed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, writing a screenplay of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, (1962, see entry) when he tried to interest executives in filming his novel Under the Volcano from his own screenplay. However, the studio passed. Instead, actor Zachary Scott optioned the novel in 1962, but when Scott died, Scott's widow sold the film rights to brothers Robert and Raymond Hakim. The Hakims spent $400,000 and began hiring talent when Marjorie Lowry determined that she had been excluded from creative consulting as stipulated in her contract, and filed a lawsuit, withdrawing the brothers’ film rights, according to a 20 Apr 1973 DV article. The 23 Aug 1983 NYT article stated that Hakims’ lost the case in 1973.
       As mentioned in the 20 Apr 1973 DV article, when the Hakims owned the film rights, they chose Alan Bridgers to direct, Richard Burton for the role of “Geoffrey Firmin”, and Richard Chamberlain to play half-brother “Hugh”. According to a 23 Mar 1973 DV news item, their version of the movie would be filmed in Spain. Then, producer Luis Barranco bought the rights and commissioned a treatment from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but a movie was never filmed, according to the 23 Aug 1983 NYT article.
       The 11 Dec 1983 NYT Magazine article reported that directors such as Jules Dassin, Ken Russell, Luis Buñuel, Joseph Losey, and Jerzy Skolimowski had expressed interest in making the film, but went on to other projects. According to a news brief in the 19 Feb 1964 Var, Buñuel had bought the film rights and had planned to make the movie in Mexico with actress Jeanne Moreau.
       Producer Wieland Schulz-Keil, a longtime admirer of Lowry’s novel, bought the film rights in early 1982 and approached director John Huston on the set of Annie (1982, see entry). The novel had long been considered impossible to film because its characters express themselves through considerable “internal dialogues.” According to production notes in AMPAS library files, Huston had been interested in adapting the novel for more than thirty years and had rejected more than twenty potential screenplays. A 10 Jun 1984 NYT article reported that Huston was aware of sixty treatments of the novel and had been sent twenty-five of them.
       As noted in the 11 Dec 1983 NYT Magazine article, screenwriter Guy Gallo had penned two papers on Malcolm Lowry as a Yale University graduate student, and was inspired to write a speculative screenplay. He received additional encouragement from Paul Bluhdorn, a friend from his undergraduate days at Harvard University, who was now a production executive at Paramount Pictures, and the son of Charles Bluhdorn, former head of Gulf & Western, then parent company of Paramount. As events unfolded, it was the producing team of Schulz-Keil and Moritz Borman who delivered Gallo’s script to Huston. Encouraged by the economy of Gallo’s writing, in Jul 1982 Huston teamed with the younger writer in CA for two weeks, during which the men revised the screenplay scene by scene. Later, they moved to Huston’s home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for extensive line-by-line revisions. According to Gallo in the 23 Aug 1983 NYT article, the men spent five months working on the script. The intention of the collaborators was to look for ways to simplify the characters, retain sympathy for the protagonist, replace internal monologues with action, and compress the story into a twenty-four hour timeframe.
       Apart from an arduous process of crafting the right script, the producers Schulz-Keil and Borman met with resistance from “four major studios” that passed on financing the film, according to NYT Magazine. The budget was estimated to be $4.5 million, although the Aug 1983 NYT, Oct 1984 AmCin, and 7 Sep 1984 BAM articles quoted productions costs of “$3 million,” “under $4 million,” and “about $4.7 million,” respectively. A 23 May 1984 Var news item stated that the budget was “around $5 million.”
       According to production notes, principal photography began 8 Aug 1983 in the village of Yautepec de Zaraguza, Mexico, a short car ride from Cuernavaca. The NYT Magazine reported that Huston filmed most of the scenes in sequence, due to the destructive descent of the character, Geoffrey Firmin. Production notes stated that the film was shot in eight locations. Huston chose Yautepec to double for Cuernavaca because its 18th--century architecture had the right feel and could be filmed without additional construction. The town’s central square was used to film the Day of the Dead festivities, and a local hotel was given murals, new doors, and lamps to create the Bella Vista Hotel. A residence known as “the Netzahualcoyotl House” in the older section of Cuernavaca that was once part of an old convent was used as Geoffrey Firmin’s home, while the Red Cross ball was filmed at Cocoyoc, a resort area with a storied history, having once been Spanish explorer Fernando Cortez’s private estate, a Dominican monastery, and a 16th century sugar mill that was destroyed by Emiliano Zapata in 1916 during the Mexican Revolution. Later, the property was converted into a resort. The dining room at Cocoyoc was used to film interiors of the Bella Vista Hotel.
       The Hacienda de San Jose Vista Hermosa, Cortez’s summer palace on the shores of Lake Tequesquitengo, was where the production built a bullring and filmed bullfight sequences. The production chose a site located just outside the village of Metepec to construct El Farolito, a brothel. An actual El Farolito existed in the “red light district of old Cuernavaca,” but it was rejected because of its dilapidated state and the physical surroundings did not match its description in the book.
       The shooting schedule, running from late summer to early fall 1983, prevented production designer Gunther Gerzso from acquiring African marigolds used during the Day of the Dead because the flowers do not bloom naturally until late Oct or early Nov. Instead, Gerzso used 30,000 paper marigolds combined with hothouse-grown marigolds and mubes, a white flower, for the holiday sequences.
       Reviews were mixed. In the 23 Aug 1984 LAT, Charles Champlin praised the film for being “vigorous” and “confident." Richard Schickel’s review in the 25 Jun 1984 Time stated that Huston’s “unselfconscious and objective” style of moviemaking brought clarity to Lowry’s story, and praised Albert Finney’s acting for drawing viewers into a difficult plot. Merrill Shindler agreed that Finney turned in a strong, nuanced performance, but lavished his greatest praise for Huston’s storytelling and his ability to capture “the dreamworld of Mexican life” in an Aug 1984 Los Angeles magazine review. A negative review from David Denby in a 25 Jun 1984 New York article labeled the film “a failure” because Huston had not been able to translate the thoughts of tragic hero, Geoffrey Firmin, into a satisfying cinematic story. Denby found Finney’s performance technically brilliant, but the script only captured a fraction of the symbolism and interior thoughts of Lowry’s novel. In a 10 Aug 1984 Commonweal review, Foster Hirsch described Lowry’s book as “a Mount Everest that filmmakers have wanted to scale.”
       The film received two Academy Award nominations: Albert Finney was nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, while Alex North was nominated for Music (Original Score). The film also received two Golden Globe nominations: Albert Finney for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama, and Jacqueline Bisset for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture.