Henry B. Walthall was initially attached to star in The Scoffer, as announced in a 29 November 1919 Motion Picture News brief. By the time filming began in January 1920, he had been replaced by James Kirkwood. In addition to shooting at Brunton Studios in Hollywood, CA, location filming was done in Santa Cruz, CA, according to items in the 16 January 1920 Los Angeles Times and 25 January 1920 [Fresno, CA] Fresno Morning Republican. Exteriors in Santa Cruz were filmed in a redwood forest, where Allan Dwan directed a scene in which an actual redwood tree was set to be struck by artificial lightning, rigged by the film crew via a system of electrical wires connected to a power line. Los Angeles Times listed members of the film company who traveled to Santa Cruz, including James P. Hogan , whose role was not specified but who may have served as assistant director; cameraman Glenn McWilliams; and Jean Smith, whose role was not specified. An image in the 17 July 1920 issue of Picture Show depicted Dwan hand-etching electric currents onto film frames for The Scoffer, suggesting that the artificial lightning experiment may not have worked or needed to be enhanced. In an interview with Dwan in the 1997 Peter Bogdanovich book Who the Devil Made It, Dwan remembered: "I took a sharp pushpin and, starting backward from the explosion, I scratched the emulsion a little bit on one frame--maybe an eighth of an inch in the dark sky above the tree. And I went on scratching through a series of frames simulating the lightning that way through the dark sky. We made a dupe negative from the print I'd used, and from that we were able to make our prints."
A news brief in the 13 May 1920 New York Daily News indicated that location shooting also took place in the Los Angeles, CA, courtroom where a criminal referred to as the “American Bluebeard” had been tried. Principal photography was completed by early February 1920, as noted in the 6 February 1920 Los Angeles Times.
The 22 May 1920 Motion Picture News announced that Mayflower Photoplay Corp. officials had just seen a pre-release viewing of the film, which was initially scheduled for release on 6 September 1920. The opening was delayed until 15 November 1920, according to the 10 July 1920 Moving Picture World. An advertisement for the Chicago, IL, opening during the week of 22 November 1920 ran in that day’s Chicago Tribune.
According to the Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Survival Database, this film is extant.