The story behind "Crazy Old Woman," written by H. Scott Hughes, is loosely inspired by a ghost story his late Grandmother Scheberle used to jestfully tell about an antique crank phone in her kitchen. She was an avid fan of Hitchcock, Agatha Christie, and ghost stories.
Popular Vancouver juice maker TrueBlue helped sponsor the production's craft services, garnering a subtle product placement within the film.
Art Director Karol Pivon utilized a mixture of the actors' cleared family photos, and new photo sessions with them, to hang throughout the Hanson home and appear in a photo album seen in the film.
Though belonging to different genres, "Crazy Old Woman" and "Food for the Gods" take place in the same fictional universe. The connection is what the writer of both films calls the Hanson Family Curse. The Hanson Family, as portrayed in "Crazy Old Woman," meet a shocking fate in present day Vancouver. In sci-fi film "Food for the Gods," granddaughter Dr. Denise Hanson meets a strikingly similar fate on an alien world, fifty years later (in an otherwise unrelated tale).
A similar crossover nearly took place between "Crazy Old Woman" and a film written and directed by Jonathon Corbiere, "See Through Me." In COW, Nicki Burke plays fashion magazine editor Terri Hanson. The protagonist of Corbiere's film also works for a fashion magazine and turns to a co-worker for advice. Hughes and Corbiere considered that it might be fun to reveal Nicki Burke reprising her role as Terri Hanson. Ironically, that co-worker was indeed played by Nicki Burke, although portraying a different character. A further irony, Nicki's male co-star in "See Through Me" is none other than her COW husband, Dan Richardson.