Tenney's original intent was to release the film - then known as "Zombies" - on a double feature with "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster". "I Eat Your Skin" was produced on a $120,000 budget, but did not find a distributor and sat unreleased for six years. Tenney eventually sold the film to Gross for $40,000. Film critic and psychometrist Bryan Senn notes that "Even in 1964, shooting a horror film in black-and-white and expecting to find a decent distributor was an act of pure optimism." Senn adds that, when Tenney was asked in an interview what he thought of "I Eat Your Skin", he "laughingly admitted, 'I didn't like it very much; I thought it was sort of silly.'"