The film went into production under the working title "Sinbad at the World's End". The live action was filmed in Almería, Spain; Malta; and Jordan. The treasury house of Al Khazneh at Petra makes an appearance in one scene. Several castles near Mdina, Malta, were used as backdrops for the film and inserted using triple-exposure, and scenes of ships at sea were filmed in a huge water tank there. Most interior sequences were shot on a soundstage of Verona Studios near Madrid (Spain). Principal filming took place between June and October 1975. Some sets were based on previous films in a wide variety of genres. The massive doors and deadbolt to the ancient shrine of the Arimaspi in the arctic were based on a similar set of doors in 1933's "King Kong". The interior of the shrine was very similar to the shrine set in the 1935 motion picture "She", complete with steep pyramidal steps, a vortex of light coming from above, and a Smilodon encased in ice. The power source of the shrine of Arimaspi was actually made of dental floss. Harryhausen and the crew mounted dozens of floss fiber strands around a cylinder-like construction made of gauze, and this was mounted on a revolving mechanism and put in front of black velvet. It was then pulled out of focus to create shimmering and an inky light was run up and down the system to give it reflections.