The script drops hints that Heathcliff is really Earnshaw's illegitimate son, either by a mistress or a prostitute, and thus is Cathy's half-brother. While many critics over the years have debated an incestuous subtext in the novel, this was the first film version to be (relatively) open about the issue.
Like Wuthering Heights (1939), this film depicts only the first sixteen chapters concluding with Catherine Earnshaw Linton's death, and omits the trials of her daughter, Hindley's son, and Heathcliff's son.
Judy Cornwell , seen here as the sympathetic housekeeper Nellie, would be featured in a screen version of another Brontë sister's work, Cornwell playing the villainous Mrs Reed in Jane Eyre (1983) which starred Timothy Dalton as Rochester.
AIP had announced a sequel Return to Wuthering Heights but it was not made. Neither were other adaptations of classic novels mooted by the studio, including Camille, The House of Seven Gables, and Tale of Two Cities.