"Anak Perawan di Sarang Penjamun" was produced beginning in 1962. At the time tensions between leftist and rightist movements, both in politics and the arts, were reaching a high. The Communist Party of Indonesia-allied arts group Lekra would call for the Sukarno government to block films by non-Lekra filmmakers as anti-revolutionary. After a press screening on 26 February 1964, "Anak Perawan di Sarang Penjamun" was challenged by Lekra; a review in "Warta Bhakti" considered the film to "betrayal the [Indonesian people's] struggle", owing to the film's pro-Malay sentiment during the ongoing confrontation with Malaysia. However, the Indonesian film historian Salim Said suggests that the film was condemned not because of its plot, but because of Alsijahbana's alliance to the Socialist Party of Indonesia.