The Outfit

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• Selected by Quentin Tarantino for the First Quentin Tarantino Film Fest in Austin, TX, 1996.
• Joe Don Baker's character mentions that his diner (which we see at the start of the film) has a location in Presque Isle. The equivalent character in the novel this films adapts, Handy McKay, also has a diner in a town called Presque Isle. However, that Presque Isle refers to the actual town in Maine (McKay mentions the location in Maine), while this film seems to take place in the Southwest.
• Brian Garfield, in an intro to a reprint of the novel this film is based on, notes that it was originally written by director John Flynn as a period piece, intending to be set in the postwar 1940s. That's why such "film noir" veterans such as Elisha Cook Jr., Richard Jaeckel, Marie Windsor and Jane Greer appear in it. The studio, however, decided it would be too expensive to shoot a period picture, so the script was superficially updated, the World War II vets became Vietnam vets, and actors like Robert Ryan, Karen Black and Sheree North joined the cast. The result was that the story was restored to its original conception (the series this book was based on was written and set in the then contemporary 1960s and 1970s). Had the period piece idea gone through, this would have represented a rare case of backdating a character.