Director Samuel Fuller said that he wanted to make this picture because, unlike many filmmakers in Hollywood, he did not see the real Jesse James as a "folk hero" or someone to be admired. Fuller saw him as a cold-blooded psychopath who shot down women, children, the elderly, the helpless (his gang once stopped a Union hospital train and executed every wounded federal soldier on it) and, in Fuller's words, Bob Ford "did something that should have been done quite a bit earlier in the life of Jesse Woodson James".
Directorial debut of Samuel Fuller.
Shot in ten days.
The character played by Robin Short, identified in the cast merely as "Troubadour," is obviously based on the real-life traveling musician Billy Gashade, who shortly after James' death wrote the "Ballad of Jesse James" sung by Short in the film and also used as a recurring theme by composer Albert Glasser.
The skilled gunman who attracts younger opponents who want to defeat him is very commonplace in the world of westerns. This movie is said to be the one that started this trend.