- Alternative Character Interpretation: Was Books wanting to kill for sport one last time or were his final three victims legitimate bad guys?
- Award Snub: John Wayne believed that his performance would gain him an Academy Award nomination, even putting ads in Variety. He blamed the studio's lack of promoting the film on his failure to get nominated.
- Funny Moments: A weaselly reporter shows up and offers to write an exploitative piece of yellow journalism on Books, who responds by sticking a gun barrel in the guy's mouth and curtly advising him to "Pretend this is a nipple."
- He Really Can Act: John Wayne's final performance is one of his very best.
- One-Scene Wonder: John Carradine's cameo as Hezekiah Beckum the undertaker.
- Questionable Casting: There was some opposition to John Wayne's casting, as the producers believed that he was be too old to be a gunfighter at 68 (the character in the book was in his fifties).
- Retroactive Recognition: A gunslinger John Wayne shoots in the head may be more recognizable decades later as Jonathan Goldsmith, The Most Interesting Man in the World.
- Tear Jerker:
- "I'm just an old man scared of the dark".
- The ending.
- Hell, most of the film. The sight of John Wayne, an icon of masculinity, as a frail, sick, dying old man is enough to make grown men cry. The fact that this was his final film doesn't help at all.
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