According to Cathy Moriarty, Donald Cammell was so attentive to the dialogue that neither her or David Keith were allowed to ad-lib during their scenes. Moriarty has spoken of the difficulty she had with this at first, as it was the first time ever that a director hadn't allowed her to improvise.
When the movie was threatened with an X-rating, Marlon Brando, a close friend of director Donald Cammell, wrote a lengthy appeal to MPAA to bring it down to R.
Donald Cammell, fascinated by Apache legends, came up with the film's title: the phrase "white of the eye" described those who look too closely into the eye of violence and how being a witness leaves a mark upon the viewer.
The climatic chase sequence was shot in an abandoned copper mine in Globe, Arizona.