Written by Gene L. Coon and directed by Don Siegel, it is the second Hollywood adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's 1927 short story of the same title, following the 1946 version.

[2] Hitmen Charlie and Lee enter a school for the blind and shoot the unresistant Johnny North multiple times, killing him.

Tempted by the missing money, Charlie and Lee visit Miami to interview Johnny's former mechanic, Earl Sylvester.

Charlie and Lee approach a former member of Browning's crew, who reveals (in a flashback) after the crash, Sheila found Johnny working as a mechanic.

To avoid an ambush, Charlie and Lee go to the hotel hours earlier than agreed, but a clerk spots them and calls Browning.

[3] The Killers was intended to be one of the early made-for-TV movies as part of a Project 120 series of films that did not reach the airwaves.

After Cassavetes was signed to play the race car driver, director Don Siegel found out the actor could barely drive.

The song "Too Little Time", composed by Mancini with lyrics by Don Raye as the love theme for The Glenn Miller Story, was sung by Nancy Wilson.

One of the earliest of the iconic American sportscars built by Carroll Shelby, it has one of the longest screentimes of any Hollywood movie.

[citation needed] Film critic J. Hoberman writing in The New York Times regarded Siegel’s The Killers as a "more vivid, streamlined and callous” adaption of the Hemingway short story than director Robert Siodmak's 1946 version.

Thanks to Marvin’s sleek, snub-nosed menace and the edgy thrill-seeking projected by Angie Dickinson’s classy moll, the movie exudes a cynical Rat Pack cool…The shock opener has the two relentless hit men (Lee Marvin and Clu Gulager, in matching shades and sharkskin suits) hunting their prey (John Cassavetes) in a school for the blind; their mission is accomplished amid a crowd of witnesses, none of whom can see.

The consensus reads: "Though it can't best Robert Siodmak's classic 1946 version, Don Siegel's take on the Ernest Hemingway story stakes out its own violent territory, and offers a terrifically tough turn from Lee Marvin.

It is deeply pessimistic: everyone is compromised either through their associations, occupations or their pasts.” - Biographer Judith M. Kass in Don Seigel: The Hollywood Professions, Volume 4 (1975)[10] Film critic Judith M. Kass explains the ironic significance of the opening setting for The Killers—a school for the blind: The sightless students provide a clue to the film’s symbolic stance: that none of the protagonists are able to "see" the situation they are in nor the fateful course ahead of them.

[11]Kass, commenting on the mass liquidation that marks the film’s climax writes: "In every case, sticking together or relying on one another might have changed the outcome for each.