Five Card Stud

Rating:
Summary: A mystery western
Review: A poker game ends in a hanging when one of the players is accused of cheating. Shortly thereafter, the players are murdered one by one. A western with a novel mystery angle, "Five Card Stud" is certainly no classic, but it is an easygoing, thoroughly enjoyable oater with Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum well-matched as adversaries. It is Roddy McDowell, however, who steals the show as the bad seed brother of Katherine Justice.

Rating:
Summary: A mystery western
Review: A poker game ends in a hanging when one of the players is accused of cheating. Shortly thereafter, the players are murdered one by one. A western with a novel mystery angle, "Five Card Stud" is certainly no classic, but it is an easygoing, thoroughly enjoyable oater with Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum well-matched as adversaries. It is Roddy McDowell, however, who steals the show as the bad seed brother of Katherine Justice.

Rating:
Summary: A Missed Opportunity
Review: FIVE CARD STUD is a movie which never quite realizes its potential. It basically has a promising screenplay and a solid core of talented actors in Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Roddy McDowell and Inger Stevens. Katherine Justice and Yaphet Kotto aren't bad either. In one way the film looks like a convenient vehicle to utilize the many talents of Dean Martin, especially the opportunity for him to sing the catchy theme song.

The script is based on a novel by Ray Gaulden. It reminds me somewhat of THE LEAGUE OF FRIGHTENED MEN by Rex Stout. In FIVE CARD STUD a crooked gambler is lynched by a group of angry poker players. Soon thereafter the lynchers begin to be killed one by one by somebody who is obviously seeking vengeance for the mob action. My chief complaints about the movie are that it drags in too many places and it lacks the proper amount of tension.

Henry Hathaway will always be remembered as the director of some great westerns such as THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER and TRUE GRIT. I am afraid that FIVE CARD STUD will be recalled instead as one of his missed opportunities.

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable thriller western
Review: Five Card Stud is a very good mystery western that seems like a thriller or horror movie at times. The movie starts with a lynching of a stranger in the town of Rincon who was cheating at a card game. Soon after, all the men in the mob start turning up dead. No one knows who is responsible for all the grisly murders that keep going on. The story is well told throughout even though the viewer knows who the murderer is almost from the beginning. The mood and musical score contribute to the overall feeling of the movie more as a horror or thriller movie than as a western, but there are still plenty of gunfighters, gun battles, and barroom smoke everywhere.

Dean Martin stars as Van Morgan, the gambler who attempts to stop the lynching but ultimately fails. As the hero, he plays his usual cool self which works in this role. Robert Mitchum plays the preacher who appears in town soon after the lynching. This role is very similar to that of The Night of the Hunter. Yaphet Kotto is very good as George, the bartender and friend of Van Morgan. Roddy McDowall is also excellent as Nick Evers, the leader of the lynch mob. Also starring are Inger Stevens, Denver Pyle, Thelma Ritter and several other familiar western faces. The DVD offers a widescreen presentation which is very good after seeing it mangled on full screen. Very enjoyable murder mystery western with an excellent cast!

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable thriller western
Review: Five Card Stud is a very good mystery western that seems like a thriller or horror movie at times. The movie starts with a lynching of a stranger in the town of Rincon who was cheating at a card game. Soon after, all the men in the mob start turning up dead. No one knows who is responsible for all the grisly murders that keep going on. The story is well told throughout even though the viewer knows who the murderer is almost from the beginning. The mood and musical score contribute to the overall feeling of the movie more as a horror or thriller movie than as a western, but there are still plenty of gunfighters, gun battles, and barroom smoke everywhere.

Dean Martin stars as Van Morgan, the gambler who attempts to stop the lynching but ultimately fails. As the hero, he plays his usual cool self which works in this role. Robert Mitchum plays the preacher who appears in town soon after the lynching. This role is very similar to that of The Night of the Hunter. Yaphet Kotto is very good as George, the bartender and friend of Van Morgan. Roddy McDowall is also excellent as Nick Evers, the leader of the lynch mob. Also starring are Inger Stevens, Denver Pyle, Thelma Ritter and several other familiar western faces. The DVD offers a widescreen presentation which is very good after seeing it mangled on full screen. Very enjoyable murder mystery western with an excellent cast!

Rating:
Summary: Dino and Mitchum: Legends in search of a story...
Review: I saw this fim a number of years ago, and decided I liked it. Mostly, this was because of Dino and Mitchum. Upon a fresh viewing, I found other things to like (Yaphet Kotto's and Roddy McDowall's performances), but I also came away a bit unhappy with the picture.

Despite being helmed by the great Henry Hathaway, and despite having a well-known supporting cast (including Inger Stevens, Denver Pyle, John Anderson, and Whit Bissell), the script just doesn't work. Inger's dialogue seemed particularly out of place for some reason, and you never actually get the sense that she runs a brothel.

Dino only croons on the short opening and closing credits, and the King of Cool is stuck with an unimaginative song to work with. There is a big shootout, and a nightime attack in a livery stable, in both of which Dino has some fair action scenes. Other than that, the movie is on the bland side. The only imaginative visual touch by director Hathaway comes during the livery stable shootout, in which we see the killer escape into a back-lit steam cloud.

Dino is supposed to be a professional gambler, but that never really comes across. He plays a bit of cards now and then, but he could be a plain old cowhand who likes an ocassional cardgame for all we get to see here. A real waste of Dino's talents, though of course he does his best with the role.

Mitchum is great, as always. He plays a fire n' brimstone preacher who packs a Colt 45. The script works against him, but like Dino, he does the best he can.

Roddy McDowall is also in top form as Dino's vengeful rival. His evil schemes help carry the movie along.

Denver Pyle plays a hardscrabble land baron, hardly a challenge for him. Ruth Springford does her best Thelma Ritter impression as saloon owner Mama Malone. Yaphet Kotto plays her bartender, and seems a bit more modern in his education, thinking, and attitude than 1880 would allow a black man to be. Sadly, Whit Bissell has what amounts to a walk-on as the town doctor.

Basically, seven men are playing cards one night, when an out-of-towner is caught cheating. Despite Dino's best efforts, the other players hang the card cheat. Then, the men start turning up dead, one by one. Dino tries to dope out the identity of the killer and save some lives. Along the way, he makes time with Inger Stevens, and trades witty remarks with the new town preacher, Mitchum.

Murder mystery westerns are all too rare (check out the film "Pursued", a fine Mitchum western noir!). That's why it's so regrettable that, for everything the movie has going for it (great star actors, great supporting cast, fabled western hand Hathaway, and a very interesting concept), the film falls a bit flat. Dino is never really in danger, and the hero needs to be a target for this kind of mystery to work. There just isn't all that much tension, and a murder mystery needs tension. The killer is revealed to us way too early, and it takes too long to get to the ultimate showdown with good guy Dino.

If only the movie had been handled with a bit more care by Hathaway, "Five Card Stud" could have been a real classic. Alas, the overall impression I was left with was that this was a made-for-TV movie.

Still, Dino, Mitchum, and McDowall's performances make this one worth seeing at least once.

Rating:
Summary: Too Cool
Review: O.K...so it's not your traditional western. Not too many horses, no cattle, Indians or lumbering, grizzley western sterotypes favored by dusty, old f*rts who worship at the shrine of Audie Murphy and John Wayne. This is more like a who-dun-it than an oater. Wonderful, campy, over-the-top performance by Roddy McDowell and starring two of the coolest guys EVER...Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. The latter virtually reprising his NIGHT OF THE HUNTER role as a preacher man. Some great fight scenes and murders (a guy strangled by barbed wire..another strung up by the neck from the church bell, etc.) and it all starts with a card game gone wrong when one of the players is found cheating. He is lynched by the rest of the guys at the table but soon they themselves are being murdered...one by one! Inger Stevens is on hand as the local brothel madam and there is host of great 60s heads in other supporting roles. (Denver Pyle, Whit Bissell, etc.) Dino does the catchy theme song. Not really an all-time classic but fun to check out now and again. I'm glad I bought it.

Rating:
Summary: Five Star Rudd
Review: SPOILER WARNING!! This review is for those who have already seen this fine film (or don't mind knowing the ending). I've read the earlier reviews and believe the tragic elements of this story have been overlooked.

When I first saw this movie on TV years ago I thought Mitchum's character was the hero, and I still do, albeit a flawed hero. Mitchum plays Jonathan Rudd, a preacher who comes to Rincon, Colorado to avenge the murder of his card-cheat brother. A murder even the town sheriff says won't be investigated. I believe Mitchum was sincerely trying to clean up the town by removing the guilty (based on misinformation from an especially sleazy McDowell) and by trying to prevent further slips hellward by maintaining the church in an increasingly sinful town (a whorehouse had recently opened in Rincon along with an influx of greedy, violence-prone goldminers).

Mitchum is a flawed hero for his blasphemous statement that today he is the Lord and vengeance is his; he was wrong to take justice into his own hands (though in the movie's Rincon, and often in the Old West, it may have been the only earthly justice to be had). Nonetheless I found him much more admirable than Dean Martin's character, who gambles for a living and cavorts with courtesans while shamelessly leading on an innocent young lady. Contrast that with Mitchum, who preaches righteousness in his church and lays fresh flowers on his brother's grave.

Five Card Stud is a very enjoyable but tragic film, because the hero is killed in the end. As for the film itself, it is beautiful to watch. Martin's Van Morgan is a bit flip (Matt Helm under a cowboy hat), Mitchum clearly relished his role (reminiscent of Night of The Hunter) as did McDowell playing the cold-blooded psychotic whelp who wouldn't even cry at his mother's funeral. Yaphet Kotto is also very good, even if his character is a bit of an anachronism here. The title song, crooned by Dino, is catchy and sticks in my head for a day or two after every watching.

Rating:
Summary: Five Star Rudd
Review: SPOILER WARNING!! This review is for those who have already seen this fine film (or don't mind knowing the ending). I've read the earlier reviews and believe the tragic elements of this story have been overlooked.

When I first saw this movie on TV years ago I thought Mitchum's character was the hero, and I still do, albeit a flawed hero. Mitchum plays Jonathan Rudd, a preacher who comes to Rincon, Colorado to avenge the murder of his card-cheat brother. A murder even the town sheriff says won't be investigated. I believe Mitchum was sincerely trying to clean up the town by removing the guilty (based on misinformation from an especially sleazy McDowell) and by trying to prevent further slips hellward by maintaining the church in an increasingly sinful town (a whorehouse had recently opened in Rincon along with an influx of greedy, violence-prone goldminers).

Mitchum is a flawed hero for his blasphemous statement that today he is the Lord and vengeance is his; he was wrong to take justice into his own hands (though in the movie's Rincon, and often in the Old West, it may have been the only earthly justice to be had). Nonetheless I found him much more admirable than Dean Martin's character, who gambles for a living and cavorts with courtesans while shamelessly leading on an innocent young lady. Contrast that with Mitchum, who preaches righteousness in his church and lays fresh flowers on his brother's grave.

Five Card Stud is a very enjoyable but tragic film, because the hero is killed in the end. As for the film itself, it is beautiful to watch. Martin's Van Morgan is a bit flip (Matt Helm under a cowboy hat), Mitchum clearly relished his role (reminiscent of Night of The Hunter) as did McDowell playing the cold-blooded psychotic whelp who wouldn't even cry at his mother's funeral. Yaphet Kotto is also very good, even if his character is a bit of an anachronism here. The title song, crooned by Dino, is catchy and sticks in my head for a day or two after every watching.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Mystery Western.
Review: This is a fine mystery thiller under the guise of a western.
The movie opens with a card game and one player accused of cheating,this player is hanged. Soon members of the card game
begin to die one by one. Card player Dean Martin attempts to
find out who the killer is before he ends up dead. While there
are a few suspects, most viewers will soon figure out who the
killer is. Why is not revealed till the end. Still this is a
movie that works, this is due to the entertaining cast. Dean

Martin retains his easy going style, while Robert Mitchum brings
a performance that is edgy and not as straight forward as he
appears. Roddy McDowall delivers an entertaining performance
as the spoiled rich kid at odds with Dean Martin. Yapphet Kotto
gives a strong performance as the bartender who helps Dean work
out the mystery. I have seen this movie a few times and enjoy
it due to the cast, as well as to the scenery. Attention to detail is well thought out in this western town. So saddle up.