MartinHafer "5 Card Stud" is a western that should have been a lot better. The plot setup was exceptional...but the film failed to adequately take advantage of this.When the film begins, a man is accused of cheating at cards. Instead of calling the sheriff, the rest of the gamblers decide to hang the guy! Van (Dean Martin) tries to stop them and ends up getting beaten up for his efforts. Not surprisingly, after he awakens, Van decides to leave this hellish town. While he's gone, word gets to him that a couple members of the hanging party have themselves been strangled by someone...who, exactly, they didn't know.Starting at this point, the film starts to fall apart because so often the film didn't make sense. Van decides to return to the hellish town....why? He easily could be next and it's not like Van is a sheriff or ninja!! And, once he's there, there's only one stranger in town--the weirdo preacher (Robert Mitchum) and he's pretty obviously the killer but it takes folks a very long time to figure this out. Other ridiculous plot problems include making Roddy McDowell the baddie who beats up Van!!! Heck, I think McDowell might have had trouble beating up Inger Stevens in this film and that just didn't make sense. Nor, did it make any sense his going into business with the killer...and vice-versa. It's all a real shame, as the film started off so well and degenerated due to poor writing and casting. Rarely have I seen a film go off the rails so quickly and completely. There's no mystery (there should have been), there are lots of inconsistencies and the film makes poor use of a fancy director (Henry Hathaway) and a decent cast.

Spikeopath 5 Card Stud is directed by Henry Hathaway and adapted to screenplay by Marguerite Roberts from a novel written by Ray Gaulden. It stars Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Inger Stevens, Roddy McDowall, Katherine Justice, John Anderson, Ruth Springford and Yaphet Kotto. Music is by Maurice Jarre and cinematography by Daniel L. Fapp.Rincon, Colorado and when a gambler is caught cheating at poker, the rest of the players administer frontier justice and hang the man. All except one man that is, Van Morgan (Martin), who tried desperately to stop the lynching. When members of the card school from that night start being killed off, it's clear that somebody is also administering their own brand of retribution justice. Morgan teams up with the new unorthodox preacher in town, Reverend Jonathan Rudd (Mitchum), to try and crack the case.I don't think anyone would seriously try to argue that 5 Card Stud is a great movie, but it is a fun picture made by people who knew their way around the dusty plains of the Western genre. Basically a Western take on Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians, it's a whodunit at the core, but surrounded by Western staples as fights, gun-play, murders, barroom shenanigans and thinly veiled prostitution exist during the run time, while the Durango location photography is most pleasant (TCM HD print is gorgeous).It's not short of flaws, mind. Jarre's musical score is simply odd, I'm not even sure what film genre he thought he was scoring, but it's about as far removed as being in tune with a film as can be. McDowall as a whiny weasel villain doesn't work, the costuming is a bit sub-par and the reveal of the perpetrator is revealed too early. Yet film overcomes these problems because being in the company of Mitchum and Martin brings rewards.Dino harks back to his Western glory days in the likes of Rio Bravo, and Mitch gets to parody his Night of the Hunter preacher whilst adding six- shooter charms into the bargain. The girls are short changed by the writing, but both Stevens and Justice grace the picture with their presence, and Kotto enlivens a role that quite easily could have been standard fare. A good time to be had with this Poker Oater © 7/10

danc-26 The musical score was at times interesting, at times odd and out of place. Martin and Mitchum are fun to watch. McDowell as the villain is not the best casting choice, but he does have a sniveling quality that works. It was one of the last westerns with a polished, studio look; at that time, westerns were beginning to take on a gritty, rough-around-the-edges, contemporary feel. Denver Pyle is always a welcome ingredient in any western. The plot is interesting: Who will be the last man standing? Some of the scenes were staged poorly, but some of the dialogue was snappy. There were a few leaps of logic, but I was impressed that ammunition was referred to correctly as "cartridges," not as "bullets."

kenjha After a poker player is lynched for cheating, the members of the lynching party start dying one by one. This Western is fairly well made by veteran Hathaway, but the plot is too simplistic to raise it above mediocrity. The identity of the killer is so obvious that even a two-year old can figure out who done it. Apparently, there are no two-year olds in town, as nobody seems to have a clue who it could be. Martin is his usual unflappable self as one of the card players who tried to stop the hanging. Mitchum plays a variation on his psycho preacher character in "The Night of the Hunter." McDowall seems out of place in a Western. Stevens provides love interest.