FIVE CARD STUD, set in the American west of the 1800's, stars Dean Martin in a title role effectively cast as the cowboy gambler who drifts into town and winds up in the saloon where a card game is in progress. The tension builds when Martin is joins the card game; things go wrong when one of the players is found cheating. Soon there's another stranger in town, black-clad preacher (Mitchum} and participants in the fatal card game start dying grotesque, solitary deaths. Who is ordering these deaths and why?
Wonderful, campy, over-the-top performance by Roddy McDowell and starring two of the coolest guys EVER...Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum with 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.) Inger Stevens is on hand as the local brothel madam and there is host of great 1960's heads in other supporting roles. (Denver Pyle, Whit Bissell, etc.) Dino does the catchy theme song.
Although this film caught its share of comparisons and criticisms to better-made films and westerns of its time, its charm has been overlooked.
The direction of Henry Hathaway, contributions of Mitchum and Martin and cast and this era of filmmaking make FIVE CARD STUD something to revisit. A period piece of 1960's western filmmaking from a troupe of veterans and Paramount Pictures, FIVE CARD STUD all at once seems so familiar and, alas, now bygone from these classic Hollywood actors and producers who were so good at what they did.
