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Bill Fletcher, Dean Martin, Denver Pyle

Paramount released a first-rate Western, El Dorado, in 1967, and another, True Grit, in 1969. So why was the studio's 1968 oater such a hunk of buzzard bait? You know Five Card Stud...( read more  read more... )I>'s in trouble from the opening credits--they're too short to accommodate the Dean Martin title song, so that it spills awkwardly into the first scene. The timing never does come out right--not in the lethargic pacing, not in the lax editing (which often leaves cast members stranded onscreen at scene's end), and not in the herky-jerky screenplay, which either lurches over intervals of weeks (months?) or piles up enough calamities in one day to stock a sequel. Even the end comes five minutes and two anticlimactic scenes late.

An after-hours poker game is underway as the film begins. A stranger is caught cheating and, over the objection of professional gambler Dean Martin, lynched. Soon there's another stranger in town, black-clad preacher Robert Mitchum, and participants in the fatal card game start dying grotesque, solitary deaths. Five Card Stud wants to be a psychological mystery, but there's scant psychology and no mystery at all beyond why the filmmakers thought any viewer could fail to figure it out. Martin and Mitchum sleepwalk through their roles (Martin's includes a glum, ludicrously written romance with brothel-keeper Inger Stevens), while Roddy McDowall camps up his turn as spoiled son of the local range baron. Somewhere in the middle, the young Yaphet Kotto plays it admirably cool as a philosophical bartender. --Richard T. Jameson

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55% liked it

1,467 ratings

PG, 103 min.

Directed by: Henry Hathaway

Release Date: January 1, 1968

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DVD Release Date: June 4, 2002

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Stats: 46 reviews

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Ruth Springford ... Mama Malone (saloon owner) Five Card Stud Inger Stevens ... Lily Langford Five Card Stud Katherine Justice ... Nora Evers Five Card Stud Yaphet Kotto 5 Card Stud Katherine Justice Dean Dean Martin Robert Mitchum ... The Rev. Jonathan Rudd Robert Mitchum ... The Rev. Jonathan Rudd 5 Card Stud Bill Fletcher Katherine Justice ... Nora Evers Katherine Justice ... Nora Evers Yaphet Kotto
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Flixster Reviews (46)

  • nuheart
    December 26, 2006
    nuheart
    Interesting Western-Noir that would have played better without the love interest getting in the way.
  • grasp183
    January 27, 2008
    grasp183
    classic Western, good movie
  • turnerd32
    August 21, 2007
    turnerd32
    i would like to see this one..
  • dfreebyrd59
    August 8, 2007
    dfreebyrd59
    For a western and card movie not bad.
  • casy59
    June 30, 2007
    casy59
    Good Classic Western.
  • jjgaut
    February 11, 2007
    jjgaut
    Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum in a Western directed by Henry Hathaway. Should have been one of the greats. Instead, it's a boring, thinly-plotted, predictable, and just generally uninteresting Western-mystery. Dino is actually kinda dull; Mitchum is fine, but nowhere near as ...( read more)good as he usually is. On the plus side, there is one really good gunfight buried in there.
  • SarahJoyFrost
    December 4, 2006
    SarahJoyFrost
    yeah ok, id like to see this!

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  • LadyVanishment
    December 2, 2007
    LadyVanishment
    this has got to be one of the best westerns i ever seen it had a dynamic cast and left you on edge till the end you never knew how it was going to turn out.
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