5 Card Stud

2/9/2017

When he played he played for blood. 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 pre

3/11/2024

**_Western in the Southwest with Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum and Roddy McDowall_** In 1880, a mysterious preacher (Mitchum) comes to a frontier town a hundred miles south of Denver. That’s when the players of an infamous card game start dying and a smooth gambler (Martin) tries to figure out who’s doing the killin’. McDowall plays the rebellious son of the local mogul rancher. “5 Card Stud” (1968) is a decent town-bound Western from the late 60s with a quality cast and a good sense of a Western town in the Southwest, but the story is so contrived little of it seems real. It doesn’t hold a candle to Martin’s previous Western “Bandolero!” or even “The Sons of Katie Elder,” although it’s superior to his future “Something Big.” Blonde Inger Stevens is on hand as the new madam in town

3/9/2026

Well you know what they say about two wrongs not making a right! “Van Morgan” (Dean Morgan) is playing a game of five card stud when one of their number is caught cheating and summarily lynched. That ought to have been the end of that, but then a rather enigmatic preacher arrives in town and the vengeful townsfolk start to quite gruesomely drop like flies. Could it be that “Rev. Rudd” (Robert Mitchum) is behind this Wild West version of “Ten Little Indians”? All “Van Morgan” knows for sure is that it isn’t him doing the killings, so he is going to have to think quickly in case he ends up next! It’s not often you hear Maurice Jarre’s music supporting a western but I thought his themes worked well accompanying this quietly intriguing mystery as the cheeky Martin, the more austere Mitchum (no