Five Card Stud [VHS]

Five Card Stud [VHS]
by Henry Hathaway

Five Card Stud [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Dean Martin, Inger Stevens, Katherine Justice, Robert Mitchum, Roddy McDowall
Director: Henry Hathaway
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Unknown)
Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 103 minutes
Release Date: 1998-04-07
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Publisher: Paramount
Studio: Paramount

VHS Movie Reviews of Five Card Stud [VHS]

Movie Review: A Must for Dean Martin Western Fans
Summary: 5 Stars

Dean Martin once delt cards for money, and knew a lot of card tricks that wowed his children.. Dean knew cards.. And he knew movies that worked..

I love the old Dean Martin Variety shows. On them he would mention that he was working on westerns and would add a little western flavor to the show. Deano had a ranch and loved his horses and he had a few he really prized.

FIVE CARD STUD Starring Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Inger Stevens, Roddy McDowall, and Katherine Justice, is a very well written western I'd classify as a western action/drama. It is heavy on the drama of one dangerous card game and the action that unfolds from it. Robert Mitchum plays cool and tough (as usual) and Roddy McDowall's character is played very well. Dean shines in this movie and his charachter is likable and believable. You'll like the twists as well as the ending!

***Other Dean Martin & Western Suggestions:
"Rio Bravo" with "The Duke" John Wayne (another 5 star performance!)
"Seargeants 3" with Frank Sinatra
"4 For Texas" with Frank Sinatra

I think most guys have a few good westerns in their DVD collections. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, The Highwayman's "Stage Coach", and Sinatra & Martin are in some of mine.
Many Women seem to love 'period pieces' with all the costumes and scenery like the Janette Oke series. Nice, but I like the "western" 'grit' in movies like this one, "Five Card Stud". I highly recommend it for the poker lover who likes westerns too.

Movie Review: An Underated Western Mystery
Summary: 4 Stars

This Dean Martin vehicle was a childhood favorite. Getting to see it on DVD forty years later, I still am a fan.

The plot, involving a string of revenge killings,is much like a "Columbo" episode. Solving the case, though fun, is not nearly as important as wotching the interaction of the principles. In this case, they are Dean, Robert Mitchum, and Roddy McDowell. Dean is a card-playing "everyman", not as much heroic, as resigned to playing out the string to see what befalls him. His understated performance is a perfect foil for Mitchum, as a gun toting preacher, just arrived in town.
The Reverend steals every scene he is in. McDowell plays a callow, craven son of a rancher, just a bit "over the top". All three are a joy to watch.

Yaphet Kotto and Inger Stevens provides nuanced secondary characters and give solid performances.

The story is a good one, with elements of revenge, romance, deceit, humor, and world-weary cynicism. The pace is usually quite brisk, and the camera work excellent.

Any fan of the lead actors owes it to themselves to pick up this "Noir Western".

Movie Review: "When a gambler lets his game wind up in a killing, pretty soon he doesn't have a game."
Summary: 3 Stars

Despite his attempt to stop the execution, Van Morgan (Dean Martin) was hit by a gun on his head and thrown out, at night, in the streets of Rincon, Colorado and the clumsy crook was lynched...

Feeling uncomfortable, Van Morgan leaves for Denver the next day ... In the days of his absence, two of the seven card players have been dead, one being drowned in a flour barrel, the other got it with a twist of wire...

For Little George (Yaphet Kotto) who went to see Van in Denver, it looks to him somebody is out to kill every man at that party which is a real good reason for Van to steer clear of Rincon if he is figuring on coming back...

Meanwhile, a gold rush has brought a bunch of outsiders to the town so, on his return, Morgan finds new faces like Jonathan Rudd (Robert Mitchum), the preacher with a Bible in his hand and a Colt in his belt ; and Lily Langford (Inger Stevens), with her elegant barbershop and her gorgeous lady 'barbers.'

Robert Mitchum plays the man who is looking for the man who is looking for him... Tension mounts when Nick Evers (Roddy McDowall) saves the hunter a long hunt... Dean Martin waits as the gambler who doesn't bank on his cards, because if he does, he winds up broke...

Movie Review: Mildly entertaining Western whodunnit
Summary: 3 Stars

The story opens as Dean Martin is playing a card game in a saloon late at night. One of the players is exposed as a cheat and the rest of the players, led by Roddy McDowell, decide to lynch him. Martin unsuccessfully tries to stop the lynching. Several months later the players in the card game start dying one by one. Is one of the lynch mob trying to silence the other witnesses, or is someone else doing the dirty work and why? Dean Martin has to figure out who is doing the killings before he becomes a victim. Along the way he makes googly eyes at a beautiful ranchers daughter and the owner of a bordello (I won't spoil the fun and tell you which he rides off into the sunset with - watch the film). Robert Mitchum co-stars as the moral conscience of the small town.

This is a mildly entertaining Western that isn't as bad as some of the most negative reviews claim, although this is certainly no classic. Definitely a step below the middling Randolph Scott works. Not much tension, but there are enough twists and turns to keep your interest until the big showdown at the end when the mystery is revealed. Roddy McDowell is horribly miscast in this film (and I couldn't stop thinking about Cornelius as I was watching it). Workmanlike performances by Martin and Mitchum, Ingar Stevens does a nice job as the bordello owner/love interest for Martin. Yaphet Kotto has a minor role as the bartender and is probably the most interesting character in the film. I wouldn't spend $10 to add it to my collection, but certainly worth a look as a rental.

Movie Review: When He Played, He Played For Blood.
Summary: 3 Stars

Garden of Evil" director Henry Hathaway's western whodunit "5-Card Stud" pits 'hellfire gambler' Dean Martin against 'gunfire preacher' Robert Mitchum in a frontier tale about lynching, murder, and revenge. Mind you, deducing the whodunit will pose a minor challenge to astute audiences. You will spot the actor committing the crimes long before the film identifies him in its second-to-last scene. If you study the stable strangling scene, the killer's headgear gives him away. The characters in "True Grit" scenarist Marquerite Roberts' screenplay based on Ray Gaulden's novel are flat since they neither change either their their mentality or their morality. Nevertheless, Roberts boots around an interesting question about "who people were before they became who they are" which segues with the mystery. Otherwise, this Hathaway horse opera is sturdy enough, contains a believable cast and knows how to blend comedy with drama nimbly enough so that it rarely becomes either heavy-handed or repetitious.

Compared to Hathaway's other oaters, "5-Card Stud" doesn't top "True Grit," "The Sons of Katie Elder," "Garden of Evil," "From Hell to Texas," or "Rawhide." However, "5-Card Stud" surpasses "Shoot Out" and "Nevada Smith." Although some critics don't cotton to Maurice Jarre's orchestral score and denigrated it as "Dr. Zhivago" on the range, I contend that it is superb music and differs from anything that Jerry Goldsmith, Elmer Bernstein, or Ennio Morricone would have done. Jarre's score enlivens the action and enhances the atmosphere. The Dean Martin song at the beginning and end of "5-Card Stud" marks this sagebrusher as a traditional western As far back in the 1950s, many major westerns contained a ballad about the story or the hero with lyrics like ". . . play your poke and he'd leave you broke."

Interestingly, "5-Card Stud" makes some racial references that chipped away at the usual barriers. In one scene, Robert Mitchum's gun slinging preacher doesn't think it inappropriate that a black man be buried among whites, something that marked this western as a departure from Jim Crow mentality. John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven" had broken ground earlier with a gunfight so that an Indian could be buried in a white graveyard.

Professional gambler Van Morgan (Dean Martin of "Sergeants 3") takes a break from a Saturday night poker game while Sig Ever's son Nick (Roddy McDowell of "Planet of the Apes"), stableman Joe Hurley (Bill Fletcher of "Hour of the Gun"), Mace Jones (Roy Jenson of "Big Jake"), storekeeper Fred Carson (Boyd 'Red' Morgan of "Violent Saturday"), Ever's ranch hand Stoney Burough (George Robotham of "The Split") continue to play poker with newcomer Frankie Rudd (Jerry Gatlin of "The Train Robbers") until Nick catches Rudd cheating 'red-handed' and organizes a lynch party. They take Rudd out to a stream and string him up from the bridge. Barkeeper George (Yaphet Koto of "Live and Let Die") warns Morgan and Morgan lights out after Nick and company to thwart the necktie party. "You don't hang a cheat," Morgan growls, "you kick him out of town." When Morgan arrives, Frankie is swinging with a noose around his neck, and Nick clubs Morgan on the back of the head with his six-gun.

Mama Malone (Ruth Springford of "Vengeance Is Mine") discovers Morgan strewn on the boardwalk the following morning and summons George to help the battered gambler to his room. Morgan decides to pull out of Rincon and try his luck in Denver. Before he leaves, he rides out to Sig Ever's spread to bid goodbye to Sig's comely daughter Nora (Katherine Justice of "The Way West") and deck Nick as repayment for clobbering him at the hanging.

Naturally, the town marshal (John Anderson of "Young Billy Young") can neither identify the lynch mob nor can he identify the hanged man. Later, participants in the card game begin to die. One is wrapped up in barbed wire, another is hanged in the church, and still another is suffocated in a barrel of flour. Indeed, Hathaway and Roberts make each death look different. Eventually, George visits Morgan in Denver and Morgan decides to ride back to Rincon. Two things have changed since Morgan rode out of Rincon. First, the town has acquired a gun-t0ting pastor who renovates the church and holds services, and second Lilly Langford (Inger Stephens of "Hang'em High") has opened a barbershop that features a $20 item that intrigues Morgan when he visits her establishment for the first time. Lilly and Nora contend for Morgan, while Morgan closes in on the new preacher Jonathan Rudd.

"5-Card Stud" boasts several good scenes. The shoot-out in the streets of Rincon when paranoid miners go berserk because they fear that they may be the next victim of the local serial killer is well staged. If you slow down your DVD or VHS copy, you can see Dean Martin lose his Stetson when he grabs hold of an axle to let a wagon haul him out of harm's way. You can see his headgear fall off completely and in the next scene is hat is back on his head. Nevertheless, it is still a neat gunfight with Morgan and Rudd standing back to back against the opposition. The scene at a windmill where Rudd hits each of the windmill blades because he was aiming at the spaces in between the blades is fun, too. George plays a role in the story and provides his buddy Morgan with a clue to the killer's identity. The animosity between Nick Evers and Van Morgan is feisty throughout the action with Nora trying to do her best to dampen it. Van Morgan and Lilly have some amusing banter. The expository scenes about Nick's childhood almost make his character marginally sympathetic.

Indeed, "5-Card Stud" is no classic, but it good enough for a rainy day.

"Five Card Stud" comes with nothing in the way of illuminating special features, such as a director commentary track or a critical commmentary track.

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Summary of Five Card Stud [VHS]

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'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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