5 Card Stud
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
5 Card Stud is a 1968 Western, released by Paramount Pictures. Directed by Henry Hathaway, the script was written by Marguerite Roberts who also wrote the screenplay of True Grit for Hathaway the following year. The film features two stars known for their casual underplaying: Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum. In the supporting cast were Roddy McDowall, Inger Stevens, Katherine Justice, John Anderson, Yaphet Kotto, and Denver Pyle. Martin plays a gambler who is falsely implicated in the lynching of a fellow gambler caught cheating. Mitchum is a gun-toting preacher. As the lynchers are killed off one by one, it becomes clear that someone is taking revenge; and it is up to Martin to solve the mystery as he becomes the next target of the killer. The movie unfolds in a rather undistinctive manner but the conventions of a detective mystery in the Western setting make for an intriguing and atmospheric film. Added to this are the performances of Martin and Mitchum, who seem to outdo each other in underplaying their roles. Yet this is a subtle pretense because both actors grow into their roles and Mitchum gradually assumes centre stage in his more showy part. He gets to perform some very stylish gunplay, returning us to the tried and true conventions of the Western; and the last confrontation between Martin and Mitchum is a sudden showdown in the classic Western tradition but entirely free of the cliches. 5 Card Stud is an undervalued Western. Effectively, its casualness is deceptive, as much a style as it is seemingly a symptom of a genre grown tired.
