5 Card Stud

**_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; unfortunately, she committed suicide at the age of 35 less than two years after the release of this movie. Meanwhile winsome Katherine Justice was 25 during shooting and a highlight as Nora, although her brunette hair looks fake (she’s actually a redhead). For anyone who objects to a black man being a bartender out West (Yaphet Kotto), the fictitious town of Rincon is located a hundred miles south of Denver, which means it was in the state of Colorado, admitted to the Union four years earlier. This is decidedly the West, not the South. The story is set fifteen years after the Civil War wherein the Colorado Territory was majority pro-Union. Mama's Saloon was a private business and anyone who didn't want to be served by a black man could take their business elsewhere (at the time, it was the only saloon in town, but a competitor was being built). The fact that George (Kotto) was a muscular 6'4" helped keep racists at bay. While not on the level of contemporaneous Westerns like “Duel at Diablo,” “El Dorado,” “The War Wagon,” “Hombre,” “Firecreek,” “Hang ’em High” and “The Train Robbers,” it’s cut from the same cloth and worth checking out if you liked those. I’d put it on par with “Young Billy Young,” which came out the next year and also starred Mitchum. The movie runs 1 hour, 43 minutes, and was shot in Durango, Mexico, with studio stuff done at Paramount in Los Angeles. GRADE: B-/C+

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 (not quite as menacing as in “The Night of the Hunter” (1955) though) and the engaging effort from local barbershop owner “Lily” (Inger Stevens) keep this moving along nicely towards a denouement that there are plenty of clues for us to guess/deduce in advance - if we pay attention to what goes on in the shadows. It did take some convincing to see Roddy McDowell in Stetson and spurs, but in the end it’s held together by Martin’s charisma, and I enjoyed it.