Five Card Stud (1968)

Five Card Stud deserves credit for trying something new with the Western, namely combining it with a typical murder mystery story. Unfortunately, screenwriter Marguerite Roberts and original author Ray Gaulden seem to think that just grafting the two genres together is all that was needed. After coming up with a viable gambit -- a Ten Little Indians-style serial murder among the participants of a particularly unfortunate poker game -- the writers didn't follow through. There's far too little mystery in the mystery, with the identity of the killer fairly obvious and the red herrings equally so. There's also a bit too much padding, especially in the unconvincing manner in which the initial killings turn the town of Rincon inside out and produce open warfare. By this point in his career, Henry Hathaway had been involved with enough westerns that he could have directed Stud with his eyes closed. This turned out to be both a positive and a negative. On the plus side, there are several sequences which reveal his sure hand and experience; on the minus side, things feel a bit tired and the flic drags far too often. The cast tries hard, with Robert Mitchum taking top honors and Dean Martin coming off much better than might be expected. But Roddy McDowall flounders, and Inger Stevens and Katherine Justice have to contend with parts that are quite poorly written. And Maurice Jarre has provided what surely is one of the worst and most inappropriate scores ever written for a Western. Stud holds some interest, but on the whole it falls far short of the mark of a good "oater." ~ Craig Butler, All Movie Guide