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  Released by Paramount Pictures in 1968 and staring Robert Mitchum and Dean Martin, FIVE CARD STUD seems to suffer from an identity crisis that is harder to figure out than the main mystery of the plot.


The script was based of off the Ray Gaulden novel and has been called both the problem and the only good thing about FIVE CARD STUD. Not having read the script itself, I cant say if it is the reason the movie lags so much or that the protagonists motivations are so thinly veiled, or if it is more the application of director Henry Hathaways vision. It is hard to say, although Henry Hathaway was also the director of what some consider to be great westerns like THE SONS OF KATIE ELDER and TRUE GRIT.


  The movie opens on a late night card game in which one player is caught cheating. Typical of many a movie set in the wild, wild West, cheating isnt very well tolerated and the cheater is soon swinging by the neck. Dean Martins character, a professional gambler, tried to stop the lynching but was voted down.


  Soon Robert Mitchum shows up in the persona of the traveling preacher, and shortly after each member of the vigilante mob that hung the cheater begin dying one by one. In this way the plot at least takes a sharp right turn away from typical westerns, but some say cannot pull of being a who done it in a believable way.


  Other factors that are unpopular to modern movie watchers include poor editing, such as the opening credits not matching the Dean Martin-sung theme song, so that it carries over into the first scene (but not in a way that suggests this was the original intent.)