In 1880, a gambler in the small town of Rincon, 100 miles (161 km) from Denver, Colorado, is caught cheating at a five-card stud poker game. The players, led by the volatile Nick Evers, take the cheating gambler to lynch him. One of the players, Van Morgan, tries to prevent the others from administering frontier justice, but is unable to stop the killing. Morgan leaves town, but later returns, when he hears that several of the other players from the poker game have become victims of grisly murders.
The town has a new resident, a stern and somewhat edgy Colt .45-carrying Baptist preacher, named Reverend Rudd. As more members of the lynch mob are killed off one by one, it becomes clear that someone is taking revenge, and it is up to Morgan to solve the mystery. When Morgan is the last man from the poker game left alive, he realizes that Rudd is the murderer, and he kills Rudd in a shootout.
5 Card Stud was shot in Mexico and filming wrapped in May 1968.[5]
The song led by Reverend Rudd at his first service in Rincon is "Mercy's Call," a late-19th-century Baptist hymn written by W.H. Doane.
This film marked one of the final appearances of Inger Stevens, and the second time that Mitchum played an unorthodox preacher (following 1955's The Night of the Hunter). 5 Card Stud brought together director Henry Hathaway and Dean Martin for a second time; the first was the 1965 film The Sons of Katie Elder starring John Wayne.
Reception
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Vincent Canby identified 5 Card Stud as one of a recent spate of "Buddy System" Westerns, such as: El Dorado (1966) with John Wayne and Mitchum; The Way West (1967) with Kirk Douglas, Mitchum and Richard Widmark; The War Wagon (1967) with John Wayne and Kirk Douglas; Bandolero! (1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin; and Villa Rides (1968) with Yul Brynner, Mitchum and Charles Bronson. Canby wrote: "Without important exception, all of these titles, stories and settings are interchangeable, to say nothing of the stars, some of whom are beginning to look as if they'd been hatched from dinosaur eggs. ... Buddy System Westerns are somehow basically soft."[2]
In the Chicago Sun-Times, critic Roger Ebert wrote: "'Five Card Stud' is not a great movie, but it's a polished, professional one, and it's a good deal more than a common Western. ... But, it also has something rather rare, a well-made story. Most action Westerns are directed by rote: good guy, bad guy, a standard pattern of fights, an eventual triumph for the gentleman in the white hat. Not this one, which presents a suspense story in a Western setting."[6]
References
^"5 Card Stud (Advertisement)". Chicago Tribune. July 12, 1968. p. 17, Section 2.
^ abCanby, Vincent (August 1, 1968). "Screen: Buddies Out West". The New York Times. p. 24.
