A whodunit set in the American West
Next in our season of Dean Martin Westerns is one he made for Hal Wallis at Paramount in 1968, the same year as Bandolero!, our last review, and between a couple of Matt Helm movies.
The picture had a pedigree and really should have been pretty good. Wallis was no mug, and the film was directed by Henry Hathaway, no less, and if anyone understood Westerns, Hathaway did. Furthermore, it was written by Marguerite Roberts, who so brilliantly adapted Charles Portis’s novel for True Grit the following year and would yet again team with Wallis and Hathaway for Shoot-Out with Gregory Peck in 1971.
And paired with Dino (though Martin got top billing) was one of the great actors of the time, and old Western hand, Robert Mitchum.
Backing up this duo was a range of character actors Westernistas were very familiar with, the likes of John Anderson, Denver Pyle, Whit Bissell and Ted de Corsia.
It was 103 minutes of Technicolor. Daniel Fapp (The Far Horizons) was at the camera and there were Durango, Mexico locations. Maurice Jarre (Lawrence/Zhivago) wrote the score.
Yup, it ought to have been good.
I saw at the time it came out, I remember, but never again until a recent re-view. I remembered an amazing amount of it so it must have made an impression on me at the time (I would have been 19 or 20). Now, though, I fear I don’t think it’s that wonderful…
Well, one has seen worse. Actually, despite the title, 5 Card Stud isn’t a poker movie at all, not like, say, A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Warner Bros, 1966). Hardly any card-playing goes on. It’s not even a Western really, except tangentially. It’s a (rather predictable) whodunit set in the American West. Wallis had produced a noir, Dark City, in 1950 and had decided to remake it as a Western.
We are in Rincon (California, presumably), 1880. While a professional dealer is briefly outside, ahem, otherwise engaged, five gamblers he had been playing cards with lynch the sixth, a tinhorn from out of town whom they accuse of cheating. The hero is mortified. But not as much as the gamblers are because one by one they are found murdered. Now, a preacher has arrived in town. I’m afraid you don’t have to be Hercule Poirot to put two and two together, and it’s a fatal weakness of the movie: we know whodunit. Yup, the preacher turns out to be the dead man’s brother (this is kind of a spoiler, I guess, but it will be so obvious to you anyway) and is out for revenge. He happens to be a crack shot too. He says he is backed by “God and Mr Colt.”
The trouble was, Hathaway didn’t really give a damn. But he was enthusiastic compared with Martin and Mitchum, the most famously insouciant actors Hollywood had. They sleep-walked through the whole thing. Mitchum used to say they painted eyeballs on his closed lids. Martin was clearly also just going through the motions to get to the end of the shoot. Perhaps Wallis and the writers were going for the crazed preacher vibe from The Night of the Hunter with Mitchum in a black frock coat. If so, they didn’t get it. In Hunter Bob provided true menace and absolutely superb acting. In this commercial vehicle he just recited the (indifferent) lines, with Dino doing the same in riposte.
There were other weaknesses. Brit Roddy McDowall hams it up unmercifully as the weird son who instigates the hanging. He had a bit part in The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean four years later but did nothing else of note Western-wise. It’s perhaps unkind to say he didn’t have a clue but really, he didn’t have a clue.
Dino hovers between Inger Stevens (blonde madam of a barber shop – don’t ask) and Katherine Justice (Roddy’s sis), both of whom have set their caps at him. Katherine’s and Roddy’s father is about the best actor. It’s Denver Pyle. Now I love Denver, who doesn’t, and he was a stalwart of countless (well, 142) Westerns, but I don’t think anyone would call him Oscarable, in all honesty, do you? So if he was the best actor on the set, well…
The music is not exactly of Jarre’s best quality. In fact is downright irritating. Dino starts us off with a (naturally) quite beautifully sung title song (the man was a musical genius) but unfortunately Jarre worked the ditty to death in orchestral variations throughout the movie till you almost wanted to turn the sound down.
As I said at the beginning, I’ve seen worse. Much worse. But I don’t think any of the principals would claim this as a great Western. It was a payday, only.
The IMDb database says that there was no chemistry at all between the leads. “Martin stayed in his trailer all the time watching television when they were not filming, and the critics felt he had just phoned in his performance.”
It wasn’t even all that much of that. Bandolero! got to 17th in the box-office rankings that year, grossing $12m. 5 Card Stud was even beaten by Shalako.
Vincent Canby in The New York Times thought it was just one of a spate of ‘buddy movie’ Westerns that were doing the rounds: “Yesterday 5 Card Stud opened at neighborhood theaters with Dean Martin, who is currently in Bandolero with James Stewart, co-starred with Mitchum, who can also be seen on local screens with Yul Brynner in Villa Rides. 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.” He said, though, that the public enjoyed it: “The packed — if always restless—audience at the 42d Street Lyric Theater yesterday morning gave uproarious approval.”
Variety thought that the “dramatic buildup suffers thru a premature disclosure of killer’s identity and subsequent lessening of what should have been more potent impact”, which was putting it mildly.
Roger Ebert was politer: “Five Card Stud is not a great movie, but it’s a polished, professional one.”
Here’s a truly amazing fact for you: Mitchum turned down the role of Pike in The Wild Bunch to do this movie instead. Well, he said, they were both Westerns, weren’t they? That is so Mitchum.
Of course Mitchum was great even in a trance and Dean Martin was just so damn cool. Then there’s Mitchum’s derringer hidden in a bible. So you gotta watch it. But I reckon it’ll be another fifty years before I see it again. Oh, wait a minute…
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17 Responses
Bob’s derringer hidden in the Bible rings a bell but that is all I remember about it. I did not know it was a remake of Dieterle’s Dark City starring Charlton Heston, it is not so easy to make the connection. Rincon is supposed to be located 100 miles from Denver according to wikipedia but it does not make the film better… one more film cumulating so many talented people for such a poor result… good idea Mitchum turned down Pike’s rôle, hard to imagine him instead of Holden, hard to think of someone else better than Holden for this very role anyway, Mitchum was too nonchalant when Holden impersonates so well and always a tragic destiny if you think of other films such as Toko-Ri or River Kwai or of course Sunset boulevard
Yes, it is said that Peckinpah considered all sorts of aging Western actors for the role of Pike, not only Mitchum, but knowing The Wild Bunch as we do, it is hard for us to imagine anyone else in the part.
Jeff
I sometimes wonder why you started and maintain this site as it certainly appears you don’t seem to like many western movies: there are always factors you construct to hinder your enjoyment and appreciation of them. Of course, no one needs you to be a Pollyanna about it, but sampling even just a few excerpts from your site, there seems no love lost between you and the genre. Sometimes there is an impression that you feel you are courting potential embarrassment by confessing any affection for the subject. It’s a shame really, but the internet is filled with self proclaimed “critics” who apparently find it simpler or more palatable to sarcastically and/or ironically dismiss the very topic they themselves have created a site around. Strange, yet weird, as the saying goes.
Unfortunately Jeff is not able to answer anymore to your remarks, no doubt he would have done it with his typical touch of class and sense of humor shown throughout his blog. Maybe Bud and RR who have now the hands on it will do. I think that if you are a little more curious visiting this blog you can’t help but noticing that Jeff was truly a great lover of the genre. We did not always agree, everyone being free with his own opinions and choices or preferences and it is fine this way happily enough.
I agree and well said. Jeff truly loved ‘our noble genre’ and Western history in general. I loved his sense of humor in his reviews even when we did not see eye to eye. He LOVED Randolph Scott. One could hardly get more Western than that. Jeff was a friend to all Western lovers and his site is a treasure to them.
My comments are what happens when a string of negative reviews happen to hit me upside the head after checking a review site on occasion. Of course, they are exaggerated and overly discouraging, but just as a general observation I have noticed many online “critics” attempting to inflate their sense of artistic merit by dismissing films that only exist to entertain, not illuminate the human condition or expand one’s soulful consciousness. 5 CARD STUD may not be a masterpiece of cinematic expression and experience, but I don’t think it was ever intended to be. It was meant to kill a couple of hours in an intriguing fashion and kick start the audience’s imagination enough to indulge its failings and celebrate its inspirations. Who cares if it’s not RED RIVER or THE WILD BUNCH, it’s goofy at times and fun on its own terms and unlike everyone else who has complained here, I find both Martin and Mitchum to be fully engaged in the story and their characters. Martin once said he was at his happiest making westerns and wanted to do them exclusively and I see that in 5 CARD STUD plain as day. True that he and Mitchum have an odd chemistry together, but they are both too inherently good as actors to not transcend that. Basically, it’s just a strange hybrid popcorn picture that finds a comfortable place while surrounded by all the Italian westerns and revisionist claptrap that the genre was experimenting with at that time.
Jeff was a huge fan of Mitchum and definitely check his article out on him. He didn’t like the Italians at all. Oh and his Dean Martin article is excellent too.
This is a fun but slight Western. Sometimes I get a little miffed that supertalented people like Dean and Mitch would sleepwalk through things. Well they had to eat I suppose and ‘5 Card Stud’ was never meant to be an all time classic. Still check it out as a mystery Western is a super neat idea (and Mitch can do no wrong).
There is a French saying “those who love a lot, punish well”, also meaning when someone teases you, it means he likes you.
You may call it tough love…
But If you visit this blog, not even in depth, you will note that Jeff was able to write very nice and positive words about very weak films or even almost without any interest (according to me), and very forgiving with a film he liked for some reason but for turned out to be total drag for many.
And he was also very cautious when talking of art or auteurism for any western directors (auteurism being an invention of the French critique led by François Truffaut and others (who became later film directors themselves) in the 1950s after interviewing the likes of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks etc. pointing out the (su)premacy of the director vs the scriptwriter, the actors, the dp etc.)
Even if making a film is most of the time a collective adventure in my opinion.
Jeff was always trying to “accentuate the positive” balancing between “the good, the bad and (sometimes but rarely) the ugly…
We did not agree on everything and it is the charm of this blog where there is no ayatollah dictating his rules. For instance he did not like Vera Cruz or Heaven’s Gate, to me 2 masterpieces each in their own way…
It takes all kinds to make a world and Jeff agreed on that indeed.
I suggest you to read more on this blog to understand Jeff’s mind better and you could begin with his text about Henry Hathaway who is the perfect example of the american film director know how able to quite often apply his mark or his touch on the films he made, wether excellent (Garden of Evil, True Grit, Rawhide) or “just” entertaining such as 5 Cards or his John Wayne 1960s films such as Katie Elder.
But after all HH was born a belgian aristocrat and he probably knew something about art…!
I was going to say Jeff was a great praiser of ‘time wasters’. B westerns especially. I was going to say we did not see eye to eye on ‘Once upon a time in the West’ which I think was (is) a masterpiece. He did not. Which is fine to me.
Well, of course, my comment was rushed out and based on other negative reviews he shared, not just ones we may have disagreed on. I would never subscribe to his position on Euro westerns, but it’s always hard to get to gauge someone else’s sincerity or delineate their preferences based solely on what they write. I became a film critic for a newspaper when I was still in my last year of high school and I found it to be very tough work and never easy to do, so I would never disrespect another person trying to do it simply because we may see a particular movie differently than each other. For me, creative writing and working on fiction was a much easier endeavor and I have pursued that for decades and left critical writing to others. This actually makes sense as the strengths for critical and creative expression come from two separate parts of the brain. So I do understand the complexities involved and did not intend to pass along my negative views on this site without some introspection from it, but I do admit to jumping the gun on chastising the entire enterprise here I believe it has less to do with Jeff and the site itself than a general trend I’ve encountered in critical writing in blogs and other online venues and that’s what I mentioned earlier, people becoming too infatuated with their own perspective and self worth and becoming more and more hesitant to praise something that they think may be beneath their own talents or ideas. However, I do agree that I was way too hasty and impetuous in leveling the charge here before exposing myself to more of the site and Jeff’s public persona. I posed my inquiry to Jeff himself as naturally I did not know of his recent passing, but no personal disrespect was intended on that score. I’m grateful for the responses my negative view have yielded as now I will delve more deeply into the blog and next time come armed with a bit more substantial information before so cavalierly dispensing my negative and cursory negative opinion. Thanks to Chris and Jean-Marie for that!
No problem! Enjoy the wonderful site. Lots of great articles on about everything the West and the Western has to offer. For fun check out his article on the stunning Dorothy Malone and her excellent Western career. Jeff’s articles on the Western careers of the great actors of the genre are fab.
Are you also the same Professor Echo who posts on Bluray.com? If so I enjoy your comments on their and agree with what you said on the Hamilton book thread on enjoying your physical media collection (I have an extensive war/western one myself).
I did not Jeff personnally but If there is something I am 100% sure of, he was absolutely not “infatuated”.
His (quite funnily ferocious and irresistible) text about Once Upon a time in the West for instance shows this inimitable blend of humor and seriousness.
I am sure that the more you will explore his blog, the more you will appreciate it.
Enjoy !
Thanks, guys. For so inhospitable an introduction, I’m glad we were able to move past it and find our common ground. Yes, Chris, I also post at BR.com and elsewhere online as Professor Echo (on comics sites they ask me what comic character that is!). Thanks for your kind words about my posts on that site and please come and say hello next time we are posting on the same thread!
Thanks. Hope you enjoy this wonderful site and feel free to comment on the articles here and encourage others to visit. It is a great resource.
Late to this correspondence but welcome to the site Professor. Glad you all managed to patch up your differences before I arrived! I echo what Jean-Marie says about Jeff. He was never shy of expressing his opinion forthrightly but always with good humour and the acceptance that others are going to disagree. As I recall, ‘each to his own’ was a phrase he used quite often in replies to other replies.
On the matter of 5 Card Stud – I must admit that I have a great fondness for this one. I’d never suggest it’s a great movie but I find it a relaxing one to watch. The director and actors are going through the motions but that in itself can be a pleasure with people of this calibre (and a certain laziness is inherent to both Mitchum’s and Marvin’s screen personalities anyway). And there are odd moments in the film that rise to a higher level. Someitimes it’s more enjoyable to sit through a film such as this than a certified masterpiece.