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Five Card Stud

USA 1968
produced by
Hal B. Wallis, Joseph H. Hazen for Paramount
directed by Henry Hathaway
starring Robert Mitchum, Dean Martin, Inger Stevens, Roddy McDowall, Katherine Justice, John Anderson, Ruth Springford, Yaphet Kotto, Denver Pyle, Bill Fletcher, Whit Bissell, Ted de Corsia, Don Collier, Roy Jenson
screenplay by Marguerite Roberts, based on a novel by Ray Gaulden, music by Maurice Jarre

review by
Dale Pierce

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Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
This might best be listed as a psycho western if there is such a thing, for it includes a murder-mystery, a madman seeking revenge and all the elements of a horror flick within a shoot-em-up framework.

Dean Martin plays a gambler who tries to prevent a card cheat from being lynched, when fellow card player Roddy McDowell knocks him out and leads the lynch mob.

Some time later, a mysterious minister shows up in town, played by Robert Mitchum, bent on bringing religion to the multitudes. He carries a gun, shoots fast and shows signs of being a good bit more than he appears. "Everyone was something else before he became a minister," he explains at one point in the film and though the something else is never cleared up in his case, one can only imagine.

Suddenly, bodies start to crop up. A man is strangled by barbed wire, another is hanged in the church and another still is smothered in flour. The people playing cards the night of the lynching are being picked off. Is it one of the lynch mob members doing the killing ? Is it an outsider, most suspiciously the minister ? Is it coincidence ? Is it someone working in cooperation with someone else to snuff out these people and why ? Has the tinhorn gambler returned from the grave as a ghost ? What the hell is going on ?

It is soon shown that Mitchum is indeed the culprit, the card shop who was hanged having been his brother. McDowell, at his cowardly, doubkledealing best, has been feeding the minister the names, one at a time, of those in the card game, but conveniently claimed he, not Martin, had tried to prevent the incident, only to be knocked out. Martin is blamed as the ringleader of the lynch mob, there being no love lost between the two characters and of course Mitchum is being used as a killing machine to do the dirty work.

Mitchum smells a rat and ends up killing McDowell with a gun hidden in a Bible, then goes after Dean Martin, only to be shot in turn.

Mitchum is once again masterful as the killer, in a role much like that of Night Of the Hunter several years before. A man of God who has Christian beliefs, yet has no reservations whatsoever to get what he wants, even if it means killing. Where money was his motive in Night Of the Hunter, vengeance is his driving force here.

The way the people are ritualistically killed and the subtheme with an unidentified killer running loose makes this more than just a "western" or gunfight film, as it is commonly listed. It is, as said earlier, a "psycho western" in true form.

Martin sings the rousing opening title, which repeats itself at the end, but for the most part, the film score (by Mzurice Jarre)  is a big letdown. Ennio Morricone, Bruno Nicolai, De Masi or someone of that ilk could have worked wonders with this movie. The acting, however, is masterful, with Mitchum again stealing the show. You don't know whether to feel sorry for him, support him or hate him, with McDowell being so slimy by comparison, you actually cheer when he shoots the little doubledealer.

 

review © by Dale Pierce

 

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In times of uncertainty of a possible zombie outbreak, a woman has to decide between two men - only one of them's one of the undead.

 

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special appearances by
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directed by
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written by
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produced by
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now streaming at

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Robots and rats,
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Tales to Chill
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a collection of short stories and mini-plays
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from the post-apocalyptic
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Tales to Chill
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