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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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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.
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review © by Dale Pierce
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Robots and rats,
demons and potholes, cuddly toys and shopping mall Santas,
love and death and everything in between,
Tales to Chill Your Bones to is all of that.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to -
a collection of short stories and mini-plays ranging from the horrific to the darkly humourous,
from the post-apocalyptic to the weirdly romantic,
tales that will give you a chill and maybe a chuckle,
all thought up by the twisted mind of screenwriter and film reviewer Michael Haberfelner.
Tales to Chill Your Bones to
the new anthology by Michael Haberfelner
Out now from Amazon!!! |
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