Five Card Stud Retro Review

Who likes Western movies? Who likes a good murder mystery with a surfeit of suspects and a colorful cast of characters and suspects? If you answered "ME!" to these questions then I have a movie for you. It is a classic murder mystery that is set in the days of the old west! The movie's name is 1968's: "Five Card Stud".

 Its script is based on the novel of the same name written by Ray Gaulden. The script was written by Marguerite Roberts who would also write the screenplay for John Wayne western adventure "True Grit" in the following year! The film starts off with an awesome theme song, sung by Dean Martin! Martin, who plays the lead role(that of card shark "Van Morgan") is surrounded by an all star cast. Denver Pyle plays "Sig Evers", "Sig" is the head of the Evers clan. Katherine Justice plays "Nora Evers" and Roddy McDowell plays the part of her brother, "Nick Evers ".

 While Van and Nora are close, Nick and Van do not get along. Yaphet Kotto (best known for his role as both "Ross Kananga" And "Mr. Big" in the James Bond film: "Live And Let Die") is "Little George" the bartender. Inger Stevens plays "Lily Langford", local "Matron". Seasoned professionals such as Whit Bessell, John Anderson, Don Collier, Ted de Corsia, Roy Jenson and Robert Mitchum as the "Reverend Johnathan Rudd".

 The plot of the film is an interesting one. It is the year 1880 and in a little town called Rincon (which is a hundred miles from Denver, Colorado) in a saloon several men are seated, gazing intently at their cards. The game? Five Card Stud, what else? As the play progresses, it becomes apparent that the stranger in town has been cheating! Normally (as Van Morgan later points out) you just run the tenhorn out of town. But that is NOT what happens. The men, whom have all been drinking, decide to hang the man! Van Morgan tries to stop this lynch mob, only to be knocked out by a hit from a quirt.

The mob, led by the volatile Nick Evers, succeed in administering "Frontier Justice" on the hapless cheat. When Van comes to and finds out what has happened, he leaves Rincon in disgust. A short time after Van leaves Rincon, news arrives that gold has been discovered in Rincon! The little town is soon overrun by would-be prospectors! There is also news of a different sort--two of the men whom played in the game have been brutally murdered! The murder methods used are really quite ingenious. The shop keeper is found having been suffocated in a flour barrel (fun trivia--the older lady customer who finds the shopkeeper's corpse is played by actress Hope Summers. Summer's most famous role was that of "Clara Edwards" on The Andy Griffith Show).

 A couple of cowboys find an overturned wagon in the middle of the road. Once they right the wagon, a body is revealed. This time the killer has used the barbed wire of a fence to strangle his or her victim! Both grisly incidents occur to members of the fateful poker game. This causes Van Morgan to decide to return to Rincon. After all, two men are dead and he may also be a target for the killer! Van arrives in the suddenly overflowing town. Then we meet another of he towns new residents. The Reverend Johnathan Rudd, a tall man with a stern and edgy demeanor, enters the local bar. Rudd reaches to his holster, removes a Colt .45 and blasts two holes into the floor!! He tells those assembled that he is the new preacher in town. He would be obliged if people would see fit to attend the next Sunday's church services. With that, Rudd leaves a stunned crowd of onlookers. Rudd's Gambit works. The church is filled on that Sunday morning.

The bodies keep turning up. Each victim is done in by some form of strangulation. Van Morgan has to figure out--is this the work of one of the strangers in town or is one of the men from the poker game killing everyone in order to keep themselves out of trouble for their part in the murder? The movie reveals whom the murderer is well before the final reel.

SPOILER WARNING: the killer is the Reverend Rudd himself! The hanged man was his brother--Frankie Rudd! And Nick Evers, who claims that he tried to stop the lynching, has been giving Rudd the names of the lynchers. When Nick gives the final name (Van Morgan). Rudd kills Nick and leaves his body in an open grave. When the final showdown arrives, a nervous Van Morgan goes to meet Rudd. During the movie, every time one of the people were killed, their chair would be flipped up. Van looks at the poker table where every chair other than his has been flipped up. So, Van tells the saloon owner Mama Malone "If I'm not back by dark, will you flip that last chair up?"

 When Van meets Rudd, he tries the same trick on Van as he did on Nick--drawing a hidden gun from a trick bible. But Rudd makes a fatal mistake. He accidentally holds the Bible upside down! With this bit of forewarning, Van has the edge over the gunslinger Rudd. Van kills Rudd thereby ending the threat of ambush.

"Five Card Stud" is a very suspenseful and at times, intense western murder mystery. I give the film 4 out of 5 stars!