Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Blistering performances.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Thank God it has a great opening song!Frankly, as a Western aficionado and a big fan of Dean, this movie is a tough one to get through. And yet, it's a stellar cast! Dino, Mitchum, McDowall, Yaphet Kotto! You know the problem doesn't come from there! The pacing is all wrong, the staging is all wrong, I'm guessing the shooting script was all wrong... Even Maurice Jarre score is all wrong (for this movie)!This is a big, full fledged train-wreck of a movie! So awful you can't look away but yet, you cringe all the way through. Hard to believe this was directed by Henri Hathaway (who directed the original "True Grit" a year later) and produced by the great Hal Wallis (who had produced all the Martin & Lewis movies, back in the 50's)!...It's a shame... I'd like to be able to enjoy this movie more, but seeing it could have been done so much better in a variety of ways just takes all the fun out of it. That is one movie that would benefit being remade... Except for the cast... Those legends are all gone now (except for Kotto).

This is a formula type story told in a Western. The plot: A lynch mob forms at a poker table after one of the players is caught cheating. Rody McDowell steals the show as the evil leader of the lynch mob, a spoiled rich kid with nothing but meanness in his soul. Dean Martin plays a Hollywood style poker playing pro who tried to stop the lynching. The players keep quiet about it, but find themselves being killed off one by one. It doesn't take a genius to figure out who the killer is very early. The situations are contrived, but at least fun. The plot follows a logical, easy to follow pattern, and resembles mindless fun. Still, the script and characters are so weak that only McDowell's evil gives the viewer someone to root for or against (in this case against.) But it is not a dull movie, and does entertain to some extent.

During a game of cards, one of the players is found the be a cheat. The others decide that running him out of town isn't good enough and lynch the cheater. Soon afterward, however, the men in the lynching party begin dying violent deaths. In the Old West, a showdown between two armed men was one thing, but murder is murder.Considering the cast assembled for Five Card Stud (Dean Martin, Robert Mitchum, Roddy McDowall, Yaphet Kotto, Denver Pyle, and Inger Stevens) I expected a solid and enjoyable Western. And while each of these actors does their best to prop-up the movie, they are let down at almost every opportunity by uninspired directing and a weak plot. The movie is billed as a Western/Mystery. But, there's no mystery. It is so painfully obvious who the killer is that I'm shocked it took Dean so long to figure it out. Hathaway does nothing to add any suspense or drama. I was expecting, and hoping, for a big twist ending to save Five Card Stud, but it never came.But the worst part of the movie has to be the editing. Five Card Stud is over-long and needlessly bloated with scenes that go nowhere and do nothing to advance the storyline. Better editing to create a tighter, leaner movie could have done wonders and might have made it really enjoyable.

5 Card Stud is a re-make of Dark City which was released in 1950 and was Charlton Heston's feature film debut. Dean Martin is now playing the Heston part and in many ways he's reprising the role he did in Some Came Running. The role of gambler comes natural to him, it was one of many professions Dino tried in his youth before discovering show business. In the original the part Robert Mitchum plays originated with Mike Mazurki. Mazurki had a limited role in Dark City so Mitchum's part has been built up considerably. As always Robert Mitchum is interesting.The original Dark City involved a high stakes poker game in which Don DeFore got trimmed of the rent money and just about everything else. Rather than go home, he kills himself. Soon afterward his psychotic brother goes on a rampage against everyone in that game.It's no suicide here, but a lynching as the victim is caught cheating. If you've seen Dark City than you already know who the murderer is and it's not too hard to figure it out here. In the supporting cast, standing out are Roddy McDowell as the spoiled son of a local rancher who leads the lynch party and Yaphett Kotto who is the bartender in the saloon where the fatal poker game took place.Martin and Mitchum work well together, this is good entertainment.