A preacher arrives in a frontier town situated one hundred miles south of Denver around 1880, setting off a series of deaths linked to an infamous card game. A charismatic gambler then attempts to uncover the person responsible for the killings. Roddy McDowall portrays the disobedient son of a wealthy rancher. “5 Card Stud,” released in 1968, is a serviceable Western that takes place within a town setting and features a strong cast and an authentic depiction of life in the Southwest. However, the plot feels forced and artificial. It doesn’t measure up to Dean Martin's earlier Western “Bandolero!” or even “The Sons of Katie Elder,” though it surpasses his later film “Something Big.” Inger Stevens appears as the town’s new madam; tragically, she died by suicide at age 35 not long after the movie was released. Katherine Justice, who was twenty-five during filming, is memorable as Nora, although her dark hair seems unnatural given that she's a natural redhead. For those who might find issue with a black man working as a bartender in the West (played by Yaphet Kotto), the fictional town of Rincon is located one hundred miles south of Denver, placing it within Colorado, which had joined the Union four years prior. This definitively positions it in the West, not the South, especially considering that fifteen years after the Civil War, the Colorado Territory was largely supportive of the Union cause. Mama's Saloon operated as a private establishment and anyone who didn’t want to be served by a black man could have gone elsewhere (it happened to be the only saloon in town at the time, although another one was under construction). George’s imposing physique—he stood 6'4"—likely discouraged racist behavior. While it doesn’t reach the quality of other Westerns from that era like “Duel at Diablo,” “El Dorado,” “The War Wagon,” “Hombre,” “Firecreek,” “Hang ’em High,” and “The Train Robbers,” it shares similarities with those films and is worth watching if you enjoyed them. I would consider its level to be comparable to “Young Billy Young,” which was released the following year and also featured Mitchum. The film has a running time of 1 hour, 43 minutes and was filmed in Durango, Mexico, with additional studio work completed at Paramount in Los Angeles. GRADE: B-/C+

Source on TMDB