General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

5 Card Stud

5 Card Stud is a 1968 American Western mystery film directed by Henry Hathaway, starring Dean Martin as a gambler who investigates a string of murders committed against the men who took part in a fatal poker game. It was produced by Hal B. Wallis for Paramount Pictures, written by Marguerite Roberts from Ray Gaulden's 1967 novel Glory Gulch, and released on 12 July 1968 with a running time of 103 minutes.¹ The title also names the poker variant around which the plot turns, five-card stud, an early open form of poker in which four of each player's five cards are dealt face up.²

Key fact	Detail
Release	12 July 1968 (Chicago opening); New York 31 July 1968; Los Angeles 14 Aug 1968¹
Director / producer	Henry Hathaway; Hal B. Wallis (Hal Wallis Productions, Paramount Pictures Corp.)¹
Source	Novel Glory Gulch by Ray Gaulden (New York, 1967); screenplay by Marguerite Roberts¹
Lead cast	Dean Martin (Van Morgan), Robert Mitchum (Rev. Jonathan Rudd), Inger Stevens (Lily Langford), Roddy McDowall (Nick Evers)¹
Production	Principal photography 7 Feb to mid-Apr 1968, mainly in Durango, Mexico; Technicolor¹
Music	Maurice Jarre; title song "5 Card Stud" by Jarre and Ned Washington¹
Reception	IMDb 6.5/10 (about 5,100 votes); Roger Ebert rated it 3/4³^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The story is set in 1880 in Rincon, Colorado, where a stranger is caught cheating in a game of five-card stud and lynched by the other players. Van Morgan (Dean Martin), a professional gambler who alone tried to save the cheat, leaves for Denver. A gold rush then brings outsiders to Rincon, among them the gun-carrying preacher Jonathan Rudd (Robert Mitchum) and Lily Langford (Inger Stevens), a madam whose establishment includes a group of lady "barbers." When townspeople connected to the card game begin turning up murdered, Van returns to find the killer, who is stalking the remaining players one by one.⁵

The solution ties back to the lynching itself. The killer is Rev. Rudd, whose brother was the hanged cheat; he obtained the players' names from Nick Evers (Roddy McDowall), who claimed he had tried to stop the hanging but in fact instigated it and was its ringleader. After Rudd kills the bartender Little George (Yaphet Kotto) on Nick's advice, he learns of Nick's role, outdraws him, and is himself killed in the final shootout, after which Van leaves again for Denver.¹

Production

Development and casting. Hal B. Wallis acquired the screen rights to Glory Gulch in spring 1967 and re-teamed with Henry Hathaway, who had directed Wallis's The Sons of Katie Elder (1965). Dean Martin and Robert Mitchum were announced as co-stars in August 1967; Burt Reynolds met with Wallis about playing a heavy but turned the part down.¹

Shooting. After a delay from an originally scheduled October 1967 start, principal photography began on 7 February 1968 in Durango, Mexico, with twenty-two actors and fifty-two crewmembers flown in from Hollywood; production ran into mid-April 1968. Hathaway also wrote an original hymn, "Come, Sinners," for a church meeting scene, without taking screen credit for it.¹

Key crew. Daniel L. Fapp was director of photography, Warren Low the film editor, Walter Tyler the production designer, and Maurice Jarre composed the score, including the title song with lyricist Ned Washington.¹

Reception

Roger Ebert, the longtime film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, gave the film three stars out of four. He called it "not a great movie, but ... a polished, professional one," noting that it combines the stock elements of an action Western, gun battles, fist fights, barroom brawls, and lady barbers with hearts of gold, with "something rather rare, a well-made story": a suspense plot in a Western setting. He singled out Martin's unusually restrained performance, McDowall's villain, and the film's evocation of the paranoia that spreads through the armed town.⁴ A Time Out review described the film as a Western take on Ten Little Indians, carried by the cast, with Mitchum playing a variation on his preacher in The Night of the Hunter.⁶ On aggregate sites the film holds an IMDb rating of 6.5/10 from about 5,100 users, and Rotten Tomatoes lists a 52% Tomatometer from two critic reviews.³^•⁷

Ebert also recorded a piece of production trivia in the Hitchcock tradition: Hathaway himself appears as a face peering through the window of the U.S. marshal's office behind Martin.⁴

The card game behind the title

Five-card stud is an "open" form of stud poker in which most of each player's cards are dealt face up, so players can judge the strength of opponents' hands while betting; each player keeps one concealed "hole" card. Stud poker appeared in America as early as the 1860s, and because poker is a five-card game, five-card stud is regarded as the earliest form of stud poker. Each player antes, receives one card face down and one face up, then three more face up one at a time with a betting round after each; the best five-card hand at the showdown wins. Traditionally each betting round is opened by the player with the best hand showing, although in formal American casino games the first round is opened by a compulsory bring-in bet from the player showing the lowest card.²

The game's decline gives the film's saloon setting its period flavor: five-card stud was overtaken in popularity in the late 20th century by seven-card stud and by community card games such as Texas Hold'em and Omaha, though it is still played in some places.² PokerListings describes it as one of the oldest poker variants still played and notes its frequent appearance in Western films set in saloons.⁸

Availability

The film is distributed by Paramount Pictures and has been released on home video and digital platforms; as of recent listings it can be rented or bought on Amazon Video, the Apple TV Store, and Fandango At Home, and streamed on services including Hoopla and Philo.³^•⁹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Action and adventure films (individual works) › Westerns before 1980 › Released 1961 to 1979

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?