"Five-Card Stud"

I just watched "Five-Card Stud" (1968), which is available through Netflix, both DVD and instant view. It's the first poker movie I've seen in a long time. Except that it's not really a poker movie. In fact, we see exactly one hand of poker during the whole film. There it is above, in the opening scene.

Somebody in the old west town of Rincon, Colorado, gets caught cheating, and the others form a lynch mob and give the scoundrel the frontier justice that I think casinos still ought to deliver to poker cheats. The town starts going crazy, though, when the card-playing vigilantes start being found dead one by one. The mystery of who is killing the killers is the movie's whole plot.

It's all pretty lame, I'm afraid. But it is kind of fun seeing stars such as Dean Martin, Roddy McDowall, Robert Mitchum, Denver Pyle, and Yaphet Kotto in their much, much younger days.
Maybe the best part, poker-wise, is Martin singing the cheesy title song:



Lyrics (as found at the bottom of the page here):

FIVE CARD STUD
(Music by: Maurice Jarre / Words by: Ned Washington)

He was King at Five Card Stud.
The stranger's game was Five Card Stud.
He was hard to beat,
Rather play than eat,
Long as it was Five Card Stud.

When he played he played for blood.
When this ramblin', gamblin' man said, 'Deal 'em',
You had better beware.

Bet your poke and he'd leave you broke.
Then he'd make a joke as he slyly grinned.
Then he'd say, 'That's enough today!'
And he'd ride away like the wind.

Stud was all he lived and breathed,
But now and then a fire seethed.
Liked his gals and fun.
Then he'd up and run,
Run right back to Five Card Stud.

Never played two hands the same.
He could bluff you, bluff you blind.
You'd swear that He invented the game.

How he loved that Five Card Stud.
Life to him was Five Card Stud.
When he played he played for blood.
He was King at Five Card Stud.