5 Against the House (1955)

Directed by Phil Karlson; produced by John Barnwell and Stirling Silliphant

Four law school friends (Guy Madison, Brian Keith, Kerwin Mathews, Alvy Moore) spend a weekend at Reno, where they witness an attempted robbery at a casino. Prompted by a security guard’s boast that stealing from the casino ‘can’t be done’, one of the quartet devises a plan successfully to do so. The others eventually agree to the scheme, which will actually carry out the theft – to prove an academic point – but result in the money being returned. One of the four, however, has a different intention for the cash.

5 Against the House may be one of the earliest movies depicting a heist, as opposed to a simple robbery. Perhaps prompted by The Asphalt Jungle, it in turn may have influenced other casino-heist films. As such, it is interesting, but the robbery itself is disappointing. The scheme is one unlikely to succeed even under ideal conditions; it relies on a gimmicky hidden ‘fifth criminal’, and a get-away that makes use of the railway that runs right through the centre of Reno. The possibility of such an escape route must have been realised by the police for years.

The real entertainment of the script – the first he wrote for a film by co-producer Silliphant, who went on to pen screenplays for In the Heat of the Night, The Poseidon Adventure, and other movies – is the dialogue among the four friends. It is light-hearted and genuinely funny, and gives the impression that these men are good pals. The part of the movie preceding the heist has little to do with the crime, which is being planned in the background, as it were; instead, we get to know the characters. They are interesting enough to make the robbery seem almost a detour. As well, one wonders how much these students are paying attention to their classes: Mathews states that, as long as the money is returned, there will have been no crime committed; these are would-be lawyers, remember.

The acting is good, especially by the always casual Keith, who nonetheless gives an edge of explosive menace to his character. (If he and Madison seem old for students, it should be noted that they play Korean War vets, who are probably going to university on a G.I. bill.) Moore is fun as the most comical of the four, while Kim Novak, in one of her earliest rôles, is convincing as the marriage-shy girlfriend of Madison’s character. Also seen is William Conrad in a surprisingly small part, and Kathryn Grant (Bing Crosby’s second wife) is uncredited as a former girlfriend of Keith’s character.

The direction is adequate but without tension in the climax. Karlson was a competent man behind the camera, responsible for directing such movies as Kansas City Confidential, Kid Galahad and the tv movie Alexander the Great, starring William Shatner. Prolific and competent, he worked principally on B-movies, though it’s perhaps satisfying to know that a decent, if unrecognized, Hollywood toiler at last hit it big with his penultimate picture, Walking Tall (which made him wealthy, as he had a stake in it.)

By and large, though, 5 Against the House is a likeable, largely forgettable film, remarkable only for the leading lady who went on to bigger things.