ThiefHott Too much of everything

GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Roxie The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Oslo Jargo (Bartok Kinski) Five Against the House is a 1955 flick that is really peculiar, on the one hand it wants to be an inarticulate college film, with dumb remarks and idiotic hazing, and on the other, a heist film with touches of noir.The acting is horrible and the script is no better. The ending, entirely pointless.Four college chums (played by 30 year olds), after wasting the first hour talking about girls, fights and cigarettes, decide to rob a Nevada casino, the Harold's Club.It has Brian Keith from the film noir Tight Spot (1955), which was average, and the film noir Nightfall (1957) which was a bit better. In this he just smokes and then goes nuts a few times.Kim Novak, from the good 1954 film noir Pushover, is hot, but doesn't do much. We don't even see her in a tub or anything.Kerwin Mathews (The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) and Jack the Giant Killer (1962)) is annoying, as he doesn't have any heavy gravitas here. He's horrible.Add Alvy Moore (a comic actor from Green Acres) who is probably an awful choice, as all he does is make stupid comments throughout and you wish he would get run over by a steam train.William Conrad is wasted as a casino 'money cart pusher' who gets taken in a really stupid way.For car buffs, you'll probably like the "automated parking garage" (see Bowser, Pigeon Hole and Roto Park systems). That's about it, nothing adds up much in here.

dougdoepke Uneven heist film. Making 30-somethings Madison and Keith into college students is a bit of a stretch. But I guess pairing them with the youthful Moore and Mathews presented a problem that a college dorm room could solve. Screenplay is by the celebrated TV writer Stirling Silliphant who, nonetheless, can't seem to script a line without a wise-guy quip. It's clever, but does get tiresome.The movie has two things going for it. First is an absolutely superb performance by Brian Keith. Few actors could get more mileage out of a squint and a cigarette than this low-key tough guy. His final descent into battle-shock madness is both persuasive and oddly touching. The entire movie turns on an ability to convey the required changes and he brings them off beautifully. The other plus is the location photography in Reno. It's entertaining to watch the crowds milling around the casinos, circa 1955. How the production crew got the crowds to act so natural, without acknowledging the camera, amounts to a real feat. Also, the parking garage makes for good staging, but apparently is a commercial novelty that never caught on.At the time, Columbia's head Harry Cohn was promoting Novak into the studio's newest sex goddess. Novak is okay in the role, but unfortunately her scenes with Madison slow down the pacing. Her role here looks like a rather awkward add-on to the main plot. In fact the heart of the film is neither the casino heist nor the Madison-Novak romance. Rather, the emotional center is the solid bond between the two Korean war vets. The chemistry between the two older men strongly portrays the kind of special kinship forged only in combatCertainly director Phil Karlson knows his way around action movies as proved by his gripping Phenix City Story. I suspect that had he a freer hand here, a leaner, sharper, more coherent movie would have resulted. As it is, the 90 minutes is entertaining, but not front rank. As a heist movie, it's so-so; as a buddy film, it's first rate. (In passing-- Looks like the producers of Oceans 11 {1960} sat through this film more than once.)

bkoganbing 5 Against The House is a stylish noir caper film that involves four Korean War Veterans and the girl friend of one of them in a heist against a Reno casino. It was directed by Phil Karlson and while it's a bit slow in developing when the action starts, it builds up to a good climax.The four veterans are Guy Madison, Alvy Moore, Kerwin Matthews, and Brian Keith. They're in college on the GI Bill of Rights and being a bit older than the other students there and with a shared wartime bonding, they kind of keep to themselves.After a night in Reno where they overhear an arresting cop with a suspect who tried to rob Harold's club there saying how impossible it was. That gives Kerwin Matthews who's the genius of the group an idea to plan the perfect crime.The others mean it as a prank to give the money back, but Keith is not a well man having spent some time in the psycho ward at the Veteran's Administration. He means to keep the money and he brings a long a pistol to enforce his argument. It's hard for Madison to say no to Keith, he saved his life in Korea. But Madison who is also romantically involved with Kim Novak resents her being roped in on the scheme.Best in the film is Brian Keith who does a very good job in suggesting a fundamentally decent man who's been unhinged by his wartime experiences. You have to understand that in order to understand why the film ended as it did.Novak looks fetching and lovely as always and gets a couple of inconsequential songs to sing, no doubt dubbed as they were in Pal Joey.5 Against The House did no harm to any of the careers among the cast here. Especially that of Kim Novak who was being prepped to take Rita Hayworth's spot as Columbia Picture's new sex goddess.

bmacv The boyish refulgence that brought him to movies over a decade earlier long since dimmed, Guy Madison has settled into William Holdenish good looks. Since Hollywood already had a Holden, and since Madison's acting skills were adequate at best, he no longer can hold the screen (this part came to him after a string of roles as Wild Bill Hickock). Luckily, Phil Karlson's 5 Against The House is an ensemble piece – an offbeat heist movie.Madison and Brian Keith are Korea veterans attending `Midwestern University' on the G.I. Bill; their buddies are wiseacre Alvy Moore and sobersides Kerwin Mathews. Mathews (whose faint accent stays a mystery) yearns to do something extraordinary to make him stand out, and dreams up a hare-brained scheme (no more than a prank, since he plans to give the money back) to rob a casino in Reno, Nevada. They're all in on the plan except Madison, who nonetheless joins them on the road west with his girl Kim Novak, to get married. When Madison tumbles to the set-up, he tries to stop it.The fly in the ointment, alas, is Keith, who spent time in the psychiatric ward for shell shock. He takes the prank dead seriously and intimidates the others to go along with him. Tricked out in Wild-West outfits and false beards, and wheeling a jerry-rigged money cart with a tape recorder inside, they hit the casino.... Phil Karlson falls short of top form here. The college hijinks are not this director's usual meat and potatoes, so he takes a long time getting any rhythm going. Then the heist itself, and the tensions among the robbers, seem oddly defanged, at least for Karlson; he seems to have fallen into a character study rather than an action movie, and unsure how to play it. Novak croons a couple of songs, and nobody gets killed. That's well and good, but a far cry from 99 River Street, or Kansas City Confidential, or The Phenix City Story, hard-core Karlson all. 5 Against The House remains in a no-man's-land between film noir and the light-hearted caper movies, like Ocean's 11, that would usher in the 1960s.