Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Aaron Igay This is a casino heist movie set in Reno. Apparently they didn't realize back then that any decent casino heist film must be set in Vegas. The fact that it was perhaps the first casino heist film ever is no excuse. Reno was apparently so uninteresting that they had to open the film with a five minute scene of the automated pigeonhole parking garage. Pigeonhole parking lots saw a small boom in the 50s but quickly faded as people didn't like waiting around for their cars on a good day, let alone when the elevators often broke down. Seriously, seeing what the casinos looked like back then is interesting, but unfortunately the heist itself was a bit of a disappointment, it doesn't account for much screen-time and is logistically ridiculous.

punishmentpark Somehow I mistakenly thought that this was the original version of 'Ocean's Eleven' from 2001, but that would actually be the film of the (duh) same name from 1960... no wonder this was a surprise, eh?Anyway, this is a wonderful heist film, though the heist isn't really the center of it. There's a long dramatic build up to it about a group of college friends who struggle (some more than others) with their current lives and concerns for their futures, with lots of dialogue, and it is - thank God - not crammed with superfluous music when one would pretty much expect it; something that occurs so much in more recent films - phooey!Then there is a great cast of (to me) unfamiliar faces, except for the amazing Kim Novak, who even gets to sing^ a few classy tunes - woof!'5 against the house' is really something else, maybe not for everyone - you should certainly not expect a lot of action - but it has a story that is original and gripping, although the (comedic) parts with the freshman student felt somewhat out of place. I really loved that use of that special kind of parking, too, by the bye!A big 8 out of 10; highly recommended!^ Oh, and Kim Novak didn't actually sing those songs as I found here on IMDb, but what the hey.

moonspinner55 Jack Finney's magazine story becomes an annoying, miscast film saddled with leadweight pacing and poor production values. University seniors "cook up" a great lark for successfully robbing a casino in Reno, but when they hit the highway to attend their pal's wedding, roommate Brian Keith (just out of the Korean War as well as the psycho ward!) decides to treat the heist plan seriously, hijacking the others. Good cast can't do much with this juvenile script--and the actors look too old to be campus kids, anyway (Keith could easily pass for one of the faculty--notice how no one cards him at the gambling tables). Alvy Moore's wisecracking sidekick is grating the minute he opens his mouth, but young Kim Novak has movie-star allure to spare as a nightclub singer. The locations are more interesting than these characters, although neither are especially exciting--and some of the backdrops look so phony, one half-expects them to topple over from the draft caused by the wind machine. *1/2 from ****

degatesjr Kim Novak is of course terrific (she rarely phoned one in), and it's an interesting pre-star turn, meaning before PICNIC and VERTIGO, but the rest of the cast is pretty interesting, and particularly Brian Keith---Keith did a lot of 50's B-picture work that's worth watching, if you can find it. The real reason to see this picture is because it's a Phil Karlson. Karlson is one of those guys like Don Siegel, who came up in the studio system just before television. Early live TV produced people like Frankenheimer and Arthur Penn and Paddy Chayevsky, but there were already guys in the trenches like Siegel and Karlson, who got the chance to direct because they could do it quick and cheap, but make a picture look like it didn't come from Poverty Row. (See, for example, Clint Eastwood's PLAY MISTY FOR ME. Eastwood got his shot by rock-bottom budgeting, a lesson he might have learned from Siegel.) Karlson is due for a re-evaluation, along with, say, Budd Boetticher and Burt Kennedy. Siegel seems to be getting his due, not that he couldn't use an occasional boost. But watch this, and maybe THE PHENIX CITY STORY (not a misspelling), and tell me Karlson can't do it tense.