Proof that “college boys are not swallowing goldfish these days,” as a New York Times reviewer observed in 1955, 5 Against the House transplants the characters of a campus comedy into a genre-shuffling hybrid of crime caper, shellshock melodrama, road movie, and Western-with songs. If Midwestern University students Al (Guy Madison) and Brick (Brian Keith) look too old for school, that's because they spent their formative years fighting in Korea. While Al hopes to build a future with a lovely nightclub singer (Kim Novak in an early role), Brick thinks the deck is stacked against him. When one of their glib and callow collegian pals comes up with a scheme to rob a casino simply to prove it can be done, Brick takes the intellectual exercise a little too seriously. The heist at Harold's Club in Reno highlights Karlson's talent for location shooting and his taste for surreal set pieces; a parking-garage car-elevator provides a sort of catharsis ex machina.
—Juliet Clark