Four friends enrolled at Midwestern University—Brick, Al, Ronnie and Roy—visit the Harold's Club casino in Reno, Nevada during a weekend trip. After an hour spent gambling and socializing, Ronnie must cash a check at the cashier's window. He is accompanied there by Roy, but the cashier is being threatened by a man with a gun. Using a concealed security alarm, the cashier alerts casino officials, who apprehend the armed robber as well as Roy and Ronnie. Al persuades the police to release Roy and Ronnie, but Ronnie overhears one of the police officers boast that a successful heist would be impossible.
Back at college, the incident is seemingly forgotten, but Ronnie begins developing his plans to rob the casino. Al reestablishes his relationship with his girlfriend Kay, who recently has become a singer at a local nightclub. Brick, a war veteran battling post-traumatic stress disorder, fights another student and experiences a dissociative psychotic episode. Al urges Brick to return to a veterans' hospital for treatment, but he refuses.
Ronnie finalizes his plan to rob Harold's Club and recruits Brick and Roy. He maintains that all the money would be returned and thus they would not be guilty of a prosecutable crime. Ronnie purchases an untraceable trailer and car and builds a cart that is identical to the cash carts used at Harold's.
Ronnie determines that the robbery only can proceed if Al participates, maintaining that at least four people will be needed. However, Brick, Roy and Ronnie agree that Al will not participate in the robbery if he is made aware of it. The day before the robbery, Al proposes to Kay, and they join the other men on a return trip to Reno in order to marry quickly.
Inside the trailer on the long drive to Reno, Ronnie informs Al and Kay about the heist. They are shocked and refuse to participate. By the roadside, the increasingly volatile Brick brandishes a revolver and threatens to kill Al if anyone attempts to sabotage the plan. Brick also announces a change to the plan: the money will not be returned.
At the casino, the robbery is executed efficiently as Reno's casino district is filled with costumed partiers. In disguise, Brick, Ronnie and Al assimilate into the crowd and detain casino employee Eric Berg, whom they threaten with death unless he follows their instructions. Berg is told that an accomplice is hiding in the cart and will open fire if the man deviates from the plan. Hidden inside the cart is a tape recorder with prerecorded messages that can be played at the push of a secret button to convince Berg that the accomplice is real. However, he instead throws the cart down a flight of stairs, ruining the plan and causing the men to flee. Brick leaves the others and Al pursues him into a parking structure. Kay, who has alerted the police, follows them, and a tense standoff ensues. Al convinces Brick to surrender peacefully.
The film was based on a novel by Jack Finney, which was published in 1954. Stirling Silliphant optioned the book himself, using proceeds from the sale of the rights to his novel Maracaibo.[2] The film was to be made at United Artists with Frank Tashlin as director and Mary Costa in a starring role. However, negotiations with the studio collapsed, and Tashlin and Costa withdrew. By October 1954, negotiations were under way at Columbia with Peter Godfrey to direct and Milly Vitale to star alongside Guy Madison, Alvy Moore, Roddy McDowall and Robert Horton.[3] Eventually Vitale, McDowall and Horton withdrew, and some parts were taken by contract Columbia players such as Kim Novak and Kerwin Mathews.
The role was one of Novak's earliest screen appearances. She was among the final group of actors to be signed to a studio contract and recruited through the previous studio system.[4]Harry Cohn of Columbia insisted upon casting Novak. Silliphant later said, "Who cared? She couldn't act but the role didn't require a Shakespearean capability. All she had to do was slink and roll those eyes."[2]
In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic A. H. Weiler wrote: "[B]risk direction, crisp, idiomatic and truly comic dialogue and a story line that suffers only from some surface characterizations make these 'Five Against the House' absorbing crew. ... Although their motivations would appear to be somewhat fragile, director Phil Karlson has given his melodrama mounting tension as the hold-up plan is unfolded and suddenly builds from a theoretical challenge to frightening reality."[5]
On July 16, 2019, Kit Parker Films released the film in the U.S. on Blu-ray disc as part of its set Noir Archive Volume 2: 1954–1956. No bonus material was included. On November 30, 2020, the UK's Powerhouse Films, through its Indicator label, released the film as part of its six-film Blu-ray disc set Columbia Noir #1 with commentary by film critic David Jenkins, a Three Stooges comedy short titled Sweet and Hot and a 67-minute video interview with Novak recorded at the National Film Theater in London in 1997.[7]
