Violent Saturday is a surprisingly entertaining film that mixes classic bank heist movie elements with the kind of over-done social melodrama like Douglas Sirk used to direct.
Instead of coming up with a feathered fish, director Richard Fleischer almost creates a new genre, the Woman's Weepie Heist Picture. I don't know how he pulled it off, but he did.
Describing the plot for Violent Saturday will not help anyone who may be intrigued by my earlier statements, but here goes.
A group of three men arrive in the small California town of Bradenville intending to rob the bank. They have thoroughly cased the joint and their plan is to hit the bank on Friday, just before it closes at noon.
Meanwhile, we get to meet the different towns people including Tommy Noonan as a pervert bank manager (this is probably more common than we like to think), the town floozy (Margaret Hayes) who is married to a rich drunk (Richard Egan) and a man who never served in WWII and feels guilty about it played by Victor Mature.
Toss in Sylvia Sydney as a purse-stealing librarian (yes, you read that correctly), Virginia Lieth as a sultry nurse of the "Hubba Hubba" type and finally Ernest Borgnine as Stadt, a simple Amish farmer committed to non-violence.
To paraphrase Bill Murray in Tootsie, Bradenville is one nutty town. But then the gangsters arrive beginning with the brains of the outfit played by Stephen McNally, followed later by safe-cracking expert J. Carrol Naish and finally the brawn of the gang played with gleeful malice by Lee Marvin.
I don't know why people just don't run when they see Lee Marvin approach, for he almost always means bad news. This is demonstrated rather wonderfully early in the film when a young boy bumps into Marvin, knocking his inhaler out of his hands.
As the boy apologizes and bends over to pick up the inhaler, Marvin steps on the boys hand and grinds it painfully into the pavement. Great touch!
Like most heist films, this one has an intricate plan that depends on proper timing and no slip-ups to work. Our villains have earlier scoped out Borgnine's farm as a safe place to reconnoiter after the robbery where they can divide up the money and escape.
The first bit of bad luck occurs when McNally car-jacks Victor Mature who is already smarting because his son does not think he's a hero because of his lack of service in WWII, so Mature is just itching for a chance to prove his mettle.
Then Tommy Noonan, the Peeping Tom bank manager turns out not to be such a wimp after all. Grabbing the gun he has hidden in his desk he trades gunfire with the crooks and gets wounded.
There is one other casualty however, the town floozy. Even though she has reconciled with her husband and is at the bank to get some Travelers Cheques for a trip, the fact remains she did have an extramarital affair with another man. They even had sex!
The punishment for a woman who commits adultery in an old Hollywood film is harsh. Nothing less than a painful, embarrassing death will suffice. The punishment for the man, well, not so harsh.
Even with the plan falling apart at the bank, the thieves get away with the money and race off to Borgnine's farm where the crooks have tied up Mature and Borgnine along with his solemn little Amish family.
The crooks luck deteriorates further because Mature is able to get himself free from his rope and when they arrive at Borgnine's Amish Farm (I just love the sound of that), Victor Mature is waiting for them.
This all culminates in a final shootout that is more violent than I thought possible, but it gets even better. Although Borgnine is completely dedicated to non-violence, after his five year old boy is shot in the cross fire, (kids have it tough in this movie), he is enraged enough to fight back.
So, with an act of violence that is shocking, even today, Ernest Borgnine dispatches Lee Marvin by ramming a pitchfork in his back. There were loud cheers from the audience at this point, reminiscent of what happened when the shark got blown up at the end of Jaws.
If this all sounds contrived and unbelievable, rest assured it would be if the filmmakers and actors were not so skillful. As Walter Huston once said of his acting, "I'm not paid to make good lines sound good, I'm paid to make bad lines sound good." Indeed, the most improbable of lines are rendered believable by the actors.
For example, during the bank robbery, to keep a boy quiet (again with the kids!), J. Carrol Naish hands the boy some hard candy and says, "Stick these in your kisser and go suck on them". Be forewarned, this is a line I am just dying to use in real life.
But acting aside, the whole structure of the film very deftly mixes the melodrama of these small town lives with the genre requirements of the bank heist film. I urge young screenwriters to study this picture to learn how to plant narrative bombs that come to fruition later on in the plot without seeming cliché.
Violent Saturday was shot in Cinemascope and the wide screen is wonderfully utilized to make this little town seem very sinister, even though almost the entire film occurs during the day under the harsh Southern California sun.
If it ever arrives on DVD, definitely rent it.
Instead of coming up with a feathered fish, director Richard Fleischer almost creates a new genre, the Woman's Weepie Heist Picture. I don't know how he pulled it off, but he did.
Describing the plot for Violent Saturday will not help anyone who may be intrigued by my earlier statements, but here goes.
A group of three men arrive in the small California town of Bradenville intending to rob the bank. They have thoroughly cased the joint and their plan is to hit the bank on Friday, just before it closes at noon.
Meanwhile, we get to meet the different towns people including Tommy Noonan as a pervert bank manager (this is probably more common than we like to think), the town floozy (Margaret Hayes) who is married to a rich drunk (Richard Egan) and a man who never served in WWII and feels guilty about it played by Victor Mature.
Toss in Sylvia Sydney as a purse-stealing librarian (yes, you read that correctly), Virginia Lieth as a sultry nurse of the "Hubba Hubba" type and finally Ernest Borgnine as Stadt, a simple Amish farmer committed to non-violence.
To paraphrase Bill Murray in Tootsie, Bradenville is one nutty town. But then the gangsters arrive beginning with the brains of the outfit played by Stephen McNally, followed later by safe-cracking expert J. Carrol Naish and finally the brawn of the gang played with gleeful malice by Lee Marvin.
I don't know why people just don't run when they see Lee Marvin approach, for he almost always means bad news. This is demonstrated rather wonderfully early in the film when a young boy bumps into Marvin, knocking his inhaler out of his hands.
As the boy apologizes and bends over to pick up the inhaler, Marvin steps on the boys hand and grinds it painfully into the pavement. Great touch!
Like most heist films, this one has an intricate plan that depends on proper timing and no slip-ups to work. Our villains have earlier scoped out Borgnine's farm as a safe place to reconnoiter after the robbery where they can divide up the money and escape.
The first bit of bad luck occurs when McNally car-jacks Victor Mature who is already smarting because his son does not think he's a hero because of his lack of service in WWII, so Mature is just itching for a chance to prove his mettle.
Then Tommy Noonan, the Peeping Tom bank manager turns out not to be such a wimp after all. Grabbing the gun he has hidden in his desk he trades gunfire with the crooks and gets wounded.
There is one other casualty however, the town floozy. Even though she has reconciled with her husband and is at the bank to get some Travelers Cheques for a trip, the fact remains she did have an extramarital affair with another man. They even had sex!
The punishment for a woman who commits adultery in an old Hollywood film is harsh. Nothing less than a painful, embarrassing death will suffice. The punishment for the man, well, not so harsh.
Even with the plan falling apart at the bank, the thieves get away with the money and race off to Borgnine's farm where the crooks have tied up Mature and Borgnine along with his solemn little Amish family.
The crooks luck deteriorates further because Mature is able to get himself free from his rope and when they arrive at Borgnine's Amish Farm (I just love the sound of that), Victor Mature is waiting for them.
This all culminates in a final shootout that is more violent than I thought possible, but it gets even better. Although Borgnine is completely dedicated to non-violence, after his five year old boy is shot in the cross fire, (kids have it tough in this movie), he is enraged enough to fight back.
So, with an act of violence that is shocking, even today, Ernest Borgnine dispatches Lee Marvin by ramming a pitchfork in his back. There were loud cheers from the audience at this point, reminiscent of what happened when the shark got blown up at the end of Jaws.
If this all sounds contrived and unbelievable, rest assured it would be if the filmmakers and actors were not so skillful. As Walter Huston once said of his acting, "I'm not paid to make good lines sound good, I'm paid to make bad lines sound good." Indeed, the most improbable of lines are rendered believable by the actors.
For example, during the bank robbery, to keep a boy quiet (again with the kids!), J. Carrol Naish hands the boy some hard candy and says, "Stick these in your kisser and go suck on them". Be forewarned, this is a line I am just dying to use in real life.
But acting aside, the whole structure of the film very deftly mixes the melodrama of these small town lives with the genre requirements of the bank heist film. I urge young screenwriters to study this picture to learn how to plant narrative bombs that come to fruition later on in the plot without seeming cliché.
Violent Saturday was shot in Cinemascope and the wide screen is wonderfully utilized to make this little town seem very sinister, even though almost the entire film occurs during the day under the harsh Southern California sun.
If it ever arrives on DVD, definitely rent it.