User Reviews

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.

20th Century Fox's "Violent Saturday"(1955) is exactly the kind of movie they were so good at producing in the forties when they came up with such noir gems as "Cry Of The City", Kiss Of Death", "Where The Sidewalks Ends" etc. and all in glorious Black & White too. But here, it must be said, this 1955 production, elaborately but mistakingly filmed in Cinemascope and DeLuxe colour, never achieves the atmosphere required to maintain a credible noirish look or feel. Besides the garish colour and the totally needless use of Cinemascope its main fault as a movie is the inclusion also of little vignettes of stories concerning individuals of a small town who will become effected in some way by the arrival of three crooks with a plan to rob the local bank. Firstly there is the voyeuristic bank manager (the irritating Tommy Noonan) who has the hots for local nurse (Virginia Leith), is awestruck every time he sees her and gets his jollys from watching her undress through her window at night. There is engineer Richard Egan trying desperately to save his rickety marriage to (the awful) Maggie Hayes who is having an affair with Brad Dexter (who must have been hard up for some work) and there is library employee (the totally forgotten) Silvia Sydney pilfering from her place of work to pay off her mounting debts. These minor subplots, about totally uninteresting people (who are not particularly well written or played either) are quite mundane really and only serve as so much padding until we get to the actual robbery and its fairly exciting aftermath. Deriving from a novel By William L.Heath it was produced for the studio by Buddy Adler and was dryly directed by the estimable Richard Fleischer whose name is usually stamped on much classier efforts than this. The rambling screenplay came from Sidney Boehm and the wasted Cinemascope cinematography was by Charles G. Clarke.

Three crooks (Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J.Carroll Naish) come into the town of Bradenville to rob the bank. After pulling off the heist they force hapless engineer (Victor Mature) to drive them out of town to a prearranged rendezvous at an isolated farm run by an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) his wife and young family. Tied up and blindfolded in the barn Mature manages to undo his bonds, free the family and with the crooked guard's shotgun take on the gang in a well devised and exciting shootout. The acting is just about OK! Mature turns in his usual workmanlike performance (he once famously declared "I'm no actor and I've got a scrapbook at home full of reviews to prove it"). Also reasonably good are the three baddies but Richard Egan is wasted in a nothing role and subsequently it is hard really to empathize with anyone in it who are all by and large uninteresting cardboard characters. Borgnine is about the best in it! In an unusual sympathetic role as a pacifist anti-violence Amish farmer forced to abandon his faith when a member of his family is wounded. Another plus for the film is the fine noirish score provided by the great Hugo Friedhofer. His sweeping music over the credits pointing up the multi-faceted drama that is to follow.

No, not a great picture by any means but perhaps worth a look if only for the final 30 minutes.

Three men come to a small town to rob the bank and several of the local citizens get caught up in it. It sounds simple but there is a lot going on, building slowly as the robbers make their plans and the townsfolk sort out their personal lives until the robbery itself when Saturday explodes into violence affecting the citizens for good or for ill. Filmed excellently in colour and widescreen by Charles G. Clarke and directed with a sure hand by the versatile Richard Fleischer you get to know not just the physical look of a town but the darkness beneath the sunny exteriors.

The acting all round from a reliable cast is very good. Victor Mature as the reluctant hero, Richard Egan as the unhappy mine owner, Tommy Noonan as the tormented bank manager, Margaret Hayes as the wayward wife and a bearded Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer to name a few. The bank robbers perfectly played by Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin and J. Carrol Naish are not branded as evil but just doing a job. Lee Marvin in his sleepless scene is splendid. The veteran Sylvia Sidney has a small role as a librarian with a secret.

Well worth a watch.

This is a film noir look at a bank robbery set in a 1950s Arizona town and a nearby Amish farm. The Amish characters drew me to watch this Hollywood feature by Twentieth Century Fox.

Harper (Stephen McNally), Chapman (J. Carrol Naish), and Dill (Lee Marvin) are three hoods planning a bank robbery on the main bank in the mining town. They arrive separately in town and case the bank. Harper looks for a place out of town to stash the getaway car and have another vehicle. He chooses the Amish farmer, Stadt (Ernest Borgnine), who has a wife and four children. Other major characters are the local mine owner, Boyd Fairchild (Richard Egan), and the mine manager, Shelley Martin (Victor Mature).

There's also a creepy bank manager, Harry Reeves (Tommy Noonan), who enjoys watching nurse Linda Sherman (Virginia Leith) undress at night at the local hotel since she doesn't pull the blinds down, and Emily Fairchild (Margaret Hayes), Boyd's wife, who is carrying on with a local golf pro. Boyd also has wandering eyes for nurse Linda.

It sort of goes as planned. Harper captures Shelley and takes him to the Amish farm, where everyone is bound and blindfolded in the barn. There is unplanned shooting at the bank, and when the robbers get back to the farm, they discover their captives have gotten free and overpowered the person left with the getaway truck to guard them. A shootout ensues, with the final coup de grâce administered by the Amish farmer.

It's all fairly standard film noir with some soap opera mixed in. Lee Marvin is menacing, and Victor Mature is heroic.

Ernest Borgnine is a somewhat odd Amish farmer, particularly with a hat that looks quite odd. The rest of the family are in dark clothes and rarely speak. Borgnine speaks like a 19th-century Quaker with lots of "thee" and "thou" terminology. He stoutly defends his pacifist beliefs until his son is shot by one of the robbers, and Lee Marvin is about to execute Victor Mature. Borgnine then uses a pitchfork in a manner not intended for that implement. It's a fairly typical way Hollywood converts pacifists in its war and western films. We also need to ignore the fact that there were no Amish in Arizona in the 1950s.

Richard Fleischer made his name directing black and white B movies for RKO, especially "The Narrow Margin" and "Armored Car Robbery", both starring Charles McGraw, one of the great screen hard men. Fleischer made 'Violent Saturday" for 20th Century Fox, and it was nothing like as tight and economical as those two classics. It concerns three crooks coming to a small town to rob the bank, always a promising set-up.

I think there are two main reasons for the relative inferiority of this one. One is the use of Cinemascope: colour and widescreen photography, nearly all in sunlight, though well done here, can never be as satisfying in a thriller as the old black and white. The other problem is the script. Hard to believe when it's by Sydney Boehm, who wrote some great noirs, including "The Big Heat" and "Undercover Man", both with Glenn Ford. Others have complained about the amount of soap and mentioned "Peyton Place," published the year after this film was released, and presumably the fault was with the novel on which Boehm based his script. We spend too much time on Victor Mature's desire to be a hero to his young son, and Richard Egan as a poor little rich boy driven to drink by the infidelities of his wife Emily. It doesn't help that while Mature and Egan were handsome hunks and catnip to the ladies, both are rather dull. More interesting is Tommy Noonan as the timid bank manager, married but given to taking his dog for a walk so that he could spy on, and drool over, Virginia Leith, He's got no chance, of course, as she fancies Egan, but Peeping Tom's obsession is understandable. Leith was lovely and talented, and deserves better than to be remembered as Jan in the Pan. There's also Sylvia Sidney as a librarian who steals to pay her debt, Ernest Borgnine as a pacifist Amish farmer and Brad Dexter as Emily's latest lover.

All the strands are brought together when McNally, Marvin and J. Carrol Naish stage their robbery and head to Borgnine's farm with the loot. This is where Fleischer comes into his own: like the similarly underrated John Sturges he was one of the greats when it came to staging action scenes. Marvin, not surprisingly, is the most interesting of the trio. His loose-lipped look suggested oafishness bordering on stupidity, and before he become an unlikely star it was always a pleasure to see him get his. His fate here was up there with the one in "The Big Heat." Despite my reservations, this film is still well worth watching.