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Three hoodlums plot to rob a bank in a small town. But the town has secrets of its own: The bank president is a Peeping Tom. The librarian is a petty thief. The son of the strip-mine owner is an alcoholic; his wife is openly carrying on an affair with the local golf pro. The son of the strip-mine foreman is ashamed of him because he didn't fight in Word War II. The strip-mine nurse is the object of several men's sexual fantasies.

With a great tough guy turn by Lee Marvin as one of the bank robbers, alternately sniffing an inhaler and stomping on kids' fingers, and Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer (!) who isn't completely pacifistic. (Inspiration for WITNESS?) The strip-mining is a wonderful metaphor for the secrets that lurk just underneath the surface of a seemingly placid small town. Would be good on a double bill with BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK.

The town of Bradenville is in for a Violent Saturday because three men, Stephen McNally, Lee Marvin, and J. Carrol Naish have come to town to rob their bank. McNally is the brains of the trio and for any number of reasons including the town's isolation, small police force, and the fact that the bank is open on Saturday until noon have made him determine this is the place for a stickup. He's even got a fourth guy Richey Murray staked out at an Amish farm holding the farmer Enest Borgnine and his family hostage, picked because of its isolation and the fact they have no electricity or modern communication to send up an alarm.

But this is some town Bradenville, while we see the bank robbers carefully timing out their job, we also get a glimpse of Bradenville's citizenry. Quite a little Peyton Place that town is.

Richard Fleischer as director managed to skilfully combine a soap opera and a crime caper film and it works. The script is very tight, not one frame of film is wasted. We get any number of interesting side stories in the 90 minute time of the film that do not detract in any way from the caper portion.

Victor Mature is the nominal hero of the piece, he gets carjacked and kidnapped, but proves to be a bit more than the robbers can handle. Ernest Borgnine stands out in the cast as the Amish father who has to question the pacifist tenets of his faith to protect his home and family.

A little bit of noir, a little bit of soap opera mixed very well in a good thriller of a film in Violent Saturday.

There are 50+ IMDb reviews already, so I'll try to make this brief and succinct.

The first 55 minutes is a melodramatic soap opera that's borderline boring. This section gets 4 out of 10. The remainder is a thrill ride that gives the film its title. This section gets 8 out 10. Averaged out, this motion picture gets 6 out of 10.

Several reviewers take issue with the casting. I had no problem with it. Everyone does a decent, or above decent, job at acting. I could feel that they cared about their roles and were professional, carrying out the director's and producers' visions.

Considering the decade/century in which it was made, this film's violence is quite shocking. Apparently, critics took issue with this fact. By today's standards, it's no more than a PG rating.

And tough hold-up picture with insignificant small-town stories erupt into drama . A competent bank job film that takes place in the burning light of the Midwest noonday without a shadow in sight , when a gang of hoodlums decides to steal the local bank . It results in a violent and lethal conclusion . Along the way , a number of otherwise insignificant small-town stories erupt into drama when the bunch of henchmen , often with quirky behavior , decides to rob the local bank . A father (Victor Mature) looking for pride in his child's eyes , a shy bank clerk (Tommy Noonan) who is a peeping Tom by night , a man (Richard Egan) striving to rewin his spouse's (Margaret Hayes) love , an Amish farmer (Ernest Borgnine) to defend his family has to face off the violent reality , and a proper older woman (Sylvia Sidney) become crook , all find themselves entangled with the bank thives .

This interesting movie contains marvelous performances from all concerned , suspense , thrills , exciting situations and some action . The film is part thriller , part Film Noir and part Melodrama resulting in an attractive and well-shot blending. An enjoyable caper movie adding some depiction of local characters with some really soapy elements tossed in for good measure and winding up in a peaceful weekend becomes violent . Compact drama : intense , well-made and acted , but not as incisive as it should have been . But here the really poignant and moving final half hour really stands out , as opposed to other more boring parts of the story . Any movie which features tough actors as Lee Marvin , Richard Egan , Ernest Borgnine, Victor Mature has to be some kind of primer in slobdom , but in fact Ernest plays a religious fundamentalist farmer and hero Mature soon becomes marginal when up against Marvin as a loose-lipped with a permanent head cold . Director Fleischer takes attention away from the thriller and into a moral battleground back at the farm where Borgnine faces with viciousness and ultimately gets his pitchfork . However , too much conversation and too little action bogs down this thriller , although the plot and intrigue is nice . There are excellent acting from some Hollywood's best players , including prestigious secondaries , such as : Stephen McNally , Virginia Leith , Tommy Noonan , Margaret Hayes , J. Carrol Naish , Brad Dexter , Dorothy Patrick and veteran Sylvia Sidney and brief role for Lee Marvin , being one of his several early roles where he perpormed a nasty gangster or a bad guy , before he eventually became a brave good guy/action hero.

It packs brilliant and glamorous cinematography in CinemaScope and De Luxe color by great cameraman Charles G. Clarke . Likewise , sensitive and rousing musical score by Hugo Friedhofer . One of the medium-budgeted films ever shot by Buddy Adler/Twentieth Century Fox and this motion picture was well directed by Richard Fleischer , though being marred by excessive family drama . Craftsman Richard Fleischer was a prolific filmaker with successes and flops , as he has an important , long and uneven career . The last fifteen years the Richard Fleischer's films were not exactly very bright , filming Charles Bronson or Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicles , but in his first twenty-five years had proved his own right as one of the most interesting directors of American commercial cinema . He was an expert director , including classy adventures (Vikings, 20.000 leagues under sea) , noir cinema (Narrow margin , Clay pigeons , Trapped) , Terror (Amityville 3-D) , Sci-fi (Soylent Green) , Sword and witchery (Conan the Destroyer , Red Sonja) , among others .

Combination crime-drama and soap opera, presumably a contract picture from Fox with many familiar faces (and Ernest Borgnine inexplicably cast as an Amish farmer!), turns out to be a pretty exciting movie. Three hoods plot to stick up a small town bank; meanwhile, hormones are boiling over at the new copper plant where the foreman's son is drinking himself into a stupor while his cheating wife runs around on the golf course ("You're an alcoholic," she tells him, "and I'm a tramp!"). There's also a married banker who lusts after a shapely nurse, a librarian with sticky fingers, and Victor Mature as a graduate whose oldest child is ashamed that his father never served his country. Director Richard Fleischer sets up the pieces of this story almost sluggishly, yet after about an hour of exposition the plot really starts cooking. There are some strong images here, and vivid cinematography by Charles G. Clarke (with excellent location shooting in Bisbee, Arizona and terrific usage of De Luxe color stock). The ensemble cast works admirably together, no one person upstaging the other; however, crooked Lee Marvin makes a fantastic entrance into town stepping on a child's hand in the street! Gripping, tense, and surprisingly well-written, with Richard Egan getting an emotional monologue at the end about the unfairness of death. An injured Amish child is forgotten about in the rush of excitement, and Borgnine in an Abraham Lincoln beard strains credulity, but the technical aspects and direction of the film are top-notch. *** from ****

Thanks to FXM we can now see the widescreen version of Violent Saturday. Its a terrific, tense crime drama that must have been somewhat controversial in 1955. Certainly the onscreen violence is stronger than anything else I've seen from the period, except possibly Richard Widmark shoving the wheelchair down the stairs in Kiss of Death. There are definitely some hints of the future Hollywood of Sam Peckinpah--the sadistic Lee Marvin grinding a little boys hand into the ground, and a bearded Ernest Borgnine using a pitchfork on Lee towards the end of the film. Well worth catching.

The wide-screen format was at most only two years old when this film was made. Yet, Charles G. Clarke's shot composition in the new wide-screen format is beautiful. This alone makes the film worth watching.

This is a good example of a color film noir; perhaps not as good as Niagara (1953) or Leave her to Heaven (1945), which were made by the same studio by the way (20th Century Fox), but still a good example from the noir cycle in color.

One way to understand film noir is that it is simply violent melodrama. Look at The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) for example. Violent Saturday (1955) is steeped in melodrama, but there is also some extraordinary violence. And the violence here--in typical noir fashion--is the resolution--however bleak--to some of the melodramatic conflict.

The film has a profound cynicism grinding beneath the surface of the beautiful color photography. And this cynicism remains at the end of the film.

If you haven't seen this film and you are interested in film noir or film of this period, then I would highly recommend the Violent Saturday.

This is a gem, an excellent little picture, smart and menacing. If you're a fan of '50's pictures, particularly crime melodramas then this is a must-see. The plot is simple. A small town is visited by three hoods (Stephen McNally,Lee Marvin,J.Carroll Naish) intent on holding up the bank. The film revolves around their plans and folowing the lives of the townsfolk, who, oblivious to the villains in their midst, go about their mundane, everyday problematic lives until the saturday the two worlds collide. Richard Fleischer made an excellent job of this potboiler,which manages to sustain the tension managed in more celebrated films(High Noon) as the villains arrange their plot to rob the town. There's a stellar cast on display, McNally, Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Sylvia Sidney and even the normally lifeless performances given by the film's principal, Victor Mature, doesn't happen in this case. It's shot in terrific colour and has a genuine air of small town claustrophobia and menace. Check it out.

Three criminals plan how they intend to rob a small town bank while the unsuspecting local citizens deal with their own personal problems, all of which results in a violent weekend full of men trying to prove their worth in this slow burn thriller starring Victor Mature. Shot in CinemaScope with glorious, rich colours, 'Violent Saturday' is an incredibly good-looking film and the vivid nature of the images suits the gradual build-up of tension very well; grumpy men step on kids' hands, solemn women offer piercing glares, etc. When push comes to shove though, the build-up occurs for far too long. It is over an hour in before the heist actually takes place and while a subsequent barnyard show down rates among the most intense sequences that director Richard Fleischer ever filmed, one has endure over an hour of (at times) histrionic melodrama before any such tension finally erupts. And yet, while it may have been a more effective film at half its length, the overall impact of the movie is hard to shake. The supporting characters vary in how engaging they are, but Mature is excellent throughout as the emotionally torn protagonist, resentful of the fact that he is not the war hero that his impressionable preteen son wants him to be. The film also benefits from one of Hugo Friedhofer's most powerful scores and seeing Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer has definite curiosity value alone.

This is a dizzyingly silly fifties crime pic, very watchable, with some capable actors in small roles. Some of the behind-the-scenes people have done some fine work elsewhere, notably director Richard Fleischer and screenwriter Sid Boehm. There's a touch of The Asphalt Jungle in the caper aspect, while Victor Mature's businessman-father-who-didn't-serve-in the-war is out of Stanley Kramer or maybe Studio One. Richard Egan tries ever so hard to bring conviction, and does, to his flashy role of a rich boy alcoholic weakling, but doesn't have the chops to pull the part off. (I can imagine someone like Richard Baeshart might have done better, and even got an Oscar nod had been been cast.) The bad guys, a sinister-looking but bland Steve McNally, a menacing Lee Marvin, and a sometimes jovial J. Carrol Naish, do decent work. The small-town that provides the background for the crime is populated by such hick types as Sylvia Sidney and Tommy Noonan. Nothing about this movie is credible. Everything takes place in a Hollywood-manufactured world, not in itself a bad thing except that the picture makes a serious stab at realism, which is a fatal aesthetic flaw, since the story would have worked better on a smaller scale, in black and white, or on a bigger, more artificial one. The slice-of-life character study part of the picture suggests a small-town Executive Suite, while the examination of the hypocrisies and oddities of Middle America evoke the yet-to-be-made Picnic. There's deja vu all over the place in this one, though to the best of my knowledge Ernest Borgnine had never played an Amish farmer before.

"Violent Saturday" is an excellent crime film--which is surprising since it's made in Technicolor and Cinemascope. A traditional example of film noir is in black and white and features unusual lighting and camera angles that you won't see in this film. But that is okay...as it works anyway even though it's an odd mix of a soap opera and violent heist picture.

The first half of the film all occurs before the actual robbery. Thugs case the small town bank and plan their robbery. Additionally, you see a lot about various folks in the town--folks that will become important in the robbery and tense finale. These stories are generally interesting but a bit salacious--such as the drunk who's married to a woman that subsequently seeks comfort from other men! There's also the guy whose son is disappointed in him since he didn't serve abroad during WWII...and you know this guy (Victor Mature) will get a chance to prove himself later. And then there's the Amish family (led by Ernest Borgnine)...one which might have to alter their non-violent beliefs if they want to survive.

The film has a lot of pluses. It's violent for the 1950s but not gratuitously so (even though critics hated this about the movie) and the thugs are an interesting lot (including such great heavies as Steven McNally and Lee Marvin). The ending is also top-notch and exciting. All in all, a riveting and exciting film with a lot to offer.

I liked it. Those '50's melodramas/dramas-they were so great. Lee Marvin is always interesting. I liked his monologue about his "skinny ex-wife, her colds, and his inhaler." By the way-my small hometown Ohio bank was open until noon on Saturday up until the mid-seventies-until ATMs, of course. They were closed on Wednesdays. So a "Violent Saturday" (when most people did their grocery shopping, made deposits, etc.) made sense then. Some of the characters were strange; the librarian, and the Tommy Noonan character for sure. The nurse is very forgiving of him. I've always liked Richard Egan and thought his last scene was well-acted. Victor Mature is not one of my favorite actors, but this is one of his better roles. If you like '50's dramas/melodramas, check it out!

"Violent Saturday" was not an outstanding movie, nor very original, but that is not to say that it had no merit. Richard Fleischer's direction goes much farther than skin-deep. From one angle, "Violent Saturday" is about a hold-up and the normal guy (Victor Mature) who tries to stop the criminals. That's fine, and there are some very exciting moments toward the end of the film. But another angle is more interesting: it's a study of what normal small-town-folks do in secret. Indeed, in comparison to the unscrupulous dealings of a voyeuristic bank manager, a larcenous librarian, and a trampy wife and her alcoholic husband, the sadistic bad guys (including a memorable Lee Marvin) seem less sinister. In its studies of the dynamics between husband and wife, parent and child, and its Everyman hero and hard-bitten villains, "Violent Saturday" is half a tribute to noir tradition, half a fifties family-drama. The mixture is sometimes uneasy. Particularly annoying are the conversations between doofy dad Mature and his cute little son who wishes his dad was more of a hero. But the drama between the weirder citizens of the little town is intriguing. A masterful use of the camera and Hugo Friedhofer's strident score are other assets. All in all, "Violent Saturday" is worth a look.

I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of this 50s view of small town America for the glossy technicolor and cinemascope photography. How clean even a quarry looks. Victor Mature in a suit looks like Tarzan in New York, and it all felt like good trashy fun, especially with Lee Marvin as the hood. I still kept watching when it turned on the 50s morality of a TV episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents, and everything fell too neatly into place, but was less enthralled. Still, the film stays in the mind for it's location in Arizona, the suits, the sex, the schmaltz. How conveniently the adulterous wife is removed to allow the drunken husband a second chance with the cute young nurse. How ridiculously obvious the bank manager makes his schoolboy crush on the same nurse. How predictable the hero's chance to prove he's a hero to his son. Despite the wide screen and its visual pleasures, this is mostly an elongated TV show.

The same Richard Fleischer who gave us the tight, expert "The Narrow Margin" offers this kaleidoscopic slice-of-life under the guise of a heist movie. It had possibilities: the lives of several inhabitants of a small city, circa mid-century, (the kind of town which today is picturesque but impoverished and forgotten) are traced as events lead up to a bank robbery to occur at noon on Saturday. Some of the threads are 99.44-hundredths pure soap opera (the crumbling marriage), some implausible (the mousey stalker), and most of another makes little sense: it's the one about Sylvia Sydney as a librarian come upon hard times (her last name is the name of the town) -- and its coherence and point seem to have fallen to the cutting room floor. But Victor Mature as the solid (what else?) police officer gets to confront a gang of nasty villains (the young Lee Marvin among them) with the help of an Amish farmer, improbably cast by Ernest Borgnine. As in "Friendly Persuasion" and "Witness," this film gingerly accepts (if marginalizes) a minority religion only to ratify it wholeheartedly when Borgnine proves his red-blooded American manhood by abandoning his pacifist creed lock, stock and double-barrel (Hollywood's broad-mindedness only extends so far). Though ultimately episodic and unsatisfying, Violent Saturday opens a window into a mid-1950s lifestyle and mindset that makes it more interesting now than it probably was upon release.

Three well-dressed hoods come to a small town to rob its bank in this solid 50's B-movie, well directed by Richard Fleischer. The Peyton Place type subplots are pure soap (except maybe for a bizarre bit featuring Tommy Noonan as a milquetoast pervert), but the bank job and its aftermath are pretty good payoffs. Chief among this film's pleasures are the great supporting character actors, including Noonan, J. Carroll Naish as a veteran safecracker, Sylvia Sidney as the town's crusty librarian, and, in early performances, Lee Marvin as a sadistic thug who favors powder blue suits and Ernest Borgnine as, of all things, an Amish farmer ("I thank thee, neighbor.")! If you like typical 50's B-movies, this will definitely be a guilty pleasure -- it's worth hunting for (I found a lousy print of it that was put out by some company called Hellfire Video). How can you resist a movie starring Victor Mature and titled "Violent Saturday"!

Too much sappy melodrama, not enough of the heist - and of the violence announced in the title itself.

Strictly average B-movie, which shows its age: 1955 - and all the repressed sexuality in the US in those days are clear for all in 2022 to see.

It does have a fairly exciting last 15 minutes - including Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer (!)

Violent Saturday is directed by Richard Fleischer and adapted to screenplay by Sydney Boehm from the novel of the same name written by William L. Heath. It stars Victor Mature, Richard Egan, Lee Marvin, Stephen McNally, J. Carrol Naish, Tommy Noonan, Ernest Borgnine, Virginia Leith and Sylvia Sidney. Music is by Hugo Friedhoffer and cinematography by Charles G. Clarke.

Stand Pat and Resist Evil.

A simmering powder keg of criminality told in beautiful De Luxe and CinemaScope, Violent Saturday is one of the definitions of a slow burn movie that pays off with explosive aplomb.

The town of Brandenville is the scene of a planned bank robbery by a trio of baddies led by Harper (McNally). The narrative has the trio arrive in town and plan for the robbery, as they move about the populace, a whole bunch of sub-plots pop up to maintain maximum interest and to of course set up the drama involving the robbery and the subsequent attempts at a getaway.

I don't blame him – she moves like a Swiss watch.

The characters are prime noir dwellers, they range from thieving dames and tramp wives, to a peeping tom, a drunkard husband and also a guilt ridden father, and this before we even get to the villains! Who, with Marvin in prime Benzedrine sniffing scumbag mode (he thinks nothing of hurting children), are truly shifty operators personified.

The Arizona locale is beautifully utilised by Fleischer and Clarke, belying the harsh side of the human condition that comes roaring out the Brandenville traps as the pic enters the final third. There's some murky moralising in said last third that irritates, more so when it involves a badly miscast Borgnine as a Quaker! While one character strand is annoyingly left dangling.

So it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. In fact some of the cast were less than enamoured with either their work on the film or the attitude of others around them. Yet, and while understanding the reticence of some to not afford it film noir status, it has the requisite characterisations and nasty bite to keep noiristas very happy indeed 7.5/10

Director Richard Fleischer crafted a tight, sparse, edgy noir also replete with enough paperback melodrama for a dozen Douglas Sirk features, which VIOLENT SATURDAY resembles but only from either close-up or afar...

The first because of the soapy situations, like a cheating wife or a father whose son seems to hate him... and the latter from the vibrant technicolor cinematography of an Arizona small town, richly contrasting from Fleischer's previous B&W city-set thrillers ARMORED CAR ROBBERY, FOLLOW ME QUIETLY and THE CLAY PIGEON...

But for crime cinema's sake, this SATURDAY is mostly about the calculated slowburn week leading up... as three eclectic snakes-in-Eden are poised to rob the local bank led by traveling salesman Stephen McNally, with neurotic/hypochondriac wild-card Lee Marvin and coolly professional J. Carroll Naish...

Herein the overall theme is about the town's seemingly average residents being as flawed as the surreptitious crooks among them, like librarian Sylvia Sidney, in-debt to the targeted bank's dweeb manager Tommy Noonan, moonlighting as the personal Peeping Tom of beautiful nurse Virginia Leith...

Nearly winding-up in the trembling arms of muscular yet pathetically cheated-on rich man's son Richard Egan, surrogate boss of Victor Mature... himself a dependable patriarch jarred by his child's sudden contempt, evoked by dad's lack of war service, who instead strategically mined copper from the same predominant factory...

Overall making VIOLENT SATURDAY an ensemble of randomly troubled, existential characters leading to the heist-flashpoint/hideout-aftermath that turns this bright-lit noirish drama into the kind of gritty Western standoff where Fleischer seems the most comfortable since... at this point... there are no more episodic loopholes or distractions.

I am puzzled at the positive reviews this film has received. It seems pointless and incoherent.

The characters are absurd. The attempt at subplotting is pointless since it has nothing to do with the main film. It isn't like the subplotting of, say, *Giant* or *Peyton Place*. The characters have no relation to any coherent theme in the film.

It adds up to a lot of noise. There's something about lacking a medal for heroism when the viewer knows that by the end of the film the child will respect his father. Sylvia Sidney is cast as purse thief with no relationship to the main film. But worst of all is the absurdly drawn Tommy Noonan character, who may go down in history as the only Peeping Tom who continues to peep even when he knows he's being watched and who confesses to a woman that he peeped in her window. As if that is not bad enough, she takes it all without apparent concern and quips that she's learned to pull down her shades. Thus not only is Noonan's character an absurd portrait of a Peeping Tom, his victim is an equally absurd portrait of such woman.

Seriously, is there a Peeping Tom in the history of the world (and there must be hundreds of thousands who (1) peep in broad daylight, (2) peep at night in front of witness who sees him peeping, and (3) turns out to be a good-natured harmless guy who confesses his peeping activity?

Maybe I'm harping too much on this; but it reflects the total lack of writing skills in this film. The title itself is a misnomer. Frankly I found nothing "violent" about it at all; surely nothing like a Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry film or before that Lancaster's Brute Force, Lang's The Big Heat, and of course Walsh's White Heat, or before that Wellman's Public Enemy.

If anything the movie virtually put me to sleep with aimless footage, uninteresting characters, irrelevant subplots, and a pedestrian caper sequence.

I did, however, like Richard Egan's performance, but also Victor Mature, who gave one of his finest performances in the film. Lee Marvin was a one-dimensional character, and like with the Noonan character, makes me think the writer had little skill drawing characters.

This brings up an interesting issue among revisionist film critics who seem to find undiscovered masterpieces in previously neglected films. Offhand I cannot think of another film where each character and subplot seems to bear no relation to the other characters and subplots in the film. Compare the masterful writing of *It's a Wonderful Life*. So many subplots and each is relevant to the other characters and to the theme of the whole.