Violent Saturday

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.

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 main reason I like this film is that the characters show what real people were like in 1955. It's a little like going back in time to an average american town where one observes various folks in everyday life including a variety of personal problems. Of course, I have always been nostalgic about the 50s as I spent my childhood in that era.

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.