A Disappointing Continuation

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.

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.

As a spectacular and involving cinemascope robbery drama VIOLENT Saturday is a major surprise if you have never seen it. The strong color and widescreen treatment is designed to have this film stand out from the small screen b/w noirs preceding it and that works well for me. I would also suggest to the uninformed that the c/s and color made it a permanent booking fixture throughout the 50s in drive ins and huge old cinemas that needed filling week after week. Production decisions to enable a film to endure are reasonable and logical if thought about in a business sense. Certainly also a seminal bank robbery film that saw imitations in later decades... especially THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT and Reservoir DOGS. VIOLENT Saturday certainly lives up to its title in the last 20 minutes and some scenes are genuinely shocking and very violent. Very well directed and in the same tough unpleasant dust city scape that is depicted in A KISS BEFORE DYING, this film from Fox in 1955 must have caused a sensation upon release. KISS ME DEADLY and even some of the terrific RKO dramas made by Ida Lupino add to a set of mid 50s tough guy films that are still satisfying to see in this clever new century. SLIGHTLY SCARLET from RKO in '56 also in c/s and color is a good match.

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.