"Violent Saturday" Movie Review

 

by Daniel White

Any film where Lee Marvin steps on a little boy's hand for messing with his benzedrine-filled nasal inhaler can't be all bad. Violent Saturday (1955) actually has more going for it, but that was the scene that sold me on this kitschy, colorful, crime drama.

Directed by Richard Fleischer for Twentieth Century Fox, it's Grand Hotel set in a mining town. The flick introduces us to a disparate group of residents living in Bradenville on the eve of a bank heist. Everyone we meet is in some sort of crisis, and all will be affected by the robbery. Shot in Cinemascope with Color By Deluxe, Violent Saturday is a relic from the fifties that is both melodramatic and entertaining. It certainly is engrossing. Who in busy little Bradenville is going to end up on the wrong end of a gun?

The overripe Victor Mature stars as Shelley Martin, a manager at the local mine, who spends much of his working day covering for the boss' alcoholic son, Boyd (Richard Egan). Boyd is married to Emily (Margaret Hayes), who, when not golfing, is sleeping with half the men in the country club. Then there's bank officer Harry Reeves (Tommy Noonan), a milquetoast/Peeping Tom who can't stop stalking Linda (Virginia Leith), a gorgeous nurse who has a "yen" for Boyd. Throw in Sylvia Sidney as a larcenous librarian and Ernest Borgnine as an Amish farmer who works a mean pitchfork, and you've got a second-rate, yet satisfying sudser.

Filmed on location in Bisbee, Arizona, Violent Saturday is pure soap-opera that culminates in a cracking, if convoluted, robbery. The splashy color, the on-location shooting, and the capable cast of players all help lift it from the mundane to an enjoyable time-waster. And kudos to director Fleischer for keeping things humming briskly along. Better to quickly push this potboiler forward to its pop-pop finish than let it idle. Delay could be deadly - for the audience. Co-starring Stephen McNally and the malleable J. Carroll Naish as Marvin's cohorts in crime, Violent Saturday is available on YouTube.

There is a scene in the movie where Tommy Noonan and Sylvia Sidney are lurking around in an alley. On wooden planks used to board up a derelict store is a poster for the 1946 film Shock. Welcome to Follow the Film, my new pastime in which one movie leads me to the next!