Watch Violent Saturday Online

Harper (Stephen McNally) is a bank robber posing as a traveling salesman. He arrives in town, soon to be joined by Dill (Lee Marvin) and Chapman (J. Carrol Naish).

The villains are idiosyncratic. Early in the film, Dill sets the tone by stepping on the hand of a boy who gets in his way. He is constantly using an inhaler, indicating a sinus problem or addiction.

Boyd Fairchild (Richard Egan) is manager of the local coal mine, troubled by his philandering wife (Margaret Hayes). He is considering an affair with a nurse (Virginia Leith). His associate Shelley Martin (Victor Mature) has a happy home life, but is troubled by a son who believes that he is a coward because he did not serve in World War II.

A subplot involves the bank manager (Tommy Noonan) and a librarian Sylvia Sidney (Sylvia Sidney), whose lives interact with the robbery.

Martin is trapped on a farm with an Amish family. With the help of the father (Ernest Borgnine) he defeats the crooks single handedly. That proves his courage to his son.

The lives of others, including Fairchild, are soon changed by the bank robbery as it gets underway in a violent climax. Fairchild's wife is slain, and the nurse is available to comfort him in his bereavement.

The New York Times did not approve of the violence of the movie. Critic Bosley Crowther called the movie an "unedifying spectacle," while praising the performance of Lee Marvin as a hood "so icily evil he is funny." Borgnine's performance was panned as "a joke."

More recent reviewers have been favorable. In a 2008 article, the Village Voice called it "the reigning king of Southwester noir." The New York Press said "Violent Saturday seems rooted in tradition, but as an exciting pulp story with a profound center, it manages to break all the rules."

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