Violent Saturday is a 1955 American CinemaScope crime film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Victor Mature, Richard Egan and Stephen McNally. Set in a fictional mining town in Arizona, the film depicts the planning of a bank robbery as the nexus in the personal lives of several townspeople. Filmed on location in Bisbee, Arizona, the supporting cast was particularly strong, with Lee Marvin, Sylvia Sidney and Ernest Borgnine.
Plot
Harper is a bank robber posing as a traveling salesman. He arrives in the town of Bradenville, soon to be joined by sadistic benzedrine addict Dill and bookish Chapman.
Boyd Fairchild is the manager of the local copper mine who is troubled by his philandering wife. He considers an affair with nurse Linda Sherman, although he truly loves his wife. His associate Shelley Martin has a happy home life, although his son believes that he is a coward because he did not serve in World War II. Harry Reeves, the manager of the local bank, is a peeping tom, and librarian Elsie Braden resorts to larceny to escape her debts.
As the bank robbers execute their plan to rob the bank, Fairchild’s wife is slain and Reeves is wounded in a gunfight. Martin is held hostage on a farm with an Amish family. With the help of the family’s pacifist father, he defeats the crooks. In the aftermath, Martin becomes a hero to his son and Linda comforts Fairchild as he grieves for his wife.