This is a great movie!

Douglas Sirk didn't make films like this, and if anyone's style was superfiicial it was Sirk's -- all gloss with no substance, the reason his "style" is celebrated in some quarters today. VIOLENT SATURDAY isn't a perfect film but to compare it to the work of the man who directed MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, THE TARNISHED ANGELS and empty nonsense of that ilk is ridiculous. Sirk may have been capable of better things but there is nothing in VS that is remotely Sirk-like. Flesicher did a far better job with this kind of film, a genre he excelled in.

This flick is one of the really good Fox flix of the fifties! Interesting story line, well acted by the cast members. Dull? Hardly! And as to Borgnine's portrayal of the peace-loving Amish farmer, a very good job indeed!Too bad that today's movie makers don't check it out to see what good movie-making is all about. It may not have been a "classic," but "Violent Saturday" had all the elements that would satisfy customers coming into the theatre for all good afternoon's entertainment.

To be honest I wasn't expecting this. I thought it would be a hardboiled crime picture, but instead it is a crossing between crime and melodrama. This I found to be refreshing and interesting. You realy care for some characters and you dislike others. In the robbery scene these characters get there "comeuppance": Elsie loosing the money she had stolen, the wife of Egan gets shot (which is all the more painful since she seemed to have made up with her husband) and Noonan gets wounded (afterall, he only just was a peeping tom). I like this sort of moralism blending in with the action.

I thought the side stories were pretty good, although the Mature character ending up being a hero was a bit corny. Still, kids, at least young boys, are like that: they think it is important that they're father is a hero or someone big. I appreciate these subplots while it gives us info and an emotional background to the characters. Above all, I like we get to know the bad guys. Marvin seems to be the meanest guy, but we learn that he is indeed insecure and in need of someone who will listen to him. The bad guys are made human. All in all I like this movie alot.

Someone made the comparison between VS and the work of Sirk. Another commentator found Sirk superfluous and overrated. To each his own I guess, but I absolutely love the work of Sirk. I don't think you have to look for hidden psychological meanings in his work, because it is all spelled out. The use of symbolism and the use of colour by Sirk is breathtaking. Above all, Sirk deals with honest human emotions in a cinematical way. Sometimes performances are over the top (like Stack in Written On The Wind), but overall they are solid in my opinion. I can see some commonalities between VS and Sirk: the colour photography and indeed some subplots. Still I find this a very different movie and to me it doesn't fit the Sirk canon.

I've been chasing this movie for years. It was on TV a lot when I was young, but I only caught bits and piecea of it -- which made things very weird: what's the connection between an Arizona mining site in the middle of the desert and an Amish family with a nice house and some harvest nearby? Aren't they supposed to be in Pennsylvania?

It more recent years, I would see it listed in the "TV Guide Grid" but on Fox Movies. And I didn't GET Fox Movies. So I'd have to just wonder about it.

Finally watched it on Hulu this week (December 2021.) Its just as wild a hybrid as I thought it was way back when -- that mining site(with explosives going off) and those Amish STILL don't mix.

Its main value to me is how it LOOKS. It reminds us that a movie is not JUST the story. Its the world created by the filmmakers, and in this case, the gorgeous colors that widescreen Techniclor can give you. Thus we have wide-screen vistas of the Arizona desert and mining Goliath; and the bustling and detailed "small town city" that is called Bradenville in the movie but was really Bisbee, Arizona(where Russell Crowe and Kim Basinger return in LA Confidential.) Add in the "piece of time"(James Stewart's phrase) of seeing Bisbee in 1955 -- the people, the cars(especially VIc Mature's bight blue number), the hairstyles, the clothes -- its a movie experience ASIDE from the plot.

The plot -- famously, I guess -- mixes small town Peyton Place melodrama with a bank robbery scheme; we get a nice "Hotel" style buildup of all the personal stories and then watch the bank robbery blow all of the stories apart in a life or death manner.

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