''Cash on Demand'' is a 1961 British black and white

second feature A B movie, or B film, is a type of cheap, low-budget commercial motion picture. Originally, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, this term specifically referred to films meant to be shown as the lesser-known second half of a double feature, s ...

neo noir Neo-noir is a film genre that adapts the visual style and themes of 1940s and 1950s American film noir for contemporary audiences, often with more graphic depictions of violence and sexuality. During the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the term ...

crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definiti ...

thriller film Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre. ...

directed by

Quentin Lawrence Quentin Lawrence (6 November 1920, in Gravesend, Kent, Gravesend – 9 March 1979, in Halifax, Yorkshire) was an English film and television director. He worked a long time for ATV. An article about TV directors in ''The Guardian'' said he was "n ...

and starring

Peter Cushing Peter Wilton Cushing (26 May 1913 – 11 August 1994) was an English actor. His acting career spanned over six decades and included appearances in more than 100 films, as well as many television, stage and radio roles. He achieved recognition f ...

and

André Morell Cecil André Mesritz (20 August 1909 – 28 November 1978), known professionally as André Morell, was an English actor. He appeared frequently in theatre, film and on television from the 1930s to the 1970s. His best known screen roles were as ...

. The screenplay was adapted from the Sept.24, 1960 ''

Associated Television ATV Network Limited, originally Associated TeleVision (ATV), was a British broadcaster, part of the ITV (TV network), ITV (Independent Television) network. It provided a service to London at weekends from 1955 to 1968, to the Midlands on week ...

Theatre 70'' teleplay ''The Gold Inside'', also directed by Lawrence, and featuring André Morell and Richard Vernon in the same roles. Filming ran from April 4, 1961 to April 16, 1961, and although Hammer considered it one of their best films, it wasn't distributed in UK for some reason until December 13, 1963, and even today it is not shown frequently at all on TV. The British print was 18 minutes shorter than the US print.

Plot

Two days before Christmas, a bogus insurance investigator, Gore Hepburn, brazenly conducts a con trick on a bank, largely through making Fordyce the bank manager believe that his family have been kidnapped. Fordyce is a cold, officious man. Gore Hepburn recognises the insecurities underlying Fordyce's behaviour and exploits them ruthlessly, tormenting him with veiled threats. Feeling that he has no choice, Fordyce helps Gore Hepburn to steal £93,000 in banknotes from the bank vault, concealing his actions from the rest of the staff. However, they have already phoned Gore Hepburn's insurance company as a routine precaution, and discovered that he is an impostor. When Fordyce learns the police are on their way he becomes desperate for his family's safety. When police arrive Fordyce convinces Pearson to cover for him and excuse the bank staff contacting the police as a misplaced cheque. Police have already arrested Col Gore Hepburn, who has a case containing the bank's money. Gore Hepburn is not his real name; he is a known criminal. Police suspect he must have had inside help with the robbery, which points to Fordyce. A quick call establishes that Fordyce's family were never under threat. Fordyce tries to convince the police that the colonel deceived him; for instance, by ordering him at one point to stand by the window and mop his brow, as a signal to a supposed associate outside. As he demonstrates this to the officers, a sealed bank package of £500 (which Gore Hepburn had slipped into his pocket earlier) falls out. Once more the police are sceptical of his innocence. Gore Hepburn tells the police that Hepburn and another man used a tape recorder to disguise their voices and make it seem like Fordyce's family was kidnapped, and that Fordyce is innocent. Fordyce is finally seen as innocent and the police let him go. Knowing his wife and son are safe, he has changed his opinion of his co-workers for helping him. He goes to the police station with them to talk to his wife and to Hepburn for deceiving him. With a half-smile on his face, he tells Pearson to manage the bank in his absence, assuring him he will be back in a few hours and join them at the staff Christmas party.

Cast

as Harry Fordyce *

as Colonel Gore Hepburn (as Andre Morell) * Richard Vernon as Pearson * Norman Bird as Arthur Sanderson * Kevin Stoney as Detective Inspector Bill Mason * Barry Lowe as Peter Harvill *

Edith Sharpe Edith Mary Sharpe (14 September 1894 – 6 June 1984) was a British actress. Born in Hackney, London. She married Alexander Francis Part in 1931 and had one child. She appeared in TV series such as Dixon of Dock Green, Z Cars, Emergency Ward 1 ...

as Miss Pringle * Lois Daine as Sally * Alan Haywood as Kane * Charles Morgan as Det. Sgt. Collins * Fred Stone * Gareth Tandy * Vera Cook

Production

Hammer Film Productions Hammer Film Productions Ltd. is a British film production company based in London. Founded in 1934, the company is best known for a series of Gothic horror and fantasy films made from the mid-1950s until the 1970s. Many of these involve classi ...

invested approximately £37,000 to produce the film. To optimise its budget the film uses a limited number of sets; an interior street set, the trading area of a bank, the manager's office, the stairway between office and the vault, and the interior of the vault itself.

Release

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc., Trade name, doing business as Columbia Pictures, is an American film Production company, production and Film distributor, distribution company that is the flagship unit of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group ...

released the film in the United States on 20 December 1961, and screenings continued until April in some major cities.

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin The ''Monthly Film Bulletin'' was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 until April 1991, when it merged with '' Sight & Sound''. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those wi ...

'' wrote: "Set from first to last in a small country bank, this is a neat and quite freshly conceived robbery thriller. There is no violence (only the threat of violence), yet the menace is more pronounced than in many films relying on physical brutality. Once the preliminaries are over and the story begins to unfold, the tenseness of the situation is maintained with considerable success right through to the concluding stages. The only weak point is the business of the wife's telephone call, which is finally revealed as false: much of the plot's conviction rests on this circumstance, which is inadequately explained by a vague reference to an impersonation and a trick with a tape recorder. Otherwise the story is watertight, terse and gripping. Andre Morell's performance as the thief is a little too deliberately phony, perhaps, but Peter Cushing is impressive as the prim bank manager, and there is a nice cameo from Richard Vernon as the cashier." ''Cash on Demand'' was selected by the film historians Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane as one of the 15 most meritorious British B films made between the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

and 1970, writing: "Above all, it is Peter Cushing's performance of the austere man, to whom efficiency matters most (though the film is subtle enough to allow him a certain integrity as well), and who will be frightened into a warmer sense of humanity, that lifts the film well above the perfunctory levels of much 'B' film-making." In ''Offbeat: British Cinema's Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Items'', Julian Upton wrote: "''Cash on Demand'' is not just vastly superior to the majority of its British B-movie peers, it is also a cut above most of Hammer's output, both horror and non-horror."

References

External links

* * * {{Quentin Lawrence 1961 films 1960s Christmas drama films 1961 crime drama films 1960s crime thriller films 1960s heist films British black-and-white films British Christmas drama films British crime drama films British crime thriller films British heist films Columbia Pictures films Film noir Films about bank robbery Films based on television plays Films directed by Quentin Lawrence Films shot at Bray Studios Hammer Film Productions films 1960s English-language films 1960s British films Films scored by Wilfred Josephs English-language crime drama films English-language crime thriller films English-language Christmas drama films