Cash on Demand **** (1961, Peter Cushing, André Morell, Richard Vernon) – Classic Movie Review 10,836

Hammer Films’ most satisfying 1961 British black and white film noir crime thriller Cash On Demand boasts a very fine performance from their big star Peter Cushing as an efficiency-obsessed bank manager made to help a suave but ruthless robber.

Director Quentin Lawrence’s 1961 British black and white film noir crime thriller Cash On Demand is based on a 1960 TV play called The Gold Inside by Jacques Gillies.

When Hammer Film Productions studios weren’t churning out horrors they were still making TV spin-offs like this tense, pacy, and most satisfying little thriller, with a very fine, distinguished performance from their big star Peter Cushing as a stone cold, nastily officious bank manager of a small country branch. André Morell also stars, re-creating his TV role, and gives an equally fine and distinguished performance. Their verbal clashing is riveting. It is a quite brilliant double act.

Cushing changes from being ice cold, to hot sweaty nervous, and finally a broken man, before, like Scrooge before him, his ways are reformed by this twist of fate. It is  Christmas time, after all, December 23, and the bank staff fancy a little party, though old Scrooge won’t chip in a fiver, or join in.

It is a tour de force from Cushing. (Interesting and odd to see Cushing in modern dress, by the way, he always seemed to be in period costume in his films. It is also interesting and odd to see Cushing looking quite this young, and quite this tormented) Cushing humanises this petty monster.

Morell is all urbane charm, with flashes of steel and determination. It is a most impressive turn, a sort of Jack Hawkins kind of performance, the Jack Hawkins of The League of Gentlemen that is. He is quite mesmerising, so of course you would believe him and do as he commands.

There’s a third impressive turn from Richard Vernon as the downtrodden head clerk Pearson, whom Harry Fordyce treats abysmally, like dirt, threatening his employment over nothing. Vernon is also re-creating his TV role, which may be why this always good actor is outstanding here, grading and shading his performance nicely.

The yarn is about an extremely snotty, efficiency-obsessed bank manager, Mr Harry Fordyce (Cushing), the boss from hell, who is made to help a suave but ruthless robber, Colonel Gore Hepburn (André Morell), steal money from his own bank branch, in order to save his kidnapped wife (Vera Cook) and child. It is two days before Christmas, and Colonel Gore Hepburn arrives posing as an insurance investigator.

Gore Hepburn makes Fordyce believe that his wife and son have been kidnapped (though it turns out to be a con trick), so an agonised Fordyce helps Gore Hepburn to steal £93,000 in banknotes from the bank vault, now packed tidily away in the robber’s suitcases.

Unfortunately, some of the staff discover the truth (Richard Vernon as Pearson, Norman Bird as Arthur Sanderson and Barry Lowe as Peter Harvill) and so Cushing has to beg for their silence to save his family. But the staff have already phoned Gore Hepburn’s insurance company and discovered he is an impostor and called the local police. At the last minute, Detective Inspector Bill Mason (Kenneth Stoney) of the police arrives on the scene and may be able to help out.

The small number of sets are inventively used, with the cramped, tiny country bank branch looking, well, like an actual country bank branch, while the phoniness of the interior street set is ingeniously disguised by snowfall. Quentin Lawrence keeps his film commendably tense and brisk. It’s all talk, but it’s tasty banter, and all shot in six little sets, which the actors, cinematographer (Arthur Grant) and director manage brilliantly to disguise and make you forget. No one would dare make a film like this now, so it’s astonishing how well it works. Would it be any better if Hammer had spent more money on it? No, not really.

Also in the cast are Richard Vernon as Pearson, Norman Bird as Arthur Sanderson, Edith Sharpe as Miss Pringle, Barry Lowe as Peter Harvill, Lois Daine as Sally, Alan Haywood as Kane, Charles Morgan, Vera Cook, Gareth Tandy and Fred Stone.

The screenplay is adapted from the 1960 Theatre 70 teleplay The Gold Inside by Jacques Gillies, also directed by Lawrence, and featuring André Morell and Richard Vernon in the same roles of Colonel Gore Hepburn and Pearson. Richard Warner played Mr Fordyce. Theatre 70 was a 70-minute UK TV dramatic anthology series produced by ATV, and 25 episodes aired on ITV from 1960 to 1961.

There are three versions: it either runs 67 minutes (original 1963 UK theatrical release) or 80 minutes (DVD) (US), or 89 minutes.

Hammer Film Productions produced the film for £37,000, using a small number of sets, including 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. It was shot at Hammer’s Bray Film Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire, England. Amazon Prime Video acquired Bray Film Studios in July 2024.

It was released in the UK by British Lion Films on 15 December 1963. Columbia Pictures distributed the film in the US from 20 December 1961 until April 1962.

Quentin Lawrence and Peter Cushing reunited for The Man Who Finally Died (1963).

The films of Quentin Lawrence: The Trollenberg Terror (1958), Cash on Demand (1961), The Man Who Finally Died (1963), We Shall See (1964), and The Secret of Blood Island (1964).

Cash On Demand is directed by Quentin Lawrence, runs 67 minutes (UK) or 80 minutes (US), is made by Hammer Film Productions, is released by British Lion Films (UK) and Columbia Pictures (US), is written by Lewis Greifer and David T Chantler, based on the 1960 teleplay The Gold Inside by Jacques Gillies, is shot in black and white by Arthur Grant, is produced by Michael Carreras (executive producer) and Anthony Nelson Keys (associate producer), and scored by Wilfred Josephs, with Production Design by Bernard Robinson.

The cast

The cast are Peter Cushing as Harry Fordyce, André Morell [Andre Morell] as Colonel Gore Hepburn, Richard Vernon as Pearson, Norman Bird as Arthur Sanderson, Kevin Stoney as Detective Inspector Bill Mason, Barry Lowe as Peter Harvill, Edith Sharpe as Miss Pringle, Lois Daine as Sally, Alan Haywood as Kane, Charles Morgan as Detective Sgt Collins, Vera Cook as Mary Fordyce (voice, uncredited), Jimmy Cains as pavement Santa, Gareth Tandy as Tommy Fordyce (voice, uncredited), Paddy Smith as Bank Customer, Graham Tonbridge as Bank Customer, and Fred Stone as Window Cleaner.

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© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,836

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