Cash on Demand
Cash on Demand is a 1961 British neo noir crime thriller film directed by Quentin Lawrence and starring Peter Cushing and André Morell.[2] The film company Hammer Film Productions invested approximately £37,000 to produce the film. The screenplay was adapted from the 1960 Theatre 70 teleplay The Gold Inside, also directed by Lawrence, and featuring André Morell and Richard Vernon in the same roles.[3]
| Cash on Demand | |
|---|---|
 Original theatrical poster | |
| Directed by | Quentin Lawrence |
| Screenplay by | David T. Chantler Lewis Greifer |
| Based on | The Gold Inside (1960 teleplay) by Jacques Gillies |
| Starring | Peter Cushing André Morell |
| Music by | Wilfred Josephs |
| Cinematography | Arthur Grant |
| Edited by | Eric Boyd-Perkins |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | BLC Films (UK) Columbia Pictures (US) |
Release date | October 1961 |
Running time | 88 min. (also shown as 60, 80, and 84) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Budget | £37,000[1] |
Columbia Pictures began distribution of the film in the United States on 20 December 1961, and screenings continued until April in some major cities.
Summary
Two days before Christmas, a bogus insurance investigator brazenly conducts a meticulous small-town bank robbery. A stagey but suspenseful set-piece reworking of the Scrooge story in which an urbane, but ruthless, thief induces the complicity of a fastidious bank manager with threats against his family.
Cast
- Peter Cushing as Harry Fordyce
- André Morell as Colonel Gore-Hepburn
- Richard Vernon as Pearson
- Norman Bird as Sanderson
- Kevin Stoney as Detective Inspector Mason
- Barry Lowe as Harvill
- Edith Sharpe as Miss Pringle
- Lois Daine as Sally
- Alan Haywood as Kane
- Vera Cook as Mrs. Fordyce
- Charles Morgan as Detective Sergeant Collins
Critical reception
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 and 1970. They note that it also received enthusiastic reviews at the time of its release from The Monthly Film Bulletin and Kinematograph Weekly. They particularly praise Peter Cushing: "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."[4]
References
- Marcus Hearn & Alan Barnes, The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films, Titan Books, 2007 p 69
- "Cash on Demand (1963)". ftvdb.bfi.org.uk. Archived from the original on 14 January 2009.
- "The Gold Inside (1960)". BFI.
- Steve Chibnall & Brian McFarlane, The British 'B' Film, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009, pp. 280–81.
External links
