{{Short description|1961 British film by Quentin Lawrence}} {{for|the payment arrangement|Cash on delivery}} {{Use dmy dates|date=November 2014}} {{Use British English|date=November 2014}} {{Infobox film | name = '''Cash on Demand''' | image = Cash on Demand FilmPoster.jpeg | caption = Original theatrical poster | director = Quentin Lawrence | producer = Michael Carreras<br>Anthony Nelson-Keys | screenplay = David T. Chantler<br>Lewis Greifer | based_on = {{Based on|(A play) ''The Gold Inside''|Jacques Gillies}} | starring = Peter Cushing<br>André Morell<br>Richard Vernon<br>Norman Bird | music = Wilfred Josephs<br>John Hollingsworth | cinematography = Arthur Grant | editing = Eric Boyd-Perkins | studio = Hammer Film Productions<br>Woodpecker Productions | distributor = Columbia Pictures (US)<br>British Lion (UK) | released = {{film date |df=y|1961|12|20|US|1963|12|13|United Kingdom}} | runtime = 84 minutes (USA)<br>66 minutes (UK) | country = United Kingdom | language = English | budget = £37,000<ref name="hearn">Marcus Hearn & Alan Barnes, ''The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films'', Titan Books, 2007 p 69</ref> | gross = }}
'''''Cash on Demand''''' is a 1961 British black and white second feature<ref name="Chibnall">{{Cite book |last1=Chibnall |first1=Steve |title=''The British 'B' Film'' |last2=McFarlane |first2=Brian |publisher=BFI/Bloomsbury |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-8445-7319-6 |location=London |pages=125}}</ref> neo noir crime thriller film, released by Hammer Film Productions, directed by Quentin Lawrence and starring Peter Cushing and André Morell.<ref name="BFIsearch">{{Cite web |title=Cash on Demand |url=https://collections-search.bfi.org.uk/web/Details/ChoiceFilmWorks/150024417 |access-date=2 January 2024 |website=British Film Institute Collections Search}}</ref>
==Plot== [[File:Cash on Demand (1961) trailer - Peter Cushing 2.png|thumb|Peter Cushing as Harry Fordyce]] Two days before Christmas, a bogus insurance auditor, "Colonel Gore Hepburn", appears at a provincial bank.
Bank manager Harry Fordyce is a cold, officious man who treats his employees with disdain, but is revealed to care a great deal about his family. "Colonel Hepburn" recognises the insecurities underlying Fordyce's behaviour and exploits them ruthlessly, tormenting him with veiled threats.
Feeling that he has no choice, and showing increasingly distraught agitation about his kidnapped wife and son, Fordyce helps Hepburn to steal £93,000 in banknotes from the bank vault, concealing his actions from the rest of the staff. However, the staff have already phoned the bank's insurance company as a routine precaution, and discovered that Hepburn is an impostor.
When Fordyce learns the police are on their way, he becomes desperate for his family's safety. Fordyce convinces assistant manager Pearson to cover for him by excusing the “false” alarm as a legitimate cheque draft of which he was unaware.
Police arrest Col. Hepburn with suitcases containing the bank's money and bring him back to the bank. "Gore Hepburn" is not his real name; he is a known criminal. Police suspect he must have had inside help, which points to Fordyce, who is shocked to see him again, as he has been led to believe if that Hepburn could not make a clean getaway, his family would be killed.
A phone 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 Hepburn had slipped into his pocket earlier) falls out. Once more the police are sceptical of his innocence. Hepburn tells the police that he and another man used a tape recorder to capture the voices of Fordyce’s wife and son to convince him they had been kidnapped, and that Fordyce is telling the truth.
The police dismiss Fordyce as a suspect, but request he accompany them to the station. Knowing his wife and son are safe, he is grateful to his co-workers for helping him. He tells Pearson he is confident that Pearson can manage the bank in his absence (the opposite of his opinion earlier in the day), assuring him he will be back in a few hours to join them at the staff Christmas party, a ritual he previously never attended.
==Cast== * Peter Cushing as Harry Fordyce * André Morell 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 as Miss Pringle * Lois Daine as Sally * Alan Haywood as Kane * Charles Morgan as Det. Sgt. Collins * Fred Stone * Gareth Tandy * Vera Cook
==Production== The screenplay was adapted from the Associated Television ''Theatre 70'' episode "The Gold Inside" (broadcast 24 September 1960), also directed by Lawrence, and featuring André Morell and Richard Vernon in the same roles.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b433cd8|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190717194835/https://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2b6b433cd8|url-status=dead|archive-date=17 July 2019|title=The Gold Inside (1960)|website=BFI}}</ref> Filming ran from 4 April to 16 April 1961 and, although Hammer considered it one of their best films, it was not distributed in the UK until 1963. The British print was 18 minutes shorter than the US print.<ref>Johnson, Tom (1996). Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography. North Carolina: McFarland. p. 207-209. ISBN 0-7864-0034-X.</ref>
Hammer Film Productions 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.{{Citation needed|date=January 2024}}
==Release== Columbia Pictures released the film in the United States on 20 December 1961, and screenings continued until April in some major cities. The film's UK release was delayed until 13 December 1963.<ref>Johnson, Tom (1996). Hammer Films: An Exhaustive Filmography. North Carolina: McFarland. p. 208. ISBN 0-7864-0034-X.</ref>
==Critical reception== ''The Monthly Film Bulletin'' 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."<ref>{{Cite journal |date=1 January 1963 |title=Cash on Demand |url=https://www.proquest.com/docview/1305832199 |journal=The Monthly Film Bulletin |volume=30 |issue=348 |pages=171 |id={{ProQuest|1305832199}} }}</ref>
''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, 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."<ref>Steve Chibnall & Brian McFarlane, ''The British 'B' Film'', Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009, pp. 280–81.</ref>
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."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Upton |first=Julian |title=Offbeat: British Cinema's Curiosities, Obscurities and Forgotten Items |publisher=Headpress |year=2022 |isbn=9781909394933 |editor-last=Upton |editor-first=Julian |edition=2nd |pages=75–77 |chapter=Cash on Demand}}</ref>
==See also== * List of Christmas films
== References == {{Reflist}}
==External links== * {{IMDb title|0054731}} * {{TCMDb title|70427}} * {{Rotten Tomatoes}} * [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNqHLLkt7yA Cash on Demand] at YouTube
{{Quentin Lawrence}}
Category:1961 films Category:1960s Christmas drama films Category:1961 crime drama films Category:1960s crime thriller films Category:1960s heist films Category:British black-and-white films Category:British Christmas drama films Category:British crime drama films Category:British crime thriller films Category:British heist films Category:Columbia Pictures films Category:Film noir Category:Films about bank robbery Category:Films based on television plays Category:Films directed by Quentin Lawrence Category:Films shot at Bray Studios Category:Hammer Film Productions films Category:1961 English-language films Category:1961 British films Category:Films scored by Wilfred Josephs Category:English-language crime drama films Category:English-language crime thriller films Category:English-language Christmas drama films