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Although best known for horror, Hammer Films also produced a clutch of less well known dramas and thrillers,
and Cash on Demand is a definite highlight.
Based on the teleplay The Gold Inside, made for the Theatre 70 series,
the film is a B picture, but made with some of the company’s top talent both behind the scenes, and onscreen.
'Morning Fordyce.' 'Morning Colonel .'
Peter Cushing and Andre Morell had been recently paired in Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles.
‘The air on Dartmoor is very bracing I believe.’
But here the dynamic between the two actors is very different.
Costing Hammer just £37,000 this story of bank heist, actually benefits from its low budget,
focusing the claustrophobic action into a handful of sets and keeping the emphasis firmly on the humans drama.
Notably tightly wound manager, Fordyce.
‘Banking is one of the few dignified businesses left in the world, do you mind terribly if we keep it that way?’
Peter Cushing is at his brilliant best, every detail of his performance speaking to the character,
who is then gradually unravelled.
‘Do what ever he says! Do whatever he says for the love of God, I beseech you.’
Morell is equally adept as Colonel Gore Hepburn, charming.
‘I want robbing banks to be smoother, more sociable’
Yet ruthless,
‘It is extremely painful and I’m afraid the effects of it are permanent.’
and the film has been described by Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes in their authorised history of Hammer,
as ‘essentially a showcase for two of the company’s finest performers.’
‘What is it you want?’ ‘Just some money’
That may be, but it’s also a taut piece of direction by Quentin Lawrence,
best known for sci-fi, The Trollenberg Terror,
also based on a TV version, and in both cases, Lawrence directed big and small screen versions.
‘Robbing banks is a game of wits, after all isn’t it, eh?’
Morell too was reprising his role from the TV version,
as was the ever-reliable Richard Vernon as cashier Pearson.
‘Why did you lie?’
Like the film itself, the robber’s plan has a sharp, clockwork intensity.
‘It’s rather a good plan, don’t you think.’
Unlike most cinematic heists, it’s hard to see how this can go wrong,
which, incidentally, makes it very hard to spot where this is going and how it might end.
'Professional ethics prevents me from disclosing that information.'
But the robbery itself is not our concern, we’re totally engaged with Fordyce,
as this man whose world is again, clockwork in its precision,
struggles to deal with the worst day of his life.
‘If anything happens to my family, I’ll kill you. I swear I will.’
It almost goes without saying that this is a tour de force by Cushing, #
and I don’t want to underplay how good both he and Morell are.
‘I hope you won't think that Peason's standards of security are representative of this branch as a whole...’
'Presumably you asked him to show me in Fordyce.'
But I also don’t want you to think they are the only things to recommend this.
The film benefits massively from its smallness, its everydayness,
its defiant rejection of melodrama.
‘Got home and Mercantile’s number?’
From the cramped sets to performances, filled with tiny and instantly recognisable character notes,
it’s a hymn to the small scale and all the more gripping for it,
the world is not at stake; one man’s world is at stake, which is so much more engaging.
This is the sort of film we set up Dark Corners Streaming to talk about;
it’s a little gem that you might have missed and it’s on YouTube, available to everyone.
Thanks for watching, have you seen Cash on Demand or any of Hammer's lesser-seen films?
Let us know what you think of them in the comments below.