YOU will not find it in many 'Best Christmas Movies Of All Time' lists but Cash On Demand is easily my favourite festive film ever.
At this point I can almost hear traditionalists choking on their mince pies at the audacity of such a bold suggestion but bear with me out folks. This humble little British black and white crime thriller from 1961 may lack the glitter and tinsel of most festive favourites but within its perfectly formed little 88 minute running time lies a superior seasonal treat just waiting to be rediscovered.
Directed by Quentin Lawrence with a minimum of fuss or frills, this is the story of Fordyce, a prissy English bank manager who runs his small town branch with both cold hearted efficiency and penny pinching precision.
With Christmas coming and the snow falling on the suburban streets outside, a smooth talking gentleman crook enters the bank posing as an insurance investigator.
When Fordyce finds out that that his wife and child have been taken hostage while this upper class con man plans to clean out his bank vaults of all their money he must play ball and reassess his attitude to life in the process.
If that sounds like a 1960s take on the Scrooge story that's because that's exactly what Cash On Demand really is. A tightly wound, moral tale about treating the people around you with respect and decency, this is a Dickens fable dressed up as a humble British B movie.
Based on a 1960 TV play, The Gold Inside, this is a gloriously taut and trim thriller that tells its simple story with a small cast operating mostly in two basic sets, the bank foyer and the office behind the counters.
Within that austere set up Lawrence delivers a fiendishly tight and suspenseful story that grips you ever closer as the tension levels rise with every passing minute.
The script is lean and sharp and the two central roles, that of bank manager and bank robber, are superbly cast.
Peter Cushing is Fordyce, the humourless, unlikeable boss who makes unfounded allegations against his loyal and decent staff while sniffily dismissing their suggestions of a Christmas party. Cushing spent much of his career perfecting cold hearted characters like this but here he turns in an astonishing performance as the Scrooge who gradually cracks when his family is put at threat.
If Cushing is astonishing, André Morell is equally impressive as the urbane and steely eyed con merchant who ingratiates his way into the bank by turning on a slimy upper class charm offensive that has the toadying bank manager thinking of him as an obvious superior who must be accommodated.
Morell and Cushing had worked together before, of course, most notably on the BBC live adaptation of George Orwell's 1984 in 1954, but here the sparks truly fly between them on screen.
A rare excursion into thriller territory for Hammer films, Cash On Demand is a genuinely gripping and hugely enjoyable British thriller that makes for perfect Christmas viewing on a gloomy snowbound afternoon.
