When Hammer Productions Pulled The Hammer Down-Cushing And Merill’s “Cash On Demand” (1961)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sarah Lemoyne

Cash On Demand, starring Peter Cushing, Andre Merill, 1961 

[Unlike some of the other writers, film reviewers at this publication who use this space, according to site manager Greg Green, to go off on tangents discussing everything but the film they are supposed to be reviewing I am using it to introduce myself. Hi-Sarah Lemoyne is my name and this is my first serious job in journalism after several years doing a little of this and of that while keeping myself alive as a barista at Starbucks. Greg hired me for now as a stringer which he, and all the older writers, tell me is the way that things work in this business. Leslie Dumont told me that when she was hired by Allan Jackson, the former site manager when this publication was a hard copy edition, a number of years ago before she got her by-line in Women Today she had not only been a stringer, meaning then that she got paid by the word but had written half of the film reviews that Sam Lowell got credit for in his by-line when he was drunk, doped up or off chasing some woman. Funny meeting him after what Leslie told me he seemed nice and certainly not a guy who would pilfer somebody else’s work but I still have a lot to learn.

That is really what I want to talk about, about learning things, as I work on my first assignment which Greg says will help broaden my horizons. I have been given the chance to review a block of six films, six black and white films from the 1950s and early 1960s put out through the Hammer Production Company in England and distributed in America by Columbia Pictures. I will admit that before this assignment came up I had never seen a black and white film (Greg told me to include this point). Since I started here Seth Garth has sat with me when we watched what he called a classic black and white film worthy of note from a period later than the 1940s and 1950s The Last Picture Show  starring Jeff Bridges whom I did know from the movie Crazy Hearts. I am not sure I like black and white film as a way to create a certain mood but like Greg says it will broaden my horizons and reviewing older films will allow me to learn from my mistakes without causing a whole lot of problems for him. Sarah Lemoyne]   

Seth Garth mentioned to me when I told him that my assignment was this Hammer Production series and that I had never seen a black and white film since I was born in 1988 that the Hammer operation was based on a low budget schedule using unknown British actors who would work on the cheap and getting the guys who wrote books to do the screenplay to save money on writing and production time. Still he seemed to think that dollar for dollar they have held up. His experience had been reviewing the monster and ghoul movies Hammer was famous for and an important film noir series which he had reviewed in this space a few years ago. With that advice, and mention that I should take it easy and not go crazy trying to think up some “cinematic studies” stuff to what he called “padding” the review, I worked my way through the first film Cash on Demand, I don’t think they spent much money on figuring snappy titles, which seemed a little weird a couple of times to make sure I got the plot right. (Seth also said if you are in trouble with a review just go heavy on the plot and characters which is what most readers want anyway which seemed like good advice.)  

Seth also said that everybody loves a con man, everybody except the person being conned and although I don’t agree with him the con man, the bank robber here seems to be what had Seth all in a dither when I told him the plot and was looking for advice about what everybody around here calls “the hook,” what you want the reader get out of your considered judgment of the merits of the film. This con man, a Colonel played by Andre Morell, posing as an insurance investigator has the uptight and strait-laced branch manager of a London bank, Harry Fordyce, played by Peter Cushing beside himself just before Christmas when he descended on the bank supposedly for an audit. Once the scene get reduced to a battle of wits between the two the Colonel lays out his plan, or rather his intention to rob the bank without firepower or visible accomplices. Lays it out so that Harry has no choice but to go along. The Colonel has buffaloed  Harry with the idea, complete with telephone conversation (which turned out to be tapes when the whole scam was exposed later), that his unseen accomplices were holding Harry’s wife and son hostage and would do them grievous bodily harm if he did not comply to the letter with the instruction being laid out to him.  

The Colonel’s “hook” was that Harry only and solely cared about his wife and child and despite every instinct he had learned as a banker and as an uptight person he went grudgingly along with the con, with the robbery of some 93, 000 pounds sterling which seems like a lot of money for the times and even today when I would be glad to have such a sum to get out from under my college tuition debt hanging over me. The Colonel had Harry in a box until it comes time to depart with the dough. Then everything broke loose although not to Harry’s liking because one of his employees has called the coppers when things didn’t seem to add up. The London coppers apparently so clever on the pursuit brought that the Colonel was brought back in handcuffs to confront his “confederate”-the perplexed Harry.

After a bit of sleight of hand Harry was angled into going to the police station to answer a lot of questions about why he shouldn’t be sitting in the cell next to the Colonel at Dartmoor prison. Chastised by the experience we are left with the implication that hereafter Harry will be better toward his fellows and a more stand-up man. I hope everybody is okay with the synopsis and that this little tale has some meaning about being less uptight in the world and filled a bit more with the milk of human kindness. First review done and hopefully accepted.