Best Classic Christmas films

Oh, and how could I forget Cash on Demand (1961, dir. Quentin Lawrence)?



It’s an ingenious reworking of A Christmas Carol—with a bank manager (Peter Cushing) as Scrooge and a bank robber (André Morell) as all four ghosts in one. Cushing and Morell were superb actors, yet their performances here are unbelievably good even by their standards.

Cushing’s “Scrooge,” Harry Fordyce, is as cold and austere as Dickens’ man pre-redemption, yet he convinces us that he’s a real human being in ways with which even the best film Scrooges had trouble.

Morell (Hammer Films’ Prof. Quatermass and Dr. Watson, among other great roles) is one of the best movie villains ever. I suspect that another of the best movie villains ever, Die Hard’s Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), was in part based on Morell’s Col. Gore Hepburn. Both are charming, charismatic, even likable—and coldhearted, remorseless killers. Even some of the punchlines are nigh-identical:The filmmaking is just as exceptional, with suspenseful set piece after suspenseful set piece. The sequence with the safe and the alarm is a marvel. The script—witty and twist-packed as it is—betrays its stage-play origins, yet director Quentin Lawrence keeps every scene moving lightning-fast.

My only real criticisms are that the main twist is a bit obvious (although, on first viewing, I didn’t expect a few twists that preceded it) and that the supporting cast could have been used a bit better as “Cratchits” (this is mostly a two-man show). But those are tiny things. The ending is as heartwarming and, well, Christmassy as any other great Christmas Carol. A fantastic little film that deserves to be a Christmas classic.

EDIT: mikef6 already listed this, and I read his list. Well, take this as a seconding!