| The Counterfeit Plan | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Montgomery Tully |
| Written by | James Eastwood |
| Produced by | Alec C. Snowden Richard Gordon |
| Starring | Zachary Scott Peggie Castle |
| Cinematography | Phil Grindrod |
| Edited by | Geoffrey Muller |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros |
Release date |
|
Running time | 80 minutes |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
The Counterfeit Plan is a 1957 British crime film directed by Montgomery Tully and starring Zachary Scott and Peggie Castle. [1]
A gang of criminals, led by sociopath Max Brant (Zachary Scott), escape from France and set up a counterfeit operation to make British £5 and American $20 notes in the cellar of a large English country house now owned by Louie Bernard (Mervyn Johns). Brant forces Bernard, who worked for the British Government during WW2 making foreign counterfeit currency, to make the master die plates by holding his daughter, Carole (Peggie Castle), an artist, as a hostage. When Bernard finds out that Brant has tried to rape his daughter and has killed his housekeeper, Gerta (Chili Bouchier), because she witnessed the attempted rape, he anonymously posts one of the forged £5 notes to the police with a letter describing the counterfeit operation. When Brant is told about this by Duke (Lee Patterson), he confronts Bernard. Meanwhile, the police slowly close in on the gang's headquarters.
The film features professional snooker world champion Horace Lindrum in a cameo appearance playing himself. This is used as cover for one of the meetings with other criminals to discuss the sale of the forged British £5 notes to them. Another similar meeting is camouflaged as a boxing match.
The film was the first of three between Amalgamated Productions and Anglo-Amalgamated. It was very popular in the UK. [2]
Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British bank notes. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British economy during the Second World War. The first phase was run from early 1940 by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) under the title Unternehmen Andreas. The unit successfully duplicated the rag paper used by the British, produced near-identical engraving blocks and deduced the algorithm used to create the alpha-numeric serial code on each note. The unit closed in early 1942 after its head, Alfred Naujocks, fell out of favour with his superior officer, Reinhard Heydrich.
A superdollar is a very high quality counterfeit United States one hundred-dollar bill, alleged by the U.S. government to have been made by unknown organizations or governments. In 2011, government sources stated that these counterfeit bills were in "worldwide circulation" from the late 1980s until at least July 2000 in an extradition court case.
Layer Cake is a 2004 British crime film directed by Matthew Vaughn, in his directorial debut. The screenplay was adapted by J. J. Connolly from his 2000 novel of the same name. The film was produced by Adam Bohling, David Reid and Vaughn, with Stephen Marks as executive producer. The title refers to the social strata, especially in the British criminal underworld. The film's plot revolves around a London-based criminal, played by Daniel Craig, who works in the cocaine trade and wishes to leave the drug business. The film also features Tom Hardy, Colm Meaney, and Sienna Miller. Craig's character is unnamed in the film and is listed in the credits as "XXXX".
Counterfeit money is currency produced outside of the legal sanction of a state or government, usually in a deliberate attempt to imitate that currency and so as to deceive its recipient. Producing or using counterfeit money is a form of fraud or forgery, and is illegal in all jurisdictions of the world. The business of counterfeiting money is nearly as old as money itself: plated copies have been found of Lydian coins, which are thought to be among the first Western coins. Before the introduction of paper money, the most prevalent method of counterfeiting involved mixing base metals with pure gold or silver. Another form of counterfeiting is the production of documents by legitimate printers in response to fraudulent instructions. During World War II, the Nazis forged British pounds and American dollars. Today, some of the finest counterfeit banknotes are called Superdollars because of their high quality and imitation of the real US dollar. There has been significant counterfeiting of Euro banknotes and coins since the launch of the currency in 2002, but considerably less than that of the US dollar.
Stanley Clements was an American actor and comedian, best known for portraying "Stash" in the East Side Kids film series, and group leader Stanislaus "Duke" Coveleskie in The Bowery Boys film series.
Anglo-Amalgamated Productions was a British film production company, run by Nat Cohen and Stuart Levy, which operated from 1945 until roughly 1971. Low-budget and second features, often produced at Merton Park Studios, formed much of its output. It was the UK distributor of many films produced by American International Pictures (AIP), who distributed AA's films in the United States.
Chili Bouchier was an English film actress who achieved success during the silent film era, and went on to many screen appearances with the advent of sound films, before progressing to theatre later in her career.
The Counterfeiters is a 2007 Austrian-German drama film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by Nazi Germany during World War II to destabilize the United Kingdom by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England pound notes. The film centres on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Triple Trouble is a 1950 comedy film directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring The Bowery Boys. The film was released on August 13, 1950, by Monogram Pictures and is the nineteenth film in the series.
The File of the Golden Goose is a 1969 British neo noir thriller film directed by Sam Wanamaker and starring Yul Brynner, Charles Gray and Edward Woodward. Its plot involves an American detective being sent to Britain to track down a major international criminal.
Murder in Reverse is a 1945 British thriller film directed by Montgomery Tully and starring William Hartnell, Jimmy Hanley and Chili Bouchier. It is based on the story Query by "Seamark".
Operation Cupid is a 1960 British comedy film directed by Charles Saunders and starring Charles Farrell, Avice Landone and Wallas Eaton. The screenplay concerns a gang of criminals who win a marriage agency during a card game and plan to use it to arrange a lucrative marriage for one of their gang to an extremely wealthy heiress. It was made at Twickenham Studios in west London, for release as a supporting feature.
Bharat Kalicharan, also known as Akku Yadav, was an Indian gangster, robber, home invader, kidnapper, serial rapist, extortionist and murderer. Yadav grew up in the Kasturba Nagar slum, which is outside the Indian central city of Nagpur, Maharashtra. He lived and did business in the slum which housed a number of criminals and two rival gangs.
Numbered Men is a 1930 American pre-Code prison drama film produced and released by First National Pictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros., and directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The movie stars Bernice Claire, Conrad Nagel, Raymond Hackett and Ralph Ince. The film was based on the play entitled Jail Break by Dwight Taylor.
Dusty Ermine is a 1936 British crime film directed by Bernard Vorhaus and starring Anthony Bushell, Jane Baxter and Ronald Squire. In the United States it was released under the alternative title Hideout in the Alps. It was based on the play of the same title by Neil Grant.
Avenged is a 2013 South African action film written and directed by Donovan Marsh. It was screened in the Contemporary World Cinema section at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
British firms are organised crime groups originating in the United Kingdom.
The Crooked Sky is a low budget 1957 black and white British melodrama/crime film, directed by Henry Cass from a story by Maclean Rogers and Charles F. Vetter. The film stars Wayne Morris, Anton Diffring and Karin Booth.
Thomas Charles McAnea, also known as Hologram Tam, was a Scottish master counterfeiter, regarded as one of the most skillful in Europe with regard to banknote security holograms.
The Franc affair was a plot by Hungarian nationalists to forge French bank notes. In the aftermath of World War I, Hungary lost a large part of its territory and population in a series of treaties its people considered unjust. This led many Hungarians to turn towards nationalism and revanchism. In 1922, Prince Lajos Windischgraetz was approached by Gyula Mészáros who presented him with a plan to counterfeit the French franc. Windischgraetz sought to damage the French economy while simultaneously raising funds for an internal coup in Hungary and irredentist activities. The plan came to halt when the notes produced by Mészáros were judged to be too primitive. In the summer of 1923, Windischgraetz met with German nationalist and retired Prussian Army General Erich Ludendorff who prompted him to utilize the forging equipment left from a similar unrealized German conspiracy.
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