| 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, 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. 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 an artist, as a hostage. When Bernard finds out that Brant has tried to rape his daughter and has killed his housekeeper, Gerta, 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, 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 drama thriller 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, Michael Gambon, 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.
Anatasios Arnaouti is a criminal from Manchester, England, who led an ambitious forgery operation before being jailed in 2005.
Guilty Bystander is a 1950 American crime drama film noir directed by Joseph Lerner, and starring Zachary Scott and Faye Emerson. The film was shot on location entirely in New York City. It also marked the last motion picture screen appearances for character actors Mary Boland and J. Edward Bromberg.
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.
David "Noodles" Aaronson is a fictional character who is the protagonist of the 1952 novel The Hoods by Harry Grey, and of the book's 1984 film adaptation, Once Upon a Time in America, where he was portrayed by Robert De Niro. Noodles reappears, only to die in 1937, in Grey's second novel Call Me Duke (1955). However, Call Me Duke has never been filmed, and the material concerning Noodles was not used in Once Upon a Time in America where he is depicted still living in 1968.
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.
Calling Bulldog Drummond is a 1951 British crime film directed by Victor Saville and featuring Walter Pidgeon, Margaret Leighton, Robert Beatty, David Tomlinson and Bernard Lee. It featured the character Bulldog Drummond created by the novelist Herman Cyril McNeile, which had seen a number of screen adaptations. A novel tie-in was also released in 1951. It was made by the British subsidiary of MGM at Elstree Studios. The film's sets were designed by the art director Alfred Junge.
Spook Busters is a 1946 American comedy horror film, directed by William Beaudine and starring the comedy team of The Bowery Boys. It is the fourth film in the series of forty eight.
Angels in Disguise is a 1949 comedy film directed by Jean Yarbrough and starring The Bowery Boys. The film was released on September 11, 1949, by Monogram Pictures and is the fifteenth film in the series.
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.
House of Secrets, also known as Triple Deception, is a 1956 British crime thriller film directed by Guy Green and starring Michael Craig, Anton Diffring and Gérard Oury. It was wrirtten by Robert Buckner andBryan Forbes based on the 1955 novel Storm Over Paris by Sterling Noel.
Torchy Gets Her Man is a 1938 American comedy-drama film directed by William Beaudine and starring Glenda Farrell as Torchy Blane and Barton MacLane as Detective Steve McBride. It was released on November 12, 1938.
Assignment Redhead is a 1956 British crime thriller film written and directed by Maclean Rogers. It is based on the novel Requiem for a Redhead by Lindsay Hardy.
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.
Cow Country is a 1953 American Western film directed by Lesley Selander and written by Adele Buffington and Thomas W. Blackburn. The film stars Edmond O'Brien, Helen Westcott, Robert Lowery, Barton MacLane, Peggie Castle, Robert Barrat and James Millican. The film was released on April 26, 1953, by Allied Artists Pictures.
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.
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