[2] Four crooks, Johnny Mellors, Monty, Blackie, and Bert, devise a plan to rob a payroll van with the assistance of Dennis Pearson, an accountant working at the targeted firm.

From then on, however, the producers – perhaps painfully aware that bank-robberies have become a humdrum, everyday hazard in filmgoers' lives – appear to be celebrating their graduation from the second-feature thriller by throwing into their stock brew just about every ingredient known to the manual of classic melodrama.

Anonymous letters flop down upon the door-mat; guilt complex is proclaimed with the tics and perspiration more usually associated with the German silent cinema; knock-out drops and poison are dispensed with Borgia-like abandon; a nocturnal chase through a wood followed by asphyxiation in a quagmire summons up echoes of The Mummy; and a police-car, screaming to a stop on the foreshore, disgorges an Inspector who takes one look at the vengeful widow (Billie Whitelaw), scything down the villain with a motor-launch, before remarking with faint surprise: "Look, it's Mrs, Parker!"

Unfortunately the playing of such usually proficient actors as William Lucas and Kenneth Griffith can do nothing to mitigate the lunacies of a film whose main purpose apparently lies in shifting every conceivable manifestation of anxiety neurosis that members of its audience may be afflicted with upon the shoulders of its many much-suffering characters.

Payroll is also distinguished by the dour presence of a French actress, Francoise Prévost, who bears a worrying resemblance at moments of emotional crisis to her leading man, Michael Craig.

Michael Craig is on surprisingly good form as the gang leader, but it's Billie Whitelaw, as the widow of a murdered security van guard, who commands centre-stage as she risks her own life to snare the culprits.