Payroll is a 1961 British neo-noir crime thriller film directed by Sidney Hayers and starring Michael Craig, Françoise Prévost, and Billie Whitelaw.^[1] The screenplay, written by George Baxt was adapted from Derek Bickerton's 1959 novel of the same name. The film revolves around a group of criminals who plan and execute a wages robbery, which ultimately ends in disaster.

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. Pearson is compelled to support his wife Katie, who desires a more luxurious lifestyle. During the heist, the van driver Harry Parker, is killed, and Bert sustains a fatal injury from Parker's colleague, Frank Moore. Despite the setbacks, the gang successfully escapes with £50,000.

Having found out that Pearson was the 'inside man', Parker's widow Jackie starts posting threatening letters to him. Katie in the meantime has become involved with Johnny, hoping to get some of the money for herself. As the gang members start to argue amongst themselves, they are pursued by both Katie and Jackie, as well as the police. The climax takes place in Norfolk, with Johnny and Katie double-crossing each other and Jackie tracking Johnny in her bid for revenge.

The film's working title was I Promise to Pay. Much of it was shot on location in and around Gateshead and Newcastle upon Tyne^[2] Other scenes were shot in Tynemouth, Rugby and Southwold; after location work was complete, the film began studio shooting at Beaconsfield Studios on 10 October 1960.^[3]

Michael Craig was loaned from Rank. Of Hayers he said "I think he'd learned 'directing' from a manual".^[4]

The theme music, by Reg Owen and His Orchestra, was issued as a single on the Palette label (PG.9013).^[5]

The song "It Happens Every Day", sung in a nightclub scene in the film by Eddie Ellis, was composed by Tony Osborne and Norman Newell, and released as a single on the Parlophone label (R. 4749).^[6]

The film opened at the Plaza cinema in London's West End on 20 April 1961, and went into general release in the UK on 21 May 1961.^[7]

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote:

Payroll would seem to have ambitions superior to its second-feature credentials. Though these ambitions are more apparent in the latter half, it is the first half, the account of the actual robbery, which is reasonably if conventionally done along big-feature lines, with nicely calculated photography of the Newcastle backgrounds, zoom lenses homing on the armoured-van until it is crushed between a truck carrying concrete slabs and the gang's ramming truck, and a forceful performance by Tom Bell as the most aggressive of the crooks. 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.^[8]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 2/5 stars, writing: "Sidney Hayers is one of the forgotten journeymen of 1960s British cinema. This is a solidly crafted crime story in which the perfect blag begins to unravel as the gang lies low. 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."^[9]