No Orchids for Miss Blandish — No Orchids for Miss Blandish( Blu Ray)
No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a 1948 British gangster/ noir movie directed by St. John Leigh Clowes (Grand Prix, Frozen Fate and Things Happen at Night) and based on the 1939 novel of the same name by writer James Hadley Chase. The film stars Jack La Rue (Special Agent, Road to Utopia and Bush Pilot), Hugh McDermott (Devil Girl from Mars, Lilli Marlene and ‘Pimpernel’ Smith), Linden Travers (The Lady Vanishes, Christopher Columbus and The Terror), Walter Crisham (Moulin Rouge 1952, Joe MacBeth and The Beachcomber) and there is even room for a cameo from a young Sid James (Carry on up the Khyber, Carry on Cleo and Carry on at Your Convenience) as a bar tender.
Miss Blandish (Travers) is a young, introverted heiress to her father’s $100m fortune. She is soon to be wed to Foster Harvey (John McLaren), a man who loves her despite her often stand-offish ways. Mobster Johnny (Bill O’Connor) overhears the couple’s wedding night plans and hatches a plot to rob Miss Blandish of her jewellery, which is alleged to be worth $100,000. After the heist goes wrong and results in a shootout. One of the gangsters, Ted Bailey (Lesley Bradley) escapes with Miss Blandish as his captive and meets up with the Grisson gang. They take the jewels from him and decide to ransom Miss Blandish to her father for an even bigger payday. Meanwhile, Blandish and Slim Grisson (La Rue), the son of the gang leader Ma Grisson fall in love with Blandish, eventually sending the jewels back to her father with a note telling him of her plans to run away with Slim, as the pair are in love.
No Orchids for Miss Blandish was a controversial movie upon its original release in 1948. The BBFC refused the film a release unless a 45-second kiss was truncated to 20 seconds and a scene of violence where a man is beaten to death was reshot. Despite the cuts, No Orchids for Miss Blandish caused a huge amount of controversy upon its release, with the levels of implied rape and violence. The media hated it, and in April 1948's Monthly Film Bulletin, the movie was labelled as “the most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen”.
The film itself is a solid noirish thriller with some very good performances from its leads. Both Jack La Rue and Linden Travers are excellent in their respective roles as the gangster and the heiress who fall in love, while Walter Crisham gives a great performance as the sleazy mobster Eddie Schultz. The dialogue often receives a lot of criticism, but I quite enjoyed some of the slightly ham-fisted sayings that the mobsters rely on. I think it adds a sense of realism. These are not the sorts of people to speak with the eloquence of a gentleman.
This Blu-ray from 88 Films features a great print of the movie, an audio commentary from Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw and featurettes from Stephen Thrower, Melanie Williams and Maxim Jakubowski as well as trailers for the film under both its original title and that of Black Dice. No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a really good thriller with a good cast, solid direction and an interesting payoff. The once controversial elements seem tame in comparison to today’s cinema, but for the time, they must have seemed quite revolutionary.
This is a really nice release for an underappreciated gem of British cinema, and while it’s set in New York with a mostly English cast, it never feels as though the accents are anything to worry about. This is a really good noir that deserves to be seen by fans of the genre.