No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)

Captivating movie !

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

At the time this was released, some 65 years ago, the critics mauled it and not just that, they were furious. The eminent reviewer, Dillys Powell, suggested it should have been awarded a 'D' certificate, for 'disgusting' and the censor later apologised for having mislead the public into seeing something they perhaps shouldn't have. Monthly Film Bulletin used the words, 'sickening', 'brutality','perversion' and 'sex & sadism'. Well, needless to say it doesn't live up to all that, though a tender reviewer on this site in 2006 slammed it as 'the toughest film I have seen'. It's British and based upon the infamous book of the same title by the Brit, James Hadley Chase and well worth seeing. You will be surprised at the violence and sexual reference, considering the time, but you will survive.

Please note I didn't say good, I said fascinating. St. John Legh Clowes (a terrific name) wrote a terrible script which lacks subtlety and nuance, and did a terrible job in directing this crime/romance and gave us a genteel Englishman's conception of an American gangster film. Much of the dialogue is gratuitously nasty and mean-spirited, as if underworld types routinely insult one another. The acting is stilted and artificial with characters often delivering their lines while posing defiantly.Then, midway through the film, action stops as the picture changes from an action melodrama to a romancer, and the fast pace comes to a halt. I did not notice much chemistry between the principals, Jack LaRue (in a Bogart role) and Linden Travers (in a role somewhere between Ingrid Bergman and Claire Trevor), although she got the better of him in the acting department. Larue, for his part, has a great baleful stare, which comprises most of his acting technique. Speaking of acting, it was very uneven among the rest of the cast, however there were American equivalents of Sidney Greenstreet, Leo Gorcey, Mike Mazurki and Dan Duryea.Did I mention this was a fascinating picture? Well, it certainly is and if it comes on, don't miss it. It is like a Monogram Studio feature but with major studio production values. Lovely background music by George Melachrino helps, but he wrote a couple of clinkers as night club numbers which are forgettable. In short, it is very worth seeing so you can compare American and UK gangster movies.P.S. When was the last time you saw a hit-man wearing a bow-tie?

I've always tended to link three films together in that they were all released around the same time and all aroused controversy. The three titles were 'The Outlaw', 'Forever Amber' and 'No Orchids For Blandish'. Eventually I saw them all though long after their initial 'shock' value had evaporated. 'No Orchids For Miss Blandish' eluded me the longest and I have, in fact, only just caught up with it on DVD. Overall it is slightly risible in that it seems to be asking the audience to accept a string of second-rate British actors as American; in order to do this all money is spoken of in terms of dollars, dough and/or bucks and the police wear US cop uniforms. Other than that little effort is made - or if it is it is woefully inadequate - in terms of accents and ironically the one genuine American in the cast, lead Jack LaRue, sounds more English than American. Leading lady and eponymous Miss Blandish Linden Travers looks remarkably like Moira Lister (who was 23 at the time and actually appeared in three films in 1948) and fails to convince that she would succumb to Stockholm syndrome in nothing flat and was possibly a role model for the real life Patty Hearst who followed suit in real life much later. Though more embarrassing than entertaining it is watchable at least once.

A famous British example of film noir, No Orchids for Miss Blandish centers around a psychopathic killer (Jack La Rue) who kidnaps and falls in love with heiress Linden Travers. Noirishly photographed by Gerald Gibbs, the movie was often stylishly directed, but suffered from an excess of often pointless, on-screen violence. The line-up of heavies also seemed disproportionate. The police were portrayed as ineffectual document dusters, leaving only a flawed private detective (rather weakly played by Hugh McDermott, not exactly the most charismatic of leading men) to offer a challenge. Over-emphatic comic relief provided by prissy Charles Goldner and nightclub comedian Jack Durant didn't help either, but I did enjoy the songs from Zoe Gail (and this, alas, is her only movie).