blanche-2 I guess the censors were on a lunch break when this film came before them. Or perhaps the Brits didn't have a censorship program like we had."No Orchids for Miss Blandish" is a film ahead of its time, for sure, one filled with brutality, sex, and implied rape. Apparently upon its release it caused a big hullabaloo. Various councils banned the film and the lead censor had to apologize! The story concerns a woman with an insanely rich father, the aforementioned Miss Blandish (Linden Travers) whose $100,000 diamonds are stolen, she is kidnapped, and her boyfriend is killed (in an awful scene) by thugs led by Slim (Jack LaRue). Though she has witnessed a murder and there is pressure for him to kill her, Slim returns the diamonds to her and tells her to leave. He's fallen in love with her, and she with him. This leads to lots of problems.There are so many murders and people turning on one another in this film that I lost count. The story for me was highly implausible, with not enough fleshing out of the characters to make their actions believable.Despite the fact that this is supposed to be an American gangster story, it had a distinctive British feel to it. The acting was good, even though apparently it was a career-wrecker for some of the performers, Linden Travers being among them.Not what I was expecting by a long shot and for me it was short on characterizations and long on violence. Still, it's worth seeing as an artifact of not only British cinema, but of its time.

Jimmy L. Knowing NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH (1948) was a British film, I was intrigued to discover that the action is set in the good ol' USA. MISS BLANDISH is not a British crime film, like BRIGHTON ROCK (1947). It is a British attempt at making an American gangster flick. What's interesting is that the predominantly British cast use American accents and spit out American slang. There are many Hollywood films set in England or on the European continent, but it's neat to see the tables turned.It's obvious that the filmmakers were inspired by Hollywood's noirish gangster films, and this outsider's interpretation of the genre has a stylized quality. As a sort of homage I found the film very entertaining. I was surprised to see its overwhelmingly negative reception.NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH is a gangster movie with a heart. The key to the whole film is the romance between the top gangster and the abducted heiress. The gangster is actually a kind of hero, saving the girl from her original captors and then treating her with unusual compassion. This gangster has had a soft spot for the heiress for some time, and his treatment of her throughout her traumatic ordeal brings about reciprocated feelings.But the romance is not meant to be. The rest of the gang wants to off the girl, who knows too much, or try to collect some ransom for her return. The girl's father and the police try tirelessly to locate and rescue her. The girl and the gangster just want to escape and start a new life together, but the machinery of fate won't allow it.An exercise in genre, MISS BLANDISH in some ways seeks to be the ultimate gangster flick. There's lots of violence. One massacre after another. Viewers get to know characters only to see them killed off five minutes later. It keeps the audience guessing, especially with the cast of relative unknowns. It's refreshing, almost, to never know what to expect. The American tough guy archetypes are played up to extremes. Even the relentless newspaper reporter pushes a gun in people's faces.Second-tier American tough guy Jack LaRue (THE STORY OF TEMPLE DRAKE, 1933) is brought in to lend credibility to the production in the starring role of Slim Grisson, the top man in the slickest criminal organization in town (and sometime nightclub owner). Lovely Linden Travers plays the titular heiress. Among the rest of the cast MacDonald Parke stands out as a kind of intellectual, yet ruthless, member of the Grisson mob. It's an interesting sort of character that isn't often seen in gangster flicks like these.The British cast gamely assume American accents, with varying degrees of success. The Americanized lingo occasionally feels awkward, but the biggest reminder for me that this is not a Hollywood film is the gunshot sound effect, which is more of a snap than a bang.Still, I was really on board with this crime/romance. It's brutal, it's shocking, it has character. And the romantic in me roots for the star-crossed lovers, as the world closes in around them. There's something poetically satisfying about the final scene.

morrissey1-740-548043 I have wanted for a while to see this now "rare" British noir effort because I have heard so much about it--the controversy it stirred up, the sex, the violence, and so on (you can find all about that elsewhere). Saw it just the other night on TCM. Other reviews have correctly pointed out its (hardly surprising) acute awareness of social class. A preoccupation never very far away in British film, as indeed in British culture more generally. This can be a good thing, or a bad, depending on the treatment. One thing that American films have always tended to do--with many excellent exceptions, though most tellingly, from Hollywood's earliest years--is pussyfoot around questions of class (disclosure: I'm a Brit, resident in the US for twenty years-- so I can say this much: don't believe anyone who tells you that, in contradistinction to stuffy old Britain, the US is a refreshingly "classless" society. That is, as they say back "home," rubbish). The chief problem here is the attempt to make a British copy of an American noir. It doesn't work. Much better when the British stuck to British themes in British locales with British accents. Trevor Howard's "I Became a Criminal" is a far superior work for instance--as is the screen adaptation of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." Dassin's British set "Night and the City" is also streets ahead. Having said that, the film is competently directed, and is eminently watchable (if also instantly forgettable). You won't be wanting to watch it again and again, like perhaps you might Wilder's Double Indemnity or Curtiz's Mildred Pierce.

Cajun-4 This is the first version of James Hadley Chase's famous shocker. It was remade as "The Grissom Gang" in 1971 by Robert Aldrich. As a writer Chase made a fortune, despite getting atrocious reviews from British critics. The movie was no exception regarding reviews; some sample quotes... ...the most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism...the morals are about level with those of a scavenger dog...it has all the sweetness of a sewer...the worst film I have ever seen.I saw it when I was sixteen and I loved it, even buying the record of the background music (Song Of The Orchid). It had a mostly British cast with one imported American *star* Jack La Rue. It would be interesting to see it again fifty years later. I imagine the violence everyone complained of would seem pretty tame by today's standards.