No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948)

[Scottie]

[Old Geezer]

This popped up on my "recommendations" page on Amazon. It sounds like something I would really like and the price is good too.

Description from an Amazon customer:
This 1948 British creation caused a huge outcry upon its release due to its cold-blooded brutality and sexuality. The uproar merited a four-page article in LIFE magazine, titled, "London Can't Take It." Once the viewer gets used to the English actors attempting American accents (often with hilarious results) and misguided attempts at American gangster dialog ("You croaked him!")it is actually quite a lively-paced and intriguing film. Cinematography is noirish and excellent. It has been beautifully restored and deserves a new audience.

[PowellPressburger]

Just watched this BLU and I agree with the above post. This British Noir is great. I went into it blindly, not knowing what to expect but its true its filled with slaps a plenty, dames, mobsters, sex, and violence. The dialogue is awesome.

Worthy additiion for those into noir.

The image quailty looked good to me. The audio during moments with score sometimes would sound glitchy, for sure. audio issues that I doubt could be fixed but thrilled it made it to BLU.

Ill be revisiting this one soon. I only wish someone would have done a commentary track for the release.

[seentv]

Thanks for your comments. Mine arrived today, and I'm now excited to finally see it after all these years of reading varied accounts of this one-of-a-kind movie.

[javi92]

Got mine in the mail today, so I'll have to check it out soon.

[Brian M.]

Very entertaining noir, but the toughness and meanness that permeates this film is through the roof. And it's not an exaggeration to mention that the film is actually shocking

[BagheeraMcGee]

I grabbed this during the current Kino sale along with some sale items to get me over the $50 free shipping threshold. Reading this thread makes me feel even more encouraged about the blind-buy. Really looking forward to this arriving late this week.

[PowellPressburger]

Hope more will seek it out. Ive read a lot on how the film was badly panned over the years but lets face it, its pulpy, mean, trashy and great noir junk food.

[The Great Owl]

Miss Blandish, an heiress played by Linden Travers (The Lady Vanishes), is engaged to be married, but has no apparent enthusiasm for her dull fiancé or for her sheltered life in the home of her multimillionaire father. Her world quickly changes on her wedding night, when she is kidnapped and her husband-to-be is killed by small-time crooks who are after her diamond jewelry. A series of betrayals and murders ensue, ultimately resulting in the heiress being held captive by a fiercely diabolical gangster, played by Jack La Rue (A Farewell to Arms), with whom she falls in love. The two of them dream of running off together, but criminal rivals and the local police have other plans.

The 1948 noir-edged British crime thriller, No Orchids for Miss Blandish, was greeted with caustic animosity upon its release by critics who considered it to be the worst movie ever made because of its unrelenting sex and violence. The Monthly Film Bulletin described it as, “The most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen.” Even today, this film, while viscerally tame by contemporary standards, pushes the envelope of good taste and provides quite a jolt due to its many sequences of abrupt ferocity, in the form of characters being struck in the face, characters being beaten to death, women being roughed up, and, most of all, people being riddled with bullets. All of the male characters have a capacity for bloodshed, while all of the females are shown expressing affection for the men who abuse them. If you can imagine a black-and-white version of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas condensed down to 104 minutes with all of the savagery left intact, then you would not be too far off the mark.

This old-school fireball of a film was directed by St. John Legh Clowes and based on the popular James Hadley Chase novel, which was, in turn, influenced by William Faulkner's book, Sanctuary, a work that was quite controversial in its own right. It's an oddly offbeat motion picture, with a mix of British and American actors, and with badly casted people who seem to have zero chemistry with one another. Jack La Rue is the exception, and, although he comes across as a second-rate Humphrey Bogart, his opening sequence is masterfully menacing. Zoe Gail, who plays a nightclub stripper, is also decently memorable. Finally, Richard Neilson, who plays a loose cannon early in the story, gives Joe Pesci's overage punk character in Goodfellas a run for his money.

No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a movie of disparately cluttered ingredients that should not work, but somehow manage to come together in a fascinating way. I'm not sure what this says about my moral character, but I like this film simply on account of its formidable wall of constant maliciousness and impropriety. Despite its year of production, there is nothing quaint about it.

This Kino Lorber Blu-ray sports a filmic and detailed high definition video presentation, with competent audio to boot (although I would love to have been able to use a subtitle option during a few scenes). It's too bad that this particular Blu-ray is bare bones, because this movie is just begging for some supplementary material.