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.

big_O_Other To my mind the movie was a failure because of the acting, but largely because these virtually all British actors (except La Rue) were straining to fake American accents, and that caused their intonation to be 'off.' Everything sounded poorly acted, but sometimes I would imagine the actors speaking their lines in their native British accents and they would be fine.They could have just made it as a British drama, but then it might have seemed unbelievably violent for that culture... even as "American" the violence never seemed as motivated as it is in noir and gangster films in the USA of the era.It remains a very peculiar film. The relationship of Ma to Slim was never fully clarified, either.

flamingrrl Being American I had never heard of this film. Chock full of gangster clichés and Amercian accents as bad as my English attempts, it was brilliant!! It is more watchable than some 'better' films.Its also ironic to watch some 50 years later. We found it on a satellite channel Moves4Men. LOL I think I'd now classify it as noir comedy/satire of early gangster films. It now rates a PG classification and was shown at noon on a Bank Holiday Monday. Others have given excellent overviews, I see no need to do the same, but rather give our observations of this underrated film.Best passionate kiss in an early b&w film I've ever seen. Where passion is usually shown as quick peck on the lips you saw these people were passionate about one another.Film students will have a field with the metaphors in this film; the 360 around the room ending with the pounding rain on the window, the long lovingly lingering shot on the huge orchid, and Miss Blandish in a dressing gown, do we ever learn her first name? And the final tragic scene of Miss Blandish's out stretched hand not far an orchid, an exotic hot house bloom crushed beneath the feet of the uncaring passersby.For a low budget film a lot a care has been taken with detail. The gowns, especially the singer's see through skirt and tap pants, oooh we know she's a naughty girl. Even 'Ma' a large middle age woman with no make up has an exotic gown that contrasts with her mannish personality as one of the leaders of the gang.It is in strange-way, refreshing, to see some bad guy shot, no muss no fuss no long winded exposition just bang, curtains for you mat er um buddy.If I found this on DVD I'd buy it without a second thought. Its refreshing, compelling and fun. Yet the ending is poignant, poor Miss Blandish discovering too late what fun bad boys are.