- No Orchids for Miss Blandish (film)
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No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a 1948 British gangster film adapted and directed by St. John Leigh Clowes from a novel by James Hadley Chase.[1] It starred Linden Travers, Jack La Rue, Walter Crisham, MacDonald Parke, Lilli Molnar and Hugh McDermott, with an unbilled early appearance from Sid James as a barman.[2]
Contents
Plot
The film, about a kidnapped heiress who falls in love with her abductor, caused enormous controversy on its release, because of the high levels of violence that had gotten past the film censors. Though made with a largely British cast, it was set in New York, with the actors often struggling with their American accents.[3] (Ironically, the one American in the cast, LaRue, affected a slight Italian accent.)
Reception
No Orchids for Miss Blandish received strong criticism for its treatment of violence and sexuality, with the Monthly Film Bulletin calling it "the most sickening exhibition of brutality,perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen". The Observer reviewer, C.A. Lejeune described the film as "this repellent piece of work" that "scraped up all the droppings of the nastier type of Hollywood movie". [4] No Orchids for Miss Blandish was also denounced by the Bishop of London, William Wand, and several UK politicians, including Edith Summerskill. [5] Despite this condemnation, the film was commerically successful. [4] Leslie Halliwell would later describe No Orchids for Miss Blandish as a "hilariously awful gangster film...one of the worst films ever made". [6]
Other versions
It was remade in the U.S. by Robert Aldrich in 1971 as The Grissom Gang.
References
- ^ Variety film review; April 21, 1948
- ^ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040647/
- ^ Motion Picture Exhibitor review; March 14, 1951, page 3042
- ^ a b "Outrage:No Orchids for Miss Blandish" by Brian McFarlane in British Crime Cinema, edited by Steve Chibnall, Robert Murphy. Routledge, 1999. ISBN 0415168708 (pg. 37-50).
- ^ The British Board of Film Censors: film censorship in Britain, 1896-1950. James Crighton Robertson. Taylor & Francis, 1985, ISBN 0709922701 (p.174-5)
- ^ Halliwell's Film Guide, HarperPerennial, 1994, ISBN 9780062733184 (pg. 781).
External links
Categories:- 1948 films
- Films based on novels
- British films
- English-language films
- Gangster films
- 1940s British film stubs
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