No Orchids For
Miss Blandish (1948)
"A most vicious display of sadism, brutality and suggestiveness..." The Evening Standard.
Critics were shocked by its violence and lack of morality, as were MPs and clergy who also condemned the film. The problem was its story of a young heiress Miss Blandish (Linden Travers) ...
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| Linden Travers |
... who is kidnapped but falls in love with her kidnapper
Slim Grissom (Jack La Rue):
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| Jack La Rue |
Based on the 1939 novel by British author James Hadley
Chase, whose 90 or so novels covered library shelves during the sixties and seventies, it’s
one of those rare cases of a British film that is set in the USA. As a result,
there are a few rather odd accents although they are saved by the fact that
even in American films of the period upper class Americans and their servants
were usually portrayed as having British accents.
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| Linden Travers & Jack La Rue |
The film opens impressively, with unrestrained violence ...
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| Linden Travers & Richard Nielsen |
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| Linden Travers & Leslie Bradley |
... and
a brooding sense of menace hangs over the film as the characters refer to the
elusive Slim. However, once he appears that sense of menace is somewhat
diminished. Indeed, some of the most explicit violence comes from Ted and Riley (played by Leslie Bradley and Richard Nielsen) who aren't even members of the 'Grissom Gang' ...
... led by the repulsive Ma Grissom (Lili Molnar):
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| Lili Molnar |
Jack La Rue just doesn’t have the same cadaverous look and sense of
amorality as the character in the original novel. The original ‘Slim’ is a
menacing figure of evil, with a vicious streak of sexual violence dominating
his persona. Instead, in the film he is portrayed as a man as a violent killer
but not a psychopath. The Slim of the film is a thoughtful man, wracked by
guilt over his love for Miss Blandish and is without “the guts to rub her out”. It’s a far cry from the novel where he
drugs her and keeps her as a plaything, just waiting until it will be time for
her to be murdered. Even the selection of Jack La Rue as Slim doesn’t fit: Even
though the American actor was known for playing gangsters, a far closer visual choice would have been Walter Crisham
who played gang-member Eddie Schultz, and has the right sense of menace:
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| Walter Crisham |
The film’s depiction of Slim as a man drawn to Miss
Blandish, who then uses her own desire to escape from the restrictions of upper
class society, thus drawing him closer and effectively damning him, falls
strictly into Film Noir territory: man drawn in by woman, changed by love, but
ultimately unable to escape his fate. And, like so many ‘noir’ thrillers, the
helpless villain eventually commits suicide by deciding to fight it out with
the cops, despite the overwhelming odds.
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| Charles Goldner (centre) |
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| Jack Durant |
Also appearing:
German born actor Walter Gotell appearing in his ninth film,
but in his first non-war film:
Danny Green (left):
Hugh McDermott:
Jack Lester & Percy Marmont:
John McLaren:
MacDonald Parke:
Michael Balfour:
Richard Nielsen:
Zoe Gail as a night club singer, who gets to sing the immortal couplet: "Lancelot got hot pants a lot, but he didn't care for romance a lot.":
Annette Simmonds plays 'Cutie', the nightclub cloakroom girl who earns her tips by allowing customers to unzip her dress ...
... as Hugh McDermott tells her, she has a "nice smooth action."
Currently available on DVD:
It's always worth remembering, when the Daily Express condemns a film as having "morals about the level with those of a scavenger dog..." and calls it "a disgrace to the British film industry" it must mean it's worth watching!
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