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No Orchids for Miss Blandish

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No Orchids for Miss Blandish Empty No Orchids for Miss Blandish

Post by Bruce R Sun Feb 14, 2016 6:06 pm

I got this one in a trade over 7 years ago.  It was in PAL format so I had to use ConvertX to DVD to convert it to NTSC before burning a new dvd.  I was very pleasantly surprised at how crisp the transfer was.

But now onto the picture.  It's a Brit noir from 1948 starring Jack LaRue and a wonderful entourage of colorful characters.

For it's time, it must have been one of the more violent pictures made and critics didn't like it at all.  When I originally entered it into my Movie Collector program, the IMDb rating was a lowly 4.8.  Today it's 6.1.  

Here's a synopsis of the film:

James Hadley Chase's under-the-counter 1930s bestseller was somewhat bowdlerized for the screen in 1948--but not enough for provincial British and American censors, some of whom refused to allow the picture to be shown at all in certain districts. No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a tawdry kidnapping yarn about a virginal heiress (Linden Travers) abducted for ransom by a pair of cheap hoods. They lose her to a bigger crook, one Slim Grissom (Jack LaRue). His intentions are far from honorable, but given the degeneracy of the rest of the Grissom gang, Miss Blandish finds herself attracted to the boss. They plan to run off together, but the secondary hoods bump off Grissom and return the girl for the ransom money. But Miss Blandish's father refuses to accept the girl back: "Better dead than deflowered." Financed by Americans and filmed in England, No Orchids for Miss Blandish was roundly panned by critics of both nations, who couldn't conceive of a film so tasteless and sadistic. Those critics must have had coronaries when the even slimier remake, The Grissom Gang, appeared in 1971.

I found it grittily entertaining and would recommend it.

Bruce R

Bruce R

Posts : 296
Join date : 2015-07-08

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