ChicRawIdol A brilliant film that helped define a genre

Maidexpl Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

writers_reign I've always tended to link three films together in that they were all released around the same time and all aroused controversy. The three titles were 'The Outlaw', 'Forever Amber' and 'No Orchids For Blandish'. Eventually I saw them all though long after their initial 'shock' value had evaporated. 'No Orchids For Miss Blandish' eluded me the longest and I have, in fact, only just caught up with it on DVD. Overall it is slightly risible in that it seems to be asking the audience to accept a string of second-rate British actors as American; in order to do this all money is spoken of in terms of dollars, dough and/or bucks and the police wear US cop uniforms. Other than that little effort is made - or if it is it is woefully inadequate - in terms of accents and ironically the one genuine American in the cast, lead Jack LaRue, sounds more English than American. Leading lady and eponymous Miss Blandish Linden Travers looks remarkably like Moira Lister (who was 23 at the time and actually appeared in three films in 1948) and fails to convince that she would succumb to Stockholm syndrome in nothing flat and was possibly a role model for the real life Patty Hearst who followed suit in real life much later. Though more embarrassing than entertaining it is watchable at least once.

jds_revenge_redux I was surprised by the consistent entertainment value of this movie. This psycho pseudo-noir is actually quite successful visually, the sort of film that begs you to hit the "mute" button. With the sound turned on the dialog and the attempts at acting tough by the brit-sissies playing American gangsters (who I admit are brutally butch looking) are both spectacularly, bad in a very disorienting, familiar way: though it precedes "Plan 9..." by 11 years, this movie sports serious (Ed) Wood. It has a similarly quirky charm.The one actual (expatriate) American in the movie, Jack La Rue, is almost as miscast as the Brits. This is odd considering his earlier, much more convincing work in The Story of Temple Drake, etc. One telling scene near the end, a nightclub routine almost as bizarre as Jim Carrey's thalidomide baby routine in the Clint Eastwood movie "Pink Cadilac," made me wonder if the whole film was a goof, intended to have a "camp" sensibility.

sleepybone Forget the dumb title! This English Noir throws in every Hollywood cliché of the genre, and almost pulls it off smoothly. Certain plot points will remind you of some big American films, like "White Heat" and "The Asphalt Jungle", although this one came first. The "unacceptable" aspects, production code-wise, will surprise you, and the unpredictability of the plot is pretty wonderful in a film from this era. Look out for spoilers on this one! Hardworking actor Jack La Rue does nothing wrong in a role that begs for Bogart-- as so many past and present roles do.(He always reminds me of a sort of composite Bogie, Glenn Ford, and Victor Mature, especially here, without having quite their class, soul or looks, respectively.) And Linden Travers does everything she can with a practically impossible role-- you can't help but think that she could have used a little more help from director Clowes with the exposition. We don't expect noir, where style should come before substance, to be "believable" in the usual sense, but check this one out and see if it puts you in mind of how strong direction tells us what we know and can't see. If you like noir, and can roll with the punches, you'll love it.

JohnHowardReid A famous British example of film noir, No Orchids for Miss Blandish centers around a psychopathic killer (Jack La Rue) who kidnaps and falls in love with heiress Linden Travers. Noirishly photographed by Gerald Gibbs, the movie was often stylishly directed, but suffered from an excess of often pointless, on-screen violence. The line-up of heavies also seemed disproportionate. The police were portrayed as ineffectual document dusters, leaving only a flawed private detective (rather weakly played by Hugh McDermott, not exactly the most charismatic of leading men) to offer a challenge. Over-emphatic comic relief provided by prissy Charles Goldner and nightclub comedian Jack Durant didn't help either, but I did enjoy the songs from Zoe Gail (and this, alas, is her only movie).