No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a 1948 British gangster film adapted and directed by St. John Leigh Clowes from a novel

No Orchids for Miss Blandish (novel)

No Orchids For Miss Blandish is a 1939 crime novel by the British writer James Hadley Chase. The novel was influenced by the American crime writer James M. Cain and the stories in the pulpmagazine Black Mask....

 by James Hadley Chase

James Hadley Chase

James Hadley Chase is the best-known pseudonym of the British writer Rene Brabazon Raymond who also wrote under the names James L. Docherty, Ambrose Grant, and Raymond Marshall. Chase is one of the best known thriller writers of all time...

. It starred Linden Travers

Linden Travers

-Life and career:Travers was born Florence Lindon-Travers in Houghton-le-Spring, near Sunderland, the daughter of Florence and William Halton Lindon-Travers. She was the elder sister of Bill Travers, and attended La Sagesse. She made her first stage appearance at the Newcastle Playhouse in 1933...

, Jack La Rue

Jack La Rue

Jack La Rue was an American film and stage actor.Born as Gaspere Biondolillo, he worked on the New York stage from 1923 to 1931. He moved to Hollywood, where he appeared in numerous films...

, Walter Crisham, MacDonald Parke, Lilli Molnar and Hugh McDermott

Hugh McDermott (actor)

Hugh McDermott was a British actor who made a number of film and television appearances between 1936 and 1972. He was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1908 and made his screen debut in Well Done, Henry and followed it up with an appearance as HM Stanley in David Livingstone...

, with an unbilled early appearance from Sid James

Sid James

Sid James was an English-based South African actor and comedian. He made his name as Tony Hancock's co-star in Hancock's Half Hour and also starred in the popular Carry On films. He was known for his trademark "dirty laugh" and lascivious persona...

 as a barman.

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. (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

Monthly Film Bulletin

The Monthly Film Bulletin was a periodical of the British Film Institute published monthly from February 1934 to April 1991. It reviewed all films on release in the United Kingdom, including those with a narrow arthouse release. The MFB was edited in the mid-1950s by David Robinson, in the late...

 calling it "the most sickening exhibition of brutality,perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema
screen". The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

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".

No Orchids for Miss Blandish was also denounced by the Bishop of London

Bishop of London

The Bishop of London is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of London in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 458 km² of 17 boroughs of Greater London north of the River Thames and a small part of the County of Surrey...

, William Wand,
and several UK politicians, including Edith Summerskill.

Despite this condemnation, the film was commerically successful.

Leslie Halliwell

Leslie Halliwell

Robert James Leslie Halliwell was a British film encyclopaedist and television impresario who in 1965 compiled The Filmgoer's Companion, the first one-volume encyclopaedia devoted to all aspects of the cinema. He followed it a dozen years later with Halliwell's Film Guide, another monumental work...

would later describe
No Orchids for Miss Blandish as a "hilariously awful gangster film...one of the worst films ever made".