NO ORCHIDS FOR MISS BLANDISH
(St John L Clowes, 1948)
Release date: 27 May 2019
Limited Blu-ray Edition [/b]
Possibly the most controversial British film ever produced, this lurid crime drama caused an unprecedented storm of controversy upon release: local councils banned it, the Bishop of London denounced it, and MPs demanded an investigation into the BBFC for allowing it to be seen.
Based on the notorious novel by James Hadley Chase (which itself was condemned by George Orwell), No Orchids for Miss Blandish is a mixture of sex, violence and immorality, and tells the brutal story of a kidnapped heiress who falls for one of her crazed captors.
This fascinating example of British film noir, which the Monthly Film Bulletin described as “the most sickening exhibition of brutality, perversion, sex and sadism ever to be shown on a cinema screen”, is now released on UK Blu-ray for the very first time.
INDICATOR LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES:
• High Definition remaster
• Original mono audio
• Miss Blandish and the Censor (2019): ex-BBFC examiner Richard Falcon discusses the controversial film's history with the British Board of Film Censors
• Interview with producer Richard Gordon and actor Richard Neilson (2010, 35 mins): filmed interview with the famed US distributor-producer, and the actor
• Soldier, Sailor (1945, 51 mins): World War II docudrama, conceived by No Orchids for Miss Blandish’s writer-director St John Legh Clowes
• Original British and American theatrical trailers
• Image gallery: on-set and promotional photography
• New and improved English subtitles for the deaf and hard-of-hearing
• Limited edition exclusive booklet with a new essay by Robert Murphy, analysis of the different versions of the source novel, an extract from an essay on No Orchids for Miss Blandish by George Orwell, news accounts of the controversy surrounding the film’s release, an overview of contemporary critical responses, and film credits
• UK premiere on Blu-ray
• Limited Edition of 3,000 copies
• All extras subject to change
#PHILTD148
BBFC cert: PG
REGION FREE
EAN: 5037899071960
No Orchids For Miss Blandish (St John Legh Clowes 1948) An heiress is kidnapped by, well, a lot of people over the course of this James Hadley Chase adaptation. This is an odd film— a British production and starring British actors with “American” accents, it’s set in New York and everyone does their best to make this seem like a stateside noir, only naughtier. And while there is a noticeable flaunting of things that would never fly in a Hollywood production (My favorite being when a loose woman invites a man into her bed as an afterthought), the film highlights the problem with adapting pulp literature too literally: there is just too much here. Too many double-crosses, too much toxic cynicism, and waaay too many deaths. Those items may sound like standard issue noir materials, but this adaptation is a good reminder of the genius of Hollywood’s Code. A Hollywood version would have cut the number of deaths by half, given us a likable doomed protagonist, and had some decent contract stars meted out in parts best suited for them— and the film would be all the better for it. This World, Then the Fireworks shows what a faithful pulp fiction adaptation really looks like, and as I said when I first wrote about that film, the world doesn’t need another— especially not one as poorly-acted and unimaginatively staged as this.
I think that the source novel was later used as the basis of The Grissom Gang.
No Orchids for Miss Blandish was on UK TV once, as part of Halliwell's What The Censor Saw season in 1983 on Channel 4. The guide even describes it as "one of the worst films ever made".
I'm not remotely blind to this film's many, many faults (I don't think anyone could be), but I thoroughly enjoyed working on this release - which inevitably involved watching it multiple times. In terms of British cinema, it's a complete one-off.
I enjoyed this quite a bit. It kicks off like an own-brand noir by someone who’s read about the genre but never seen one, but then takes some winningly weird turns. I was interested to learn that some of the even odder stuff was sanded down from the novel.
If you missed the Indicator edition, 88 Films is releasing this in October
Audio Commentary by Kim Newman and Barry Forshaw
Class War - Stephen Thrower on No Orchids For Miss Blandish
A Shock to the System - Melanie Williams on No Orchids For Miss Blandish
Cheap Thrills - Maxim Jakubowski on author James Hadley Chase
Miss Blandish and the Censor
Theatrical Trailer
“Black Dice” Trailer
I had lunch with him and Barry Forshaw a few weeks ago, during which he told me that he always does commentaries with someone else as it involves much less preparation - doing it solo is far more demanding because the spotlight is effectively on you throughout and you can't fall back on your co-commentator.
I don't know how the Newman-Forshaw duo preps things, but when I record commentaries with Johnny Mains we agree in advance which specific aspects we're going to research. For instance, on Nightmare Alley I was handling the film and its cinematic context, while he was handling the history of circus sideshows, the chicanery behind "cold reading" and so on. The one thing that we both did was read the book, and I gather that's something that Kim and Barry do too, at least if it's available.
(I remember us all expressing bafflement at commentators who don't read source novels - surely that's about as basic as prior research gets?)
From the brief fly-past of his shelves at the beginning of that London Cinephile interview with Newman, he appears to be much more of a book collector than anything else!
