Nothing says Saturday Night Special like a good gangster movie, so let's get the show rolling with tonight's special UK feature from 1948, "No Orchids For Miss Blandish!"
The reason no characters resemble any person living or dead is because they've all been killed by gangsters!!!
Linden (Edgar Wallace's The Terror) Travers is the classic beauty Miss Blandish!
And why "No Orchids For Miss Blandish?" She keeps getting flowers from an anonymous admirer, and she keeps turning them down!
Miss Blandish's fiancée is the bland one in the relationship! That's John (Goldfinger) McClaren as Foster Harvey!
This movie is everything you could ask for in a movie, Greasy, Dirty, Sleazy, and Grimy! That's right, the four dwarfs you never heard about before, and that ain't no Snow White neither!!
So these bozos kill Miss Blandish's ex-future husband, and kidnap her in an attempt to get some good old fashioned ransom money out of her Pop who is loaded to the gills!
"No Orchids For Miss Blandish" is known to this day for raising a big stink because of this inferred rape scene! The film was given a D rating for Disgusting!!!
The Boss shows up and rubs out cheap thug Leslie (Attack Of The Crab Monsters) Bradley for being a stupid lowlife! The Boss has a nervous habit of continually rolling dice when he's thinking!
The Boss runs a big organization out of this club called "Grissons" and that's where they end up bringing Miss Blandish to!
They've got some great entertainment at "Grisssons!" There's specialty acts Halama and Konarski, and Toy and Wyng all played by themselves! There's a real comedian played by Jack Durant, and then there's Zoë Gail as Margo performing great numbers like George Melachrino & James Dyrenforth's
"When He'd Got It, Did He Want It?"
That, my friends, is the face of a woman who is stuck on the horns of a dilemma!
And that is what the back of a dilemma looks like walking up stairs!!
The Boss is a fellow named Slim Grisson, a hard-living Bogeyesque tough guy played by Jack (Mind Your Own Business) La Rue, and he's got one very big problem!!!
Despite being the man in charge and the ultimate bad guy, Slim Grisson is very much in love with Miss Blandish............
..........and she in turn is very much in love with him! You see, it was Slim that had been sending her the flowers all along!! You didn't think this was a love story, did you, but it is, a very sad love story, because there is no way in living Hell that they can possibly make this work!!
Lilli (The Long Dark Hall) Molnar as Slim's Mom is also a big player in this story and one of the major obstacles standing between Slim and Miss Blandish's happiness! This is one of my favourite shots, because of the juxtaposition of Ma Grisson and a bottle of "Old Crow" whiskey sitting on her desk!
There's more than enough problems with Ma and the other members of Slim's gang, but once the cops get involved you know it's curtains! I love this movie, catch it on TCM when you get a chance!!!
3 comments:
Thanks a bunch for posting this. I got out this DVD and watched it again tonight. Excellent film with a nice sordid feel to it. Thanks again.
Hi! Eegah!! and Tabonga!
What a nice review that "dissected" the story and the characters not up to a point, but straight to the point!
[with a dash Of good humour, thrown in for good measure, but Of course!]
[postscript: You, can also rent the film [I recently, rented the film for the first-time.]
That's if your readers, don't want to wait on TCM to air the film.]
deedee :)
Since we predominately dwell in the past, how cool it is to get comments from one of the most unique duos of the 60's, Dick and DeeDee!! Thanx you two!
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