People are voting emotionally.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Film is laughably behind the times, using "gangster" dialog from early 1930s films, even though it's set in 1941 (based on a license plate on a car). "Miss Blandish" could qualify as a satire of films from 15 years earlier, if it didn't take itself so seriously. Every 1930s gangster cliché can be seen here. "See?", "Yeah", "See?", "Yeah" said with Edward G. Robinson-styled sneers is used constantly. In-between the horrid dialog & clichés, there's a seriously evil Bad Guy expertly played by Jack La Rue, who exceeded even Pre-Code standards of Badness (except for his own turn in "The Story of Temple Blake"), & the film is worth seeing for his role alone. Lilly Molnar has an especially non-intentionally funny role in the over-clichéd part of Gangster "Ma". Jack Durant is actually funny (intentionally) as a comic imitating dialog between Peter Lorre & Sydney Greenstreet. Michael Balfour & MacDonald Parke are good in their roles. On the plus side, "Miss Blandish" was indeed far ahead of its time in terms of violence, & unrepentant crime, & it's hard to imagine how it got past the censors of the day in its 104 minute form. All in all, I got many laughs while watching this, but they were mostly laughs at the film, not with the film. This film set the record for the most Hollywood clichés I've ever seen in a film (aside from true satires), quite an accomplishment for a British movie.

After reading all the existing reviews there's not much I can add. Some of my fellow reviewers have, in my opinion, unduly savaged this film. To them I say, "Let's see YOU make a great movie and we'll see what this same group of people have to say about it". Not that this was great movie by any stretch, but as a former television director (whose company was swallowed by a corporate behemoth that runs TV commercials trying to convince you that "We're GOOD guys!! REALLY"... That company makes and sells many things, but the TV's with their name on them ARE NOT MADE BY THEM AT ALL! I refuse to even have one of their light bulbs in my home. After they bought my company and fired me and 1500 of my closest friends, I went through my house and looked at EVERY LIGHT BULB! Every one with their name on it met my ball pien hammer, up close and personal! But I digress...I'm only saying that if you think it's easy to put ANYTHING on ANY screen, big or small, let's see YOU do it. It's no problem to rip someone else's hard work to shreds from your computer, but it's something else altogether to actually DO SOMETHING CREATIVE AND GET IT DONE! Trust me - I know! But back to THIS movie. It struck me as an attempt by this group of Brits to turn out the type of film made by Warner Brothers... only 15 years too late. Despite the fact that a local accent peeks through the cliché-riddled dialogue here and there, having ACTUALLY WORKED IN FILM PRODUCTION AS I HAVE, I'd call "No Orchids For Miss Blandish" a pretty valiant effort. Sure, it could have used, say, Cagney, Bogey or even Eddie G., but on THIS budget? Not a chance! Even so, my hat's off to the lot of these people, with their Wayne GAS (NOT PETROL) pumps, and Champion Spark Plugs. This film, ladies and gents (if I can even call some of you that after what I've read here), was an excellent attempt.

I have wanted for a while to see this now "rare" British noir effort because I have heard so much about it--the controversy it stirred up, the sex, the violence, and so on (you can find all about that elsewhere). Saw it just the other night on TCM. Other reviews have correctly pointed out its (hardly surprising) acute awareness of social class. A preoccupation never very far away in British film, as indeed in British culture more generally. This can be a good thing, or a bad, depending on the treatment. One thing that American films have always tended to do--with many excellent exceptions, though most tellingly, from Hollywood's earliest years--is pussyfoot around questions of class (disclosure: I'm a Brit, resident in the US for twenty years-- so I can say this much: don't believe anyone who tells you that, in contradistinction to stuffy old Britain, the US is a refreshingly "classless" society. That is, as they say back "home," rubbish). The chief problem here is the attempt to make a British copy of an American noir. It doesn't work. Much better when the British stuck to British themes in British locales with British accents. Trevor Howard's "I Became a Criminal" is a far superior work for instance--as is the screen adaptation of Graham Greene's "Brighton Rock." Dassin's British set "Night and the City" is also streets ahead. Having said that, the film is competently directed, and is eminently watchable (if also instantly forgettable). You won't be wanting to watch it again and again, like perhaps you might Wilder's Double Indemnity or Curtiz's Mildred Pierce.

I'd just like to point out that this film has been shown on British TV, on Channel 4 in the early Eighties - though that was its first showing, and I'm pretty certain the only one to date. I'd like to see it again, though as I recall it was hard to take seriously. (Sid James as a Chicago crook...??)