Windthrop

No Orchids For Miss Blandish - a bizarre attempt to make an American style hard-boiled crime film inthis country complete with imported stars and Brits with dodgy American accents.

Having said that James Hadley Chase who wrote the source material set all his novels in the states and never entered the country son in a strange way there is a perverse logic to it.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

MB

I can't remember much about the film - only that it had moments of quite inspired and thoughtful direction here and there.

I think I was about 14 when it came out and Patsy Kensit was pretty disliked by most of the people of my generation - also David Bowie had become a derisory figure so it coloured the way we saw the film, I think...

I do remember a friend of mine being invited to the 'Wag club' where they had a pre premiere party or something. We all thought that was quite cool actually..but the slating of the film had begun well before it came out and I remember thinking then that it didn't stand a chance unless it was tip top..

Lord Brett

I actually rather like No Orchids as a curiosity. Tame by todays standards, it's astonishingly violent for a 40s film.

Lord Brett

I think Dave was well on his 80s downward slide by then (and I speak as a big Bowie fan).

For British cinematic disasters, look no further than (sorry MB) Modesty Blaise!

Steve Crook

Regardless of what everybody else was saying about it at the time, I liked it

It was a very clever updating of the old American musical genre into 1960s London.

Steve

Windthrop

I thought it was 50s. Campbell's Kingdom is playing at a cinema.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

MB

I was wondering when someone was going to say that - lol! But I like the name and the character and I think it suits me.

Modesty Blaise

Modesty Blaise - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Not that I have that many exceptional talents or a criminal past..or wandered through Arabian regions whilst nameless)

I'm also a longstanding Bowie fan.

Steve Crook

Late 1950s, early 1960s, somewhere around there.
Campbell's Kingdom could have been a revival screening. That just fixes the earliest possible date as 1957.

It also includes something very similar to the Notting Hill riots which happened in 1958.

Looking it up, the novel appears to have been more explicitly set in June - September 1958

Steve

Lord Brett

I'm also a big Modesty Blaise fan - and I like big Italian lasses, but somehow the two didn't mesh in the film!

batman

I like Absolute Beginners ... it was an attempt to do something a bit different and is good fun.

Jingle bells Batman smells ... I heard that at school Daddy.

BAT QUIZ 16 HAS JUST BEEN POSTED IN THE COMPETITION THREAD - 06/01/09

FX3

How about the 1975 film The Amorous Milkman, directed by Derren Nesbitt. Since he has never directed anything since and from what I endured it must of been a turkey. I have quite a high tolerance level for watching pre-1980's cinematic cr@p, but I could only manage watching the first 20 minutes of this film.

CaptainWaggett

Jamaica Inn

Windthrop

A professional footballer who had spent time in a prison camp would have looked a lot trimmer that Michael Caine did in that film. To be fair to Huston it wasn't quite his worst film, Phobia IMHO gets the award for that.

Thats the joke that killed the Music Hall !

Juniors Farm

Well there were a couple of laughs in it,unlike Two Weddings,Notting Hill,Full Monty etc.

Lord Brett

Poor Derren - he must have been absolutely the only person to have lost money making a 70s smut-com.

The worst one I've seen is The Ups and Downs of a Handyman, which looks like it was made for about 50p, but it's the only place to go if you want to see Bob Todd in a bowler hat spanking a naked woman in a shower!