Black Orchid ** (1953, Ronald Howard, Olga Edwardes, John Bentley, Mary Laura Wood, Patrick Barr, Russell Napier, Sheila Burrell) – Classic Movie Review 13,524

The 1953 British second feature murder thriller film Black Orchid stars Ronald Howard, Olga Edwardes, John Bentley, Mary Laura Wood, Patrick Barr and Sheila Burrell.

Director Charles Saunders’s 1953 British second feature murder thriller film Black Orchid stars Ronald Howard, Olga Edwardes, John Bentley, Mary Laura Wood, Patrick Barr, Russell Napier, and Sheila Burrell. It comes from the Robert S Baker and Monty Berman production team, and is written by Francis Edge, John Temple-Smith, and Maurice Temple-Smith.

Ronald Howard stars as a physician, Dr John Winnington, who is unhappily married to the bitchy Sophie (Mary Laura Wood), and inconveniently falls in love with her younger sister Christine (Olga Edwardes), his new laboratory assistant. The wife has offered him a divorce, and plans to leave for South Africa. John gives her a stimulant on the day she’s leaving, but then she is apparently run down by a truck in a road accident. However, next, John is accused of giving his wife poison, which is found in her body, and he is charged with murder.

Black Orchid is a creaky, far-fetched, old-style quickie whodunit with an overused mystery plot. But there are a few generally well-disguised surprises, it moves along swiftly in its short running time of only 60 minutes, and the writers, the actors and the director all seem to believe it all, which helps to make it entertaining enough.

The cast are Ronald Howard, Olga Edwardes, John Bentley, Mary Laura Wood, Patrick Barr as Vincent Humphries, Russell Napier as Inspector Markham, Sheila Burrell as Annette, Mary Jones as Mrs Humphries, Alan Robinson, Ian Fleming, Tom Gill, Tucker McGuire, Richard Shaw, and Daniel Wherry.

© Derek Winnert 2025 – Classic Movie Review 13,524

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com