This Woman Is Dangerous (1952)

How sad is this?

Excellent but underrated film

Beautiful, moving film.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Joan Crawford plays a the leader of a gang who finds herself having to undergo surgery in order to save her eyesight, only to fall in love with her doctor, Dennis Morgan. However, things get messy when her former boyfriend and fellow gang member gets wind of the budding romance. Crawford plays her usual tough self and that's enough to carry this overly tired story of a criminal seeking to leave their life of crime and go straight. Reportedly Jack L. Warner offered Crawford this tired story expecting her to turn it down so he could put the costly star on suspension, but to his surprise she took the part. Following this film, Crawford negotiated her release from her Warner Bros. contract. Crawford once said this was the only film she regretted ever making (and she even said that after filming "Trog," the film about an unfrozen caveman who goes berserk), but "This Woman is Dangerous" is still an entertaining film and watchable mostly thanks to a strong performance by the always fascinating Crawford in the lead.

And she's about as dangerous as a house cat. Yes, she is once again a gangster's moll, and once again, that gangster is David Brian. They run a racket where they pose as police officers invading supposedly legal gambling joints, and Joan poses as a customer getting access somehow to the money room. She's an ex-con, as it is revealed, having served six months of a year sentence. I look at this as the David Brian of "The Damned Don't Cry" going up against a twin who invades his world, where a twin Joan Crawford is being used in a scheme where she might even run into the JC of that 1950 melodrama. While "The Damned Don't Cry" is far from a perfect film, it's better than this, and even with that film's unbelievable script, it at least had decent direction. All this has is Joan decked out while suffering to maintain her sight and a B grade director, Felix Fiest, who to me was only known as the director of a 1936 Judy Garland/Deanna Durbin short, "Every Sunday Afternoon", and the 1945 Joan Davis/Jack Haley musical comedy, "George White's Scandals".When the audience first sees Joan, she is being told that her sight is in danger of being lost unless she goes to a special clinic near Indianapolis where eye expert Dennis Morgan can perform a risky surgery that might prevent her from going blind. She pulls one last job, has a last minute confrontation with the seemingly violent David Brian, and heads to Missouri where she is prepared to be operated on and ends up falling in love with her widowed doctor who has a young daughter. Meanwhile, Brian and the rest of the gang (Philip Carey and Mari Aldon) flee from the FBI, kill a motorcycle cop, and hire a private investigator to make sure that while Crawford is fighting for her health, she's also keeping her virtue. It's a silly set-up that only Joan Crawford in all her glamour can succeed in making palatable. Of course, like all mob related movies, it ends with a dramatic shoot-out, with poor Joan cowering in the background, desperate for being reformed. The sight of fur clad Joan sitting in Morgan's car while he attends a female prison patient is hysterical, especially when newly arrived female cons get off a prison truck and check out that fancy dame in the fur, never realizing that she's one of them. I half expected one of the women to recognize Crawford from her previous incarceration, but that did not happen. Picturing Joan as "Caged" in itself is a visual for unintentional laughs, and this film has plenty of them.

Joan Crawford left Warner Bros. with a whimper after starring in this mediocre vehicle about a jaded gangster's girl (quickly losing her sight!) who flirts with going straight after falling for her ever-patient eye surgeon. It might not be such a bad idea: the Feds are hot on her trail, as is a private detective who'd like a little inside action. Scattered screenplay, adapted from Bernard Girard's short story, tailored as a showcase for its leading lady, who gets to show both her tough side as well as her withering, womanly glow. Tolerable up to a point, the picture makes too many sentimental side-trips, and Crawford's character ends up not making a whole lot of sense (she also spends a great deal of time waiting in the car). Production values up to par, but this hoary material is second-rate. ** from ****

If it's true that JOAN CRAWFORD called this one of her "worst" films, then she is just as bad as judging her own work as Bette Davis was. Bette thought so little of "It's Love I'm After" which everyone thinks is one of the best screwball comedies of the '30s, starring Bette, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland.If THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS sounds like a lurid melodrama, it is. But it's got a lot of good things going for it. First of all, the characters are an interesting bunch--including the two rough and tough Jackson brothers (DAVID BRIAN and PHILIP CAREY), DENNIS MORGAN sincere in one of his better dramatic roles as an eye specialist who treats Crawford and eventually falls in love with her, and a plot that keeps you wondering how the whole affair is going to turn out because Brian's character is such a hot-headed guy with a gun.Also, it never becomes sappy in the romance department nor does it have the soap opera flavor of many a Joan Crawford film. Instead, it's got an almost film noir quality about the sharp B&W photography, a good score, and other technical qualities that raise it above the norm for what looks like a low-budget Warner film. But the plot has enough interesting moments to keep viewers watching until the final shootout in a hospital while a surgery is being performed.David Brian seems to be relishing his tough guy role (which seldom varied during his stay at Warner Bros.), and Joan Crawford gets a chance to play out all her anxieties and frustrations with her customary skill. Her career at Warners was just about to come to an end because she was dissatisfied with the scripts she'd been given after making such a strong showing during her first few years with the studio.A good, steamy melodrama that manages to overcome the improbable story line by being directed in brisk, no nonsense style by Felix Feist, who knew how to keep the pace tight as the story builds toward a climax.