La intrigante

Strictly B stuff which Crawford considered her worst movie, conveniently forgetting the atrocious "Ice Follies of 1939". Her part is something she could play in her sleep, a tough dame who finds herself in a tight spot.

The thing is that even though Joan is elegantly gowned her surroundings are unquestionably cheap-jack something she sensed did not bode well for her future at Warners, she negotiated her exit and this was her last film for them. It's not just that the sets are low rent, the script is far below the high standard she was being offered just a year before.

That's not to say it's not entertaining in a sensationalistic way but certainly nowhere near her best films.

Joan Crawford's only reason for making "This Woman Is Dangerous," (a script that she thought was terrible) was that it would complete her contract to Warner Brothers Studios and she would then be free to go over to RKO and begin production on "Sudden Fear," (which would earn her an Academy Award nomination).

This Woman Is Dangerous marks Warner Brothers termination of the contracts of Joan Crawford and Dennis Morgan. It's a potboiler of a story at best made a lot better by the A list cast.

Joan's a woman of some class who's hooked up with gangster brothers David Brian and Philip Carey and Carey's wife Mari Aldon. After successfully pulling off a heist at a gambling casino, Joan consults a doctor about some vision problems she's having and discovers she's going blind. A really delicate operation is needed and Dr. Dennis Morgan is the guy to do it. So Joan drops out of the gang to go east to Indiana and the hospital Morgan is affiliated with.

While she's repairing her vision, Brian does something really stupid and makes the gang red hot. He kills a state trooper and then in a move I cannot understand ditches the trailer camper they were traveling in with the trooper's body. Might as well have signed a confession.

But Crawford's prints are also in the trailer though the FBI knows she was in the hospital when the murder occurred. She looks like a good bet to lead the FBI to Brian and the rest reasons FBI agent Richard Webb who was also playing Captain Midnight on TV at the same time and in the same manner. So Crawford is staked out like a bird dog.

This Woman Is Dangerous would never get a notice and would be several rankings lower if it weren't for Joan Crawford and the rest of the cast.

This movie is really a star vehicle for Joan Crawford. Here she plays a "gang leader". Her henchmen are typically stupid and violent. Oddly she falls in love with a very decent doctor and the way this plays out is well done.

One especially impressive scene has her visit a woman's prison (in the company of her Doctor friend). Really nice acting job as she portrays her fear of the place (she has been in prison before one guesses) while trying to appear unconcerned. I think this movie is quite a bit better than most people give it credit for.

The woman in the title is not particularly dangerous, but she seems to be crashingly masochistic. Joan Crawford, at this point in her acting career, has been playing women with an elegant sense style who fall for the wrong men, and this time it's super-petulant David Brian, who has probably been pouting since his older sister snapped his slingshot. Early in the film, Our Joan discovers her sight is in jeopardy, and purely by accident begins to bond with her doctor, mild-mannered but sensitive Dennis Morgan, set free from Warner's musicals for a year or so; Brian soon discovers the clandestine romance, and is ready to kill someone! He loves to wave his gun around!

Although not as tightly written as this semi-noir melodrama could be, there are plenty of exciting set pieces that delight the eye and excite the intellect--all the stuff with the trailer pursued by the motorcycle copy is, while totally illogical, fascinating and beautifully filmed, and therein for me lies a major interest in this film--the superb, careful use of the camera with which Warner films could be so effective--brilliant set interiors lit perfectly, whether in the home of a sick child's poor parents, or in an operating room's audience gallery, providing a dazzling set piece finale where everybody get's involved and there's enough shattered glass to build an igloo! Cinematographer Ted McCord is the man behind the camera; he's already lensed Crawford in numerous other films, and is responsible for a rich heritage of classics from The Treasure of The Sierra Madre to The Sound of Music--a dedicated artists, McCord's work could make a meatball look like filet mignon.

A sincere dedication from dozens of Warner contract players contribute to a wide variety of locales--from hospital waiting rooms to trailer parks, prison laundry rooms to doctor's offices, and the film, I think, accurately reflects the ability of a major studio to churn out a decent film every few weeks worthy of watching. This Woman Is Dangerous is no Mildred Pierce or Humoresque, but Joan is still in top form, manages to command attention, and there are few that can suffer as bravely. Well...Kay Francis, maybe..but that's another story.....