This Woman Is Dangerous

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).

Like others on this board, I'm surprised that Joan Crawford would call "This Woman is Dangerous" her worst film. This from the woman who made Straitjacket, Berserk, and Trog?

"This Woman is Dangerous" was Crawford's last film at Warners, and perhaps she felt like she was headed downhill at Warners the way she had headed downhill at MGM. By then she was used to seeing the signs. But for the viewer, on the surface, at least, the movie is serviceable. Crawford stars as Beth Austin, a gangsteress with vision problems and a jealous boyfriend, Matt Jackson (David Brian). She goes to Indiana to have a special operation by a known surgeon, Dr. Halleck (Dennis Morgan), and the two develop feelings for one another. Knowing the good doctor's fate at the hands of her beau if she gives in, Beth resists his advances.

The film is a strange mix of romance and film noir, but the tension is always there. Phil Carey plays Brian's brother, and the two have a volatile relationship; Matt is always sure Beth has run off with another guy; the police are looking for Beth.

Pretty good, though it drags a bit.

This was Joan Crawford's final film under her Warner Brothers contract. She hated the film, but accepted it anyway to complete her agreement with the studio. It is not as bad as everyone thinks it is, but it is odd to see Joan as a lady gangster, going blind, and finding true love with the surgeon (Dennis Morgan) who restores her sight.

I recorded this 1952 Joan Crawford movie because 1) I like Joan Crawford's Warner Brothers era and 2) I liked the title. After seeing this film, I think that they overstated how dangerous Crawford's character was. She is not dangerous at all. It's as if "Mildred Pierce" decided to join a crime syndicate to help recoup lost profits after the failure of her restaurant chain. Crawford plays the same type of strong woman facing hard times that she often plays.

In this film, Crawford plays Beth Austin, the head of the gang of criminals who pull off heists in high class locales. Crawford's character was specifically recruited for her class as she could get the gang into nicer locations and provide a believable front. The gang pulls off a casino heist by impersonating police officers and make off with $90,000. Crawford is also dating one of the gangsters, a man named Matt who will kill without giving it a second thought. The conflict in this film is that Crawford is losing her eyesight and must undergo surgery to try and reverse her declining eyesight before she is blind entirely. Her doctor refers her to Dr. Ben Halleck, portrayed by Dennis Morgan. Morgan is reluctant to perform the surgery, as it is experimental, but Crawford pressures him to do so, figuring that she doesn't have much to lose.

At this point in the film, the movie kind of switches gears from a noir to more of a melodrama. As Crawford works to recover from the operation, she and Morgan begin to fall in love. Crawford accompanies Morgan on a few "house calls" where she sees the empathy and kindness that he displays toward his patients and their families. She also has dinner at Morgan's home one night where she meets his adorable daughter and seems to instantly bond with her.

The tension throughout this segment of the film is whether or not Morgan will find out about Crawford's past. The FBI is on her trail as is the private detective that her boyfriend hires to keep tabs on Crawford to see if there is more going on between her and Morgan, aside from her convalescence.

This film was okay, Crawford was fine in her part and Morgan turned in the same type of dependable performance that he usually does. However, this film couldn't decide whether or not it wanted to be a noir or a melodrama, and it wasn't captivating enough to be a melodramatic noir like Mildred Pierce. While I didn't hate it, I don't think I'll need to watch this film over and over. Crawford called this her worst film. I think she has worse films out there, Ice Follies of 1939 comes to mind, but this definitely isn't among her best.

Not one of director Feist's best, but still decent. He seems to be most comfortable in a tight 60 to 70 minute format, but this one is considerably longer and tends to drag. He's never entirely in control of the mostly maudlin storyline, and never really clinches the romance between Joan Crawford's gangster moll and Dennis Morgan's benevolent eye surgeon. The movie has a hamstrung feeling, as if Feist wasn't allowed to turn loose and be as reckless as he'd like. There are stretches where it's just too stiff and well behaved.

There are some things to like about it however. David Brian is another one of Feist's single-mindedly brutal thugs to rival Lawrence Tierney in the director's earlier "The Devil Thumbs A Ride" and Charles McGraw in "The Threat" for pure undiluted nastiness. His obsessive, murderous, almost infant-like attachment to Crawford is rather disturbing. Along with brother Philip Carey (a brooding, troubling presence throughout) the Jackson brothers certainly make for a memorable pair of crooks.

Also liked the moments just after Crawford undergoes the risky operation to save her eyesight. Feist creates a rather lush feeling of disorientation here and at one point Crawford, whose eyes have been bandaged for some time, makes a perceptive comment to the effect that drifting in the dark for so long has its advantages, that one feels completely cut off from reality and all its concerns.

There's a fresh, exciting scene involving a liquor bottle ill-advisedly thrown through a speeding camper's window and the highway patrol cop it almost strikes (Feist seems to like images of roads and highways just as much as David Lynch) and Brian's fanatic last stand, symbolically taking place in a hospital operating room where Morgan is presumably performing surgery on someone to help them ... see better.