Michael_Elliott This Woman is Dangerous (1952) ** 1/2 (out of 4)Criminal Elizabeth Austin (Joan Crawford) learns that she could end up going blind so she tells her gangster boyfriend (David Brian) that she has to go away for a while. Once away at the hospital Elizabeth starts to have feelings for her doctor (Dennis Morgan) and before long the gangster shows up. THIS WOMAN IS DANGEROUS is a pretty generic and silly title and I'd say the film is just a bit too predictable and slow to really work. While there are a few interesting moments throughout, there's no question that this material is certainly "B" level stuff and not even Crawford can really bring any class to it. Crawford would eventually call this the worst picture she ever did but I wouldn't go that far. There are a couple good moments scattered throughout and this includes the performance of Brian who is clearly the best thing about the picture. He appeared in a couple films with Crawford and I thought he proved himself to be a quite capable actor. I thought he was extremely believable as the gangster and I really thought he was good as being cold-blooded. I also thought Morgan was good in his role, although there's no question that the screenplay doesn't do much for him. As for Crawford, she's good yet again but at the same time there's no question that this material is quite up to her standards. I think she knew that too and that's why she's not as strong as you typically see her. I think one of the biggest problems with the film is its love story. Not for a second do you really believe what you're seeing and in all reality you don't even care. At 100-minutes the film has a few too many slow spots and too many sections that just drag. The film is mildly entertaining but there are certainly much better out there of its type.

blanche-2 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.

bkoganbing 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.

Greg Couture When I was still wet behind the ears, as they say, a preview of this film was shown at a theater in Boston, Massachusetts, whose main attraction was somewhat more suitable for a child of my tender sensibilities. I can remember being genuinely frightened by the rapid glimpses of scenes strung together to lure audiences in for the upcoming engagement of this film, and I recall also being tremendously offput, in those brief snippets from this production, by the complete lack of warm femininity of its leading character, as embodied by the iron-clad Miss Crawford.Many years later a TV broadcast compelled me to find out why those few minutes of advertising had so memorably etched themselves onto my memory. Warner Brothers' hard-bitten melodramas of that part of the adult world which I shall always be grateful were never anything I've directly experienced were not a part of my preferred cinema-going experience, though this one is a mostly very professional example of their slick manufacture. Crawford, exhibiting her masklike visage at its most grim, is one dame with whom any but the most brutal men would want to tangle and the title says it all, in my opinion. About the time I saw it on TV I met a gentleman who had been directly employed by Ms. Crawford in doing some personal publicity for her. He was outraged by Christina Crawford's then popular best-seller "Mommie Dearest" and claimed that his own impression of that ruthlessly self-made star was not at all congruent with Christina's nightmarish experience of her. I saw no point in revealing that I had never been able to warm to Joan and found the male-protest kinds of parts in which she specialized seemed exactly suited to how I might agree with all that Christina revealed in her memoir.There's a possible little blooper in this film: If I'm not mistaken Joan and Dennis Morgan are seen getting into what looks like a Cadillac in a parking garage but later in the same sequence are shown pulling into the driveway of a women's prison in a product of the Ford Motor Company's Lincoln division. Oops!