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Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

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.

In "This Woman Is Dangerous", the female leader of a criminal gang finds that her life changes dramatically when she experiences problems with her eyesight and has to have a risky operation in order to avoid the prospect of going blind. Violence, romance and the need to be economical with the truth, all play their parts in the melodramatic events that follow as this tough woman has to come to terms with situations which make her feel uncomfortably vulnerable.Beth Austin (Joan Crawford) masterminds a successful casino robbery in New Orleans in which her gang members pose as police officers who are raiding the premises and immediately after, has to go to Indianapolis for emergency surgery to save her eyesight. She leaves behind her extremely jealous lover Matt Jackson (David Brian) and tells him to keep a low profile until she returns. After undergoing surgery, Beth and her surgeon, Dr Ben Halleck (Dennis Morgan) fall in love and this creates some difficulties as Beth doesn't want Ben to know about her shady past and also knows that if she's totally open about her feelings, she'll effectively be putting his life in danger.Predictably, the fiercely violent Matt is unable to keep out of trouble and after an argument with his equally volatile brother and fellow gang member Will (Philip Carey), provokes an incident which culminates in him shooting a state trooper. When Beth's absence is extended longer than originally planned because she needs to stay in Indianapolis for tests after her operation, Matt gets increasingly impatient and hires a private detective to find out what's going on.Beth then has to steer a complicated course as she feels some loyalty to Matt but also has strong feelings for Ben. The fact that there's also an FBI agent and Matt's private detective monitoring her actions poses additional threats and inevitably, it isn't long before matters are brought to an extremely violent conclusion.There's a great deal of tough talking and some sudden outbursts of violence in the scenes where members of the gang are involved and this contrasts dramatically with the scenes in which Ben is present. He represents a different and more civilised lifestyle to that which Beth had been used to in the past.Joan Crawford's performance varies from subtle to over-the-top but overall, she perfectly meets the demands of her role which is the main focus of the whole story. David Brian makes a strong impression as the hot-headed Matt and Philip Carey provides good support as the not-very-bright Will, who likes to stir up arguments and get into fights."This Woman Is Dangerous" comprises an unusual mixture of violence and romance as well as toughness and vulnerability in a crime drama that features some marvellous cinematography by Ted McCord.

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.