I’m Dangerous Tonight | Blu-ray Review
Mädchen Amick in I’m Dangerous Tonight
Dead Threads: Hooper Gets All Dressed Up with Nowhere to Go in Forgotten TV Film
By Nicholas Bell | Published on August 23, 2022
The ever quotable Coco Chanel once said, “The best color in the whole world is the one that looks good on you.” In the 1990 television film I’m Dangerous Tonight, it turns out this color is evil incarnate, at least according to a cursed incarnadine garment which brings out the repressed nastiness of whoever decides to wear it. Considering the pedigree of the talent in front of and behind the camera, how it’s so formidably obscured can perhaps be remedied by its refreshed availability. A silly but entertaining little jewel from Tobe Hooper’s underrated filmography, eclipsed like many of his films by the iconicity of his The Texas Chainsaw Massacre films and Poltergeist, it premiered the same year as another forgotten theatrical feature of his, the Brad Dourif-led Spontaneous Combustion, and so began an underwhelming decade for Hooper, which would included Night Terrors (1993), The Mangler (1995), ending the decade with another forgotten television film, The Apartment Complex (1999). But considering the cast of genre greats Hooper assembled in this adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich short story (the noir author whose works inspired classics like Phantom Lady, Rear Window, and The Bride Wore Black), there’s a lot to enjoy in retrospect from this somewhat sanitized psychological thriller.
Madchen Amick (whose name means ‘girl friend’ in German), fresh off Lynch’s Twin Peaks, is the transfixing Amy (another name meaning ‘friend’), an innocent young woman whose recent orphanhood has landed her at the home of an alcoholic aunt (Mary Frann of Newhart), and her horny cousin, Gloria (Daisy Hall). Unfortunately for Amy, just as she’s paired up with Eddie (Corey Parker), a handsome student in her drama class starring as Mercutio in their production of Romeo and Juliet, she unwittingly inherits a cursed red dress at an estate sale for the deceased Professor Wilson (William Berger), which accompanied a sacrificial altar he’d recently acquired by the university. Anyone wearing the garment acts out repressed inhibitions, and when the virginal Amy dons the dress, she becomes a dangerous siren.
The problem with I’m Dangerous Tonight is not so much it feels like a television film but how it’s a rather declawed endeavor which feels a bit like one of Woolrich’s less sensational stories, like fodder for a thirty minute episode in a genre series like Tales from the Crypt or The Twilight Zone. It’s rife with familiarities, as well. The cursed dress angle requires something a bit more outlandish in its travels (like Peter Strickland’s In Fabric, 2018), but this ripped from a cursed sacrificial altar bit already felt derivative by 1990 (and continues to be revisited, as shades of this are evident in this year’s The Lost City, which also features a dress obliquely defining its main character). Garage sale transmission (Ole Bornedal’s Possession, 2012 comes to mind), where one man’s junk is another man’s curse kinda deal, is also a bit of old hat convenience. But once we slide past these necessary narrative evils, Hooper’s ensemble takes off effectively, especially with many of its actors cast against type. While Amick would present better versions of the imperiled ingenue (Sleepwalkers, 1993), Anthony Perkins, of all people, is on-hand as a professorial helpmate, while R. Lee Ermey is a gruff but satisfactory detective. Natalie Schaefer (aka Mrs. Lovey Howell of Gilligan’s Island) would make her final film appearance as a mute grandmother without any dialogue--a cliche as old as genre itself, in the vein of Euguenie Leontovich in William Castle’s Homicidal (1961) or Barbara Steele in Ryan Gosling’s Lost River (2014). But the real treat is Dee Wallace as Wanda, a murderous prostitute who really gets to chew up the scenery.
Disc Review:
Kino Lorber presents I’m Dangerous Tonight with a brand new 2K master in 1.33:1. Picture and sound quality are enhanced enough to suggest Hooper’s title could have easily been a theatrical rather than televised release. Several optional commentary tracks are available, including with Kristopher Woofter and Will Dodson (editors of American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper) and a behind-the-scenes making of feature with commentary from videographer Stan Giesea. Dee Wallace and DP Levie Isaacks are also featured in separate interview features.
★★★☆☆ (Movie)
★★★☆☆ (Disc)