source: I'm Dangerous Tonight

The stage curtains open ... Even by "made-for-tv" standards, this one was pretty bad. I just don't understand it. All the elements for something special were there. It was directed by Tobe Hooper. It starred some pretty big names from that time with Anthony Perkins, Dee Wallace Stone, R. Lee Ermey, and a young and beautiful, Mädchen Amick. It had a good story with a fun premise - but unfortunately, this one fell completely flat. It almost seemed like everyone involved with the project just gave it lip service at best. Amy (Amick) is a college student who is charged with acquiring props for a school stage play, and finds an old trunk at a yard sale for a steal at only $7.50. Inside the trunk is an eye catching, red satin cloak. It doesn't take long for this cloak to make its presence felt - immediately turning the disposition of its wearer sour and evil. Taken with how beautiful it is, Amy decides to turn it into a dress ... and then the real fun begins. Soon, bodies start turning up, and the red dress is somehow always involved. Amy is warned by a local professor (Perkins) of the power that the red cloth wields, as he knows where it came from and has been searching for it. After she believes the dress to have been destroyed, it turns up yet again forcing her into a "do or die" situation. The previews and trailers I've seen for this movie made it look like it was going to be good. Heck - even the poster for it made it look ten times better than it actually was. This film was such a huge letdown with god awful performances, directing, and editing. There was one scene where Amy witnesses the death of someone in an explosion ... and then in the very next scene, she is nonchalantly out for a morning run like nothing had happened. This movie was such a mess and all over the place. It did have its moments however, and that is why I was able to give it the paytry 2 star rating instead of the absolute worst 1 star. Mädchen Amick was very sweet and likeable in her role as the good-hearted Amy, who looked after her ailing grandmother and was always willing to help others. She had good intentions, and was the face of "good" in this good versus evil plot. Despite her charm though, it wasn't enough to lift this film to anything worth watching, let alone remembering. If you don't care how you burn a couple of hours, then watch it - you might enjoy it. It just wasn't for me.

This film looks good on paper. It's directed by Tobe Hooper (Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and features a number of good actors, old and young. Mädchen Amick in the lead role provides an outstanding performance. In fact, there's no bad acting in this film. Unfortunately, the old actors in this film are wasted. Anthony Perkins was not given a chance to be interesting. He is a fairly one dimensional professor character who seems to exist only to be inserted into the film here and there to explain the supernatural background of the story. He should have been given a better script. R. Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket) is always good to watch, but the script makes his police detective character a walking cliché (and the script makes him jump to the correct conclusions implausibly quickly). If you're a fan of Gilligan's Island, you also have ~90 year old Natalie Schafer (Mrs. Howell) in her final role. However, she is given almost nothing to do at all. In this film, it seems like all the good lines are given to the younger actors. I particularly liked Daisy Hall (an actress who seems to have completely disappeared) as cousin Gloria. She plays some very effective horror scenes with gusto (if she hadn't stopped acting, Daisy Hall would have been a good horror queen). Only in Daisy Hall's scenes, did I see real flashes of Tobe Hooper's genius (although the earliest scenes in the film, with a coffin, were pretty good too). After a perfectly okay beginning and middle, the latter part of this film was pretty disappointing because the script began to get silly. This film is not a bad way to pass the time, but it's not the best of Tobe Hooper's work.

OK, to explain how hokey this film is, I've got to include a couple of **spoilers**. When our heroine goes home to her obviously sleazy aunt, who tells her there's no money left in her dead parents' estate, and then tells her to sew a new dress for her in two days - the story was done much better in Cinderella. You just know she's gonna wreak awful vengeance on her evil relatives, as soon as the red cloak takes over. Note to director: this was done much better by Jim Carrey in "Mask". And the "red cloak". A cheesy piece of red rayon, supposedly used by Inca priests? With great magical powers? Where'd they get this prop? Salvation Army? There were some fine actors, eg, Madchen Amick and Anthony Perkins, doing their best with this, and the opening scene wasn't too bad. But, much as I wanted to find good things about this film, it was really disappointing. I gave it a 1.

Amy, a college psych student comes across a red garment in a chest she just bought to use in a play. She keeps it and makes it into a party dress. However the first time she puts it on, it influences her and changes the way she acts. By bringing out her darker side. Soon everyone seems to want a piece of this garment. From her college professor she finds out it's an Aztec cloak that was used in sacrificial ceremonies. I'll go to say that I never even heard of this Tobe Hooper supernatural thriller opus. Striking and strange, but the one-idea premise and languidly cut n' dry script doesn't really build upon its interesting background and teetering imagination enough. Maybe this is due to its restrictions of being a cheaply produced made-for-TV production, but I seem to doubt it as it could be associated to material being adapted from a short story. On the other hand it's probably best to not really delve deep into it though, because of uneven logic and it borderlines on tacky. The plot does have a 'Cinderella' touch to it, and seems to have that everything, but the kitchen sink drama quality to it. All the characters that come and go are stereotypically painted, but the performers were better than the material. The gorgeously fixating Madchen Amick confidently grows from her sweet performance as Amy. Anthony Perkins keeps it professional and likes to just pop up randomly as the suspicious college professor. Dee Wallace Stone is great in her minor role that reeks of attitude. R. Lee Ermey in a small role engages with his sombre detective. Corey Parker makes for a likable love-interest for Amick. Also appearing are Natalie Schaffer, William Berger and Jack McGee. You can really see Hooper's able illustrative style shining through this work. He subtly mixes the eerie violence together with sexual seductiveness. Sure it can become silly and lousy with its jolts, but still it stays dangerously ominous and tautly handled with its imagery. It might not have the biting flair of some his previous early work ('The Texas Chainsaw Massacre', 'Eaten Alive' and 'The Funhouse') though. He milks it out slowly, letting the atmosphere unfold and the possessive force evolve. For a TV production the film is smoothly shot, very well lit and effectively scored. A modest TV feature, which has some obvious and stodgy patterns.

Tobe Hooper is one of my favorite filmmakers. Even though his track record of churning out great movies is definitely uneven, there's always something about his films, good or bad, that I like. The quirkiness of his characters, the wild situations, or his style of direction. Unfortunately, I'M DANGEROUS TONIGHT has NONE of these Tobe Hooper qualities. It's totally bland and pretty much forgettable. And in my book, this, along with CROCODILE, is probably his worst movie ever. The idea for the story is great and had so much potential but once the fabric is turned into a dress, the story goes nowhere...fast. There's almost no violence in it. The only scene with any interesting action occurs when the woman freaks out and strangles her boyfriend. Anthony Perkins' character is totally useless. He was hired just so they can have his name on the video box. And the scenes with Natalie Schafer are very difficult to watch because it's so sad to see her in such a terrible state. Mädchen Amick is the only interesting actor in this unremarkable "horror" movie, but even her character is bland and wimpy. Even Tobe Hooper completists shouldn't bother watching this.

Long have I been an Anthony Perkins fan, so I looked forward to seeing this movie when it came on the television in a recent horror-thon. I was left disappointed with his role, but intrigued by the writing and cinematography of the rest. Horror is typically a slice 'em and dice 'em film fest where the viewer doesn't care who lives and who dies as long as the movie ends. "I'm Dangerous Tonight" supplied little in the way of well-known talent, but show-cased some unknown actors that did fairly well despite small, insignificant roles. Dee Wallace Stone had great on-screen charisma in this movie as a woman possessed, proving once again that she is truly the queen of the low-grade horror films. Peter Brooks was mismatched in his role as self-centered football legend; he would have made a better Joker-wannabe in some "Batman" remake. Mädchen Amick, who lost a lot of brownie points when she broke into soft erotica a few years ago, is both innocent and refreshing in her role as Amy, and plays well off of her on-screen love Corey Parker, despite a script which is noticeably weak and shaky. The flaws with this movie remain mostly in the lack of real characterization, and cheap theatrics. A horror movie is supposed to be either so real it scares you to death, or so cheesy you can barely stop laughing. "I'm Dangerous Tonight" manages to fall short in both categories, merely leaving you scratching your head and going, "Huh?" The script bandies around some heavy terms, but doesn't bother to explain them properly, and it's easy to leave the viewers scrambling for a dictionary to figure out what is going on. All in all, the movie rates a 7 on a scale of "good movie VS. bad movie", but only 3 on the scale of "good horror VS. bad horror". Tobe Hooper has directed a number of excellent horrific films and shorts throughout the years, but "I'm Dangerous Tonight" (as well as the 1993 TV horror "Body Bags") is definitely not one of his better endeavors.

I'm Dangerous Tonight is a functional piece of entertainment. Being a made for TV movie it is kind of bland and toothless. The blurb on the back on the case made me think it would primarily involve the Madchen Amick possessed by the evil dress for the course of the movie, sort of slowly turning her evil, kind of like Christine but with a dress instead of car. It doesn't quite work like that with the dress being worn or possessed by various different people throughout the film and turning evil to varying extents. The central premise of a dress, or a cloth that eventually gets turned into a dress, that turns those who wear it evil is one of those silly concepts that could provide cheesy entertainment and would require some really good scripting to work as a genuinely good film. I'm Dangerous Tonight does kind of try but ultimately does not succeed. There is some claptrap that is never really explored about inanimate objects being mystical focuses of belief and power, which is thrown in as an explanation for the Aztec cloak/dresses' power, which is quite forgettable. It does seem an enormous coincidence that the girl who comes into possession of the dress (No pun intended) just happens to be studying this very esoteric and specialised topic as part of her college course. There is also some stuff about the dress affecting different people in different ways, depending of their existing strength of character and their psychology etc. It isn't delved into very much, other than as an explanation as to why some people seem to turn more evil than others, but it is a fairly interesting plot idea. As it is the concept of a random object or artifact which turns people around it evil or makes weird stuff happen has been done a few times by now- I'm looking in your direction Amityville sequels. What we do get on screen is okay but nothing to write home about. Tobe 'One Trick Pony' Hooper rattles through the proceedings with a predictable lack of flair. Madchen Amick is easy to watch, especially in the red dress, and Anthony Perkins provides the best entertainment in the movie with his giggle inducing scenery chewing. His histrionics and overacting are b-movie gold. By this point in this sad and sagging career it looks like he was just having fun. R. Lee Ermey has a small but amusing role as a gruff detective. There are quite a few plot contrivances and some scenes toward the end which are very choppily handled. There is one part where our heroine wakes up after being rendered unconscious to find the situation has changed in a way that doesn't make in sense in terms of plot logic or pacing. There is also a lame twist ending that everyone will see coming from miles away. Bland, as one would expect for a made for TV movie but there is enough to at least hold your interest.

This is an unanticipatedly imaginative TV terror movie revision of Cinderella, all the more effective for being guided by the same directorial hand that gave us the unrelenting physical horrors of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre' and 'Eaten Alive' in his 70s heyday. Amick (of Twin Peaks domestic violence 'Shelley' fame), in a standout performance is the lowly collegiate struggling to juggle her studies with the demands of caring for both her home and her decrepit grandmother, whilst her Aunt and cousin live it up night after night. Cue a reversal of fortune when she lands the job of props mistress in a production of 'Romeo and Juliet' and falls under the spell of a sensuous red cloth which, as spooky professor Perkins points out, is an original Aztec witchcraft cloak; and which she transforms into a dress, with murderous results. Clearly a waste of time for the underwritten Perkins and sad to see such a talented and perennially underused actor ill and jaded in a career on the wane, although far worse was yet to come (ie 'In The Deep Woods'). The film is also bereft of the sort of shock value that one would need to swallow the tall tale being presented at face value. Still, it does sort of work on a surprisingly engrossing level of creepy subtleness, and this is aided by a slinky visual quality and the billowing symbolism of the red dress; captured on film stock in what must have been one of the very last TV movies to be shot this way.

"I'm Dangerous Tonight" disappoints mainly in the plot department. Once you've realized the basic concept, the script looks one-note and unsurprising. But, judged by TV-movie standards, this thriller is surprisingly violent and sexually charged. Director Hooper brings some peculiar, kinky undertones to the material, playing with the role-reversal of the concept; there is a definite link between erotic tension and violence here. As you may have guessed, Perkins doesn't play the villain here. He is pretty much wasted in a small supporting role, but he manages to give a classy performance. Amick is the lead here, and she's striking.