I'm Dangerous Tonight (1990)

3 Stars (out of 4)

Chancy Dress

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

This made-for-TV movie from the late, great Tobe Hooper has been difficult to find, so it's wonderful news that Kino Lorber has released it in a deluxe Blu-ray edition, with tons of amazing extras. Loosely based on a novella by Cornell Woolrich, the movie tells the story of Amy (Mädchen Amick, who starred in Twin Peaks the same year), a beautiful but shy college student who looks after her invalid grandmother and lives with her nasty aunt. When she's invited to work behind-the-scenes on a play, she goes to an estate sale and buys a length of red fabric, which she turns it into a dress. Little does she know that the fabric was used in Aztec ceremonial sacrifices! When worn, it unleashes innermost desires and impulses. Amy wears it to a dance and wows everyone, but then her cousin (Daisy Hall) gets her hands on it, and then cocaine-using Wanda Thatcher (Dee Wallace), who works in a mortuary, finds it and all hell breaks loose. None other than Anthony Perkins plays a professor who seems a little too interested in Amy and the dress, and R. Lee Ermey plays a police lieutenant who rudely smokes in the school cafeteria and interrupts Amy's lunch. Admittedly, this has little of Hooper's usual style, but it's still a decent effort for a TV movie, brisk and entertaining and with enough odd (or silly) touches to make it stand out.

Bonuses include two new audio commentary tracks, one with Kristopher Woofter and Will Dodson (editors of American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper), and one with filmmaker/historian Michael Varrati, which is a lot of information for a movie that has mostly been swept under the rug. We also get interviews with Wallace cinematographer Levie Isaacks, a making-of featurette, and a video essay. Recommended.