Pauline Kael

"Bette Davis is such an eerie stimulant in this movie that you can see why some people loved her and others hated her, while still others were split. This is the mawkish, trashy movie for which she won her first Academy Award; the award was generally considered to be belated recognition of her work the year before in Of Human Bondage, but terrible as Dangerous is, she hypes it with an intensity that frequently makes you sit up and stare. She plays Joyce Heath, a self-destructive, hard-drinking actress (possibly modeled on Jeanne Eagels) who is convinced that she jinxes the people she gets involved with. Davis is remarkable in her gone-to-the-dogs barroom scene, and she can be tough and surly, as in her scene with Alison Skipworth ("I don't want any of your greasy food; give me a drink"), but nobody could do much wiht the sequences in which she's required to renounce her true love, an architect (Franchot Tone), and sacrifice herself to the mealy-mouthed husband (John Eldredge) who is crippled for life as a result of her enraged, suicidal driving...."

Pauline Kael
5001 Nights at the Movies (1982), p. 133