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If Looks Could Kill (film)

1991 film by William Dear

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 1, 2026
Entity authorityQ1812211
Source-derived summary

If Looks Could Kill is a 1991 American action comedy film directed by William Dear from a screenplay by Darren Star and a story by Fred Dekker. It stars Richard Grieco as a high school student who is mistaken for an agent and people try to kill him. It also stars Linda Hunt, Roger Rees, Robin Bartlett, and Gabrielle Anwar.

The film was theatrically released in the United States on March 15, 1991, by Warner Bros. It received mixed reviews from critics and was a box-office bomb, grossing only $7.7 million against a $12 million budget. It garnered three Saturn Award nominations: Best Fantasy Film, Best Director for Dear, and Best Supporting Actress for Bartlett.

Plot

Eighteen-year-old Michael Corben of Detroit, Michigan, is a handsome underachiever slacker. Rather than attending his high school French class, he spends all of his time drinking and partying, until graduation arrives, when all of his debauchery catches up to him and he learns that he cannot graduate without a French credit. He has only one more chance to obtain the credit: the French teacher, Mrs. Grober, and the French Club are headed to France for summer school, and Michael must accompany them and participate if he wants to graduate that year.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “If Looks Could Kill (film)” is 1991 film by William Dear. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Looks, Could and Kill, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1991—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1991-03-15, 1991-07-04—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Looks, Could and Kill is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1991 film by William Dear” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1812211. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “If Looks Could Kill (film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow If Looks Could Kill (film) primary sources, If Looks Could Kill (film) archive and Looks research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “If Looks Could Kill (film)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from If Looks Could Kill (film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.