Bad Karma (2002)

This is one of those sorry little efforts in which everyone – from minor characters right up to the director – is clearly just going through the motions, working for their pay-packet and nothing else. The director is John Hough, a veteran who, although something of a journeyman, has some good efforts under his belt (TWINS OF EVIL, DIRTY MARY, CRAZY LARRY) so he really has no excuse for producing such a shoddy piece of work. And as for the editing, well, IMDb doesn't even list an editor amongst the crew, which probably tells you all you need to know. I can only think that Hough is either very brave or very foolish to refrain from adding another dud to Alan Smithee's ever-growing CV with this one.   The story opens ten years in the past. A garage attendant, after spying on a naked teenage schoolgirl in the garage's washroom, abducts her. After stripping and tying her to a bed, he attaches electrodes to her wrists and proceeds to torture her. Now if this girl's acting was half as hot as her body, her mantelpiece would be groaning under the weight of her Oscars – and if her body was as lousy as her acting this would be a horror to put all those 70s Italian cannibal flicks in the shade. With God knows how many volts zipping through her body, our naked teen merely winces, says ow, and fetchingly jiggles her boobs. This girl, however – who also appears to be mysteriously absent from the credits – is merely setting the standard that the rest of the cast will follow throughout the movie – although it has to be said that Patsy Kensit is marginally less bad than the others (and when Patsy Kensit is the best thing about a movie, you know it's in trouble…).Anyway, the reason the poor lass has been abducted is that, in a past life, she was Jack the Ripper's squeeze, helping him to find and disembowel cockney prostitutes, and the garage attendant was one of their female victims. Now he has found her in modern-day America – which is easier to believe than is the fact that the makers actually found financing for this barmy flick – and is electrocuting her in order to retrieve her memory of her previous life before he kills her. Our wronged former streetwalker just can't resist sampling the morsel on his bed, however, which of course leads to his/her undoing: the young girl frees one wrist, unscrews the strut of the bed's headboard, magically frees her other hand and whacks the slobbering pump attendant over the noggin before then apparently retying her wrist so that she can then untie it all over again.And, believe me, thanks to the copious female nudity this is the best bit of the movie (sorry, ladies).There is a kind of trashy appeal to some of these sex and gore flicks – this one's a little like something a mediocre student of Michael Winner's might make if the old boy had turned to teaching movie-making instead of appearing in insurance adverts on TV – but the repeated lapses in logic and continuity, coupled with the bad acting (that isn't quite bad enough to be amusing) from a cast who play it straight, and the stupid decisions made by every single character, prevent the viewer from gaining even guilty pleasure from it. Even the location grates: the movie is supposed to take place in Rhode Island, but was clearly filmed in Britain - most likely some godforsaken island off the Scottish coastline by the look of it. Anyway, the attendant's electrocution theory proves to be right on the button, as Jack's moll is restored to consciousness in the teen's body and we next see her in the present day – now in the form of Patsy Kensit – strapped to a bed in a mental hospital, and convinced that her doctor (Patrick Muldoon) is the reincarnation of Jack. Funny how all these Victorian killer types gravitate toward the States in their new lives. Naturally, it's not long before she is on the loose, killing everyone she comes across, often stabbing them repeatedly before somehow washing and repairing their clothes so that she can wear them to make her escape from the scene. There's no two ways about it: this is bad movie-making, and can serve only as a cautionary message to aspiring movie makers: this is how not to do it.

Agnes Thatcher (Patsy Kensit) is a schizophrenic patient of Dr. Trey Campbell (the horrible actor Patrick Muldoon). She believes they were lovers in a past life in London and he was Jack, the Ripper. When Dr. Campbell and his family go to some American island on vacations, Agnes escapes from the asylum and chases them. Agnes kills almost every character along this predictable and full of clichés B-movie. Unfortunately she did not kill the screenwriter, the director and the producers and this trash was released to the market, where fools like me spent time watching this crap. The plot is really ridiculous and the cast (with the exception of Patsy Kensit, who I really like) is appropriate for such a trash. All of them are ham actors and actress. One point that called my attention is their pronunciation, specially the detective and Patrick Muldoon. And I am Brazilian! I suppose that, for being an actor/actress, the person should know how to act, and this would include speech. However, in this film what we see (and hear) is exactly the opposite. Watching this crap is really a waste of time. My vote is three.

This movie is completely uninteresting. The story is transparent right from the start, the gore effects are poor, the flashbacks are unconvincing (those shiny clean 1888 London streets look exactly like the studio sets they are). Patsy Kensit fails to impress as a psycho killer; the other actors are forgettable. There is simply nothing good to be said about "Bad Karma". It represents the kind of by-the-numbers filmmaking that makes you feel depressed about the current state of low-budget horror films in general. (*)

This was great except for the plot, characters, believability, and acting. It's not the worst movie I've ever seen, but it is on the list. I'm really not sure why I didn't shut it off. Probably because the actresses were hot.