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Bad Karma (2002) Set in Rhode Island but shot in Ireland, this adaptation of a Douglas
Clegg novel is a faintly nasty reprise of the familiar Psycho Bitch
From Hell sub-genre, with reincarnation and Jack the Ripper footnotes.
It opens with siliconed naked schoolgirl Maureen kidnapped and tortured
by a garage mechanic (Damien Chapa) who wants to force her to remember
earlier incarnations - he was one of the prostitute victims of Jack
the Ripper and she was the famous murderer's accomplice. After seducing
and murdering the psycho, the girl goes free only to turn up after extensive
plastic surgery (and now played by Patsy Kensit) as Agnes, a serial
killer in the care of overworked psychiatrist Dr Trey Campbell (Patrick
Muldoon). As the hero takes his wife (Amy Locane) and child (Aimee O'Sullivan)
for a vacation to revive a collapsing marriage, Maureen / Agnes seduces
his replacement and escapes from the institution, intent on forcing
Campbell to remember his own previous life, in which he was a mustachioed
Ripper. It turns out that in 1888, Agnes's earlier incarnation impulsively
burned her psycho lover to death in a furnace he was using to hide from
the police because she had found a picture in a locket which suggested
he was unfaithful to her only to learn (in one of the oldest tricks
in the book) that the woman in the picture was his sister. The plausible
blonde maniac kills a few people and worms her way into the lives of
the wife and child as the hero runs about coping with the escape. Veteran
horror director John Hough stages a few creepy moments with sudden Kensit
appearances only to fumble the gorier or would-be suspenseful sequences. First published in this form here. Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com
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