So bad It's Bad confirmed

Whether it’s so bad it’s good or so bad you watch it in genuine awe, “Body of Evidence” is a movie so bad it makes “Basic Instinct”, which it constantly apes, look like a masterwork. Meant to show that Madonna has range, not only does she not, but the film is a joke. Beginning with two characters making a sex tape, the camera then pans over to the night table, where we see a set of jumper cables. It only gets more laughable from there.


Madonna is one of those two people, playing Rebecca Carlson, a supposedly grieving mistress of the other, who died due to a heart condition. Willem Dafoe plays her attorney Frank Dulaney, called into action when she’s arrested because it turns out she has a history of rough sex with men who have heart conditions. Mirroring Madonna’s career, all the buttoned up conservatives who can’t stand that Rebecca is sexually adventurous come out of the woodwork, from the prosecutor (Joe Mantegna) and the deceased’s shady secretary (Anne Archer), to prove her guilt. Frank, meanwhile, doesn’t just believe her innocence but he also finds himself drawn into her web of kink.


Their sex scenes, which take place in rooms with flowing drapes and ready access to hot candle wax, and in parking garages on top of broken glass, have all the eroticism and passion of a kid setting ants on fire with a magnifying glass. Both actors muddle through sadism with nonplussed looks on their faces. A lot of the blame goes to Madonna, who conveys none of this character’s seductiveness and she keeps anything even remotely telling about this character so close to the vest that all we really see is emptiness there. Why care about the courtroom scenes, filmed in terribly dreary light and giving everyone from the prosecutor to the judge such cliched reactions and lines, when there’s really no reason to care about the woman on trial? A better question is how did they manage to turn a film where Madonna gets naked into such a sexless dud?