Curdled

In my opinion, this is one of the most underrated movies of the 90s, featuring one of my all-time favorite performances by the enchanting Angela Jones. It is based on a short made in 1991, about a childlike murder-obsessed Colombian-American who takes a job as a maid...who cleans up after violent murders. Apparently, Tarantino liked the short so much that he cast Jones in Pulp Fiction and produced a full length version of "Curdled" with Jones and William Baldwin (who is surprisingly great.) This is one of my favorite black comedies and easily the funniest serial killer thriller ever. Angela Jones lights up the screen with her animated facial expressions (think Audrey Tautou) and quirky delivery. Oh, and this movie features one of the best dance sequences in a movie (yes, even better than Britt Ekland's in "The Wicker Man"). The recently released DVD is a blessing and surprisingly chockful of extras (including the original short film) for a movie that is apparently so reviled. The worst thing I can say about "Curdled" is that Braddock didn't go on to make another film and Jones went on to do a freakin "Children of the Corn" sequel. Recommend to all fans of serial killer movies and dark comedies. My rating: 10/10

Tarantino presents this little gem, which he caught at an Italian genre festival while promoting Reservoir Dogs (he relates the fateful anecdote in an epilogue after the movie on video.) It shares with that director the nervy, hip black-comedy attitude, an absolute command of cinematic techniques, and a post-modern approach steeped in b-movie history. However, where QT's films (and similar triumphs like Go) are explosive, this one is insidiously subtle and dead-pan; so much so that the gradual recognition of the filmmakers' intentions will give you the shivers. The creeping revelations of the themes, the dark pastels, self-referential script and straight-faced performances are reminiscent of earlier successful dark comedies, like Parents and I, Madman. Jones (her solo dance is a knockout) and Baldwin are both dead-on, and the director and editor never miss a beat. This is one of the best films of the 90s. (by the way, did anyone notice that this film opened about the same time as Headless Body in Topless Bar? quite a coincidence.)

Gabriella (Angela Jones), a Colombian immigrant, is obsessed with understanding violent crime. The current string of murders by the Blue Blood Killer of affluent Miami socialites provides her with fodder for her scrapbook of death. She lands a job with a post-murder cleaning service and during a Blue-Blood clean-up job, discovers evidence that police have overlooked.

While this is not a perfect film, it is a fun dark comedy that should appeal to "gore hounds" and fans of Robert Rodriguez. Apparently this exists in the same universe that "From Dusk to Dawn" does, plus features Billy Baldwin as a killer. That is pretty sweet.

I would need to see this a second time to really get a handle on it, but I think I was pleasantly surprised and hope this film somehow makes a resurgence on people's to-see lists.

This is a very typical early 90's black comedy which menas that it's jarringly aware of it's own cleverness, shares the same faded primary colors as "Natural Born Killers" or "Freeway", and involves a serial killer. Frankly for anything like this to work it would need some basis in reality and the fact that William Baldwin kills women without using gloves avoiding touching things or even getting rid of his fingerprints immediately annoyed me. Nothing in this movie is real enough or gruesome enough to actually be funny or disturbing. The director poars on the stage blood but every murder is done in a clean emotionless tarantino type of way and all the crime scenes just contain neat little pool of blood. haven't they ever read that after a week you have to wear thigh length boots to prevent maggots from crawling up your legs or that you wear air masks when cleaning up these places or that most of it is done with an ultrapowful wet-dry vac? realistic details such as these would have helped this film. After reading that this was a short I could believe it because the entire film feels like it was very thinly stretched.

It's surprisingly hard to make fun about serious subjects, like murder. Curdled succeeds in it: it's a hilarious film about a girl obsessed with murder, with a nicely twisted vision of the world. Yes, it has it's faults, but there are some irresistibly funny moments in it as well.

Jones does an excellent job in this black comedy, it really is a shame we haven't heard more of her. Even Baldwin fits in his role! The soundtrack is spicy and quite excellent. Braddock has extended this from a short film, and unfortunately it shows in some places. A few scenes feel, well, boring, and dialogue isn't as sharp as it could be.

Tarantino is often linked to this film, although he was only the producer and wrote a very little piece of script. However, there are connections to his movies in Curdled and they are fun to catch.

My score: 3/5