Curdled

By far Billy Baldwin's best work, Angela Jones shines in this quirky dark comedy expanded from a film school thesis short. In a movie world that exists just a few degrees of deviation from our own world, Reb Braddock has lovingly crafted a dangerous innocent - Gabriella, who is so fascinated by violent crime that she takes a job as a maid for the Post-Forensic Cleaning Service. The only true flaw in this film is the 'question' that Gabriella so sweetly seeks an answer to, but the fantastic soundtrack and hauntingly choreographed 'final dance' make it all worthwhile.

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.

I picked this one up at the recommendation of a few people that I "trust" - and though it is not the typical sleaze/gore/trash that I pump into my brain at a record-pace - it is a truly funny, well-made and entertaining little number. Although there is some blood, don't expect a bloodbath, and there's no nudity (which DOES suck...) but this one is good on it's own merits as a fun and pretty original film... Gabriella is a sweet young girl, who has been obsessed with murder and death since an early age. To satisfy this obsession, she takes a job with a cleaning agency that specializes in cleaning up murder/accident scenes. When the opportunity arises to clean the house where one of a string of the "Blueblood" serial-killer murders occurred - Gabriella jumps at the chance. Unfortunately - her enthusiasm may bring her just a bit closer to the murders than she really wants to be...or does she??? CURDLED truly is an enjoyable and original film. More than anything - the performances carry the film. Angela Jones as Gabriella is both naive and adorable, but also strangely sexy and intense. There are a ton of people you'll "recognize" in this one, in both large and small roles - William Baldwin, Kelly Preston, Daisy Fuentes, a quick shot of Clooney and Tarantino from DUSK TIL DAWN on a "crime-show", and the guy that plays Gabriella's boss (I forget his name, but he's been in a ton of stuff too - he was the one big "boss" in WAR GAMES...) - and all the performances are pretty top-notch. The directing is also confident and well done, and the music direction adds to the overall "quirkiness" of the whole film. If you dig strange black-comedies, you'll probably dig this one. 8/10

This film is definitely unique in that it's original. Quentin Tarantino produced this film and put it under his now failed Rolling Thunder Pictures. The film in its essence had a lot of potential and really had a great leading actress, but it had its share of problems. If your a fan of Tarantino like I am you prob. will rent this no matter what anyone says, but I would recommend this movie with caution because it just a mediocre middle of the year release that Miramax quickly buried under its large pile of flops. The special features of this film are the best part. With the thesis student film attached to the DVD along with an intro and outro by Quentin himself. Overall not much here but you may find some qualities that can be enjoyed by all.

Proof that not everything Tarantino touches turns to gold. This is most definitely plastic, all the way. Its easy to see that without Quentin's involvement this would have probably sat on the shelf for years, that's assuming it would have ever got produced in the first place. It is about a woman with a fascination of death who gets a job cleaning up after crime scenes, Angela Jones is unconvincing in this role, William Baldwin is better as the Serial Killer who keeps Jones in employment!. All in all pretty poor.

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

Quentin Tarantino, aglow with the buzz-borne light from the soon-to-be-released "Pulp Fiction," was sitting in a darkened theater with his producer/pal Lawrence Bender, enjoying a short-film festival. The short being screened was called "Curdled," and it was about a Latin woman working for a housekeeping service that specialized in cleaning up crime scenes for murderers and killers. I picture our hydro-cephalic hero QT laughing so loud he annoyed everyone in the theater, including the film's writer/director Reb Braddock. But Braddock needn't have worried. Our fat-headed pop-culture savant got up from his seat when the short was over, sought out Reb and declared, full of his own ego and I can only guess Goobers, "Listen to me, Mr. Braddock, alriiiiiiiight? We're gonna take your short film and make it into a feature, okaaaaaaaaay? You'll write/direct and I'll produce, alriiiiiiiiiiight?" And so the feature-length version of "Curdled" was born. I'm scarcely exaggerating this story because it is the version told by Quentin himself in the film's bonus material. Could any aspiring director refuse the offer of a then white-hot Tarantino? Could you? Unfortunately for us the feature is nothing more than the 10 min. short stretched out over an hour and a half. Which strangely feels like three hours. Thrill as Nothing happens in slow motion. Watch the immediately-attractive Angela Jones (Butch's cabbie in Pulp Fiction) become less and less adorable as sheer boredom numbs your senses. Laugh at a one-joke black comedy that manages to kill the joke after twenty minutes. Rock to a movie so bad its writer/director Reb Braddock never wrote/directed anything ever again. At all. What did we learn today? We learned that short films don't necessarily translate into feature-length. We learned that even Latin women need good story lines to hold onto our attention. And most importantly: If Quentin Tarantino ever approaches you in a theater with greazy fingers and a shlt-eating grin you need to evacuate the premises as soon as possible. That's what Fire Exits are for. GRADE: D-

Thoughtless, ignorant, ill-conceived, career-killing (where is the talented Angela Jones now?), deeply unfunny garbage. It's no wonder Reb Braddock hasn't directed anything else since - anyone who has a chance to make his first film on his own rules, based on his own script, with the help of Quentin Tarantino himself, and creates something like THIS, anyone who feels that THIS was a story worth telling to the world, doesn't deserve a second break. Under the circumstances, the performances are good - the actors do what they're told to do, and they do it well. It's just that they shouldn't have done it in the first place. 0 out of 4.

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.

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