Curdled (1996)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Great Film overall

Don't Believe the Hype

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This movie is a total surprise. It's fast-paced and will hold your interest the entire time. As a girl, Gabriela witnesses, so to speak, the murder of a man. From then on out she becomes totally fascinated by murder and keeps a scrapbook full of drawings and clippings. As an adult she lives in Miami and ends up working at a place that cleans up after murders (suicides). Cleaners, as they are called. During this time a serial killer is on the loose and Gabriela is hooked. What makes this movie so great is Jones, who plays the young woman, and her somewhat warped sense of killings. The scene where she's dancing with the knife, re-living the latest murder is perfect. Though there's a lot of blood, and the near final scene is audibly graphic (you do not see anything), it's also one of the funniest, for those of us who appreciate a very warped sense of humor. In the Special Features Quentin Tarantino explains why this actress was so perfect for the part, and he's spot on, as even while watching her (prior to watching the SF) you could just tell. He talks about a sparkle in her eye. Her entire body lights up in this part. Everyone else, even Baldwin (as the killer), does not come close, though he did a fairly good job, especially in their scene where they are together dancing. And you know who the killer is from the beginning, so I'm not spoiling an ending here. Find this gem and watch it over and over again. Each time you will catch something new that Jones does. She's a very physical actress and I hope to see more of her, and soon.

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-

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.)

This black comedy was a little too dark for my tastes; but I loved the opening tune and the graphics. Also, glad to see Barry Corbin who is one of my favorite character actors (remember Uncle Bob in Urban Cowboy). Nevertheless, the movie is still worth viewing late night on cable.