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

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

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.

One of my favorite scenes in Pulp Fiction was the one with Butch and Esmeralda Villalobos, the cab ride. Not many people I watched it with, and most of you maybe, didn't really care for it. More than half of the scene didn't make the final cut. I thought it was intriguing, this woman wants to know "what it would feel like to kill a man."

Imagine my surprise when I turned on this movie, CURDLED; starring Esmeralda herself, Angela Jones. Her character, Gabriela is fixated on murders. She keeps scrapbooks of newsclippings and the likes. Then she joins a crime scene clean-up crew. Only she aint too bothered that much with the actual cleaning up. Instead she savors the thought that 'this is where the killing actually happened, right here.'

What miffed me was that I found out that Tarantino was the Exec Producer, but he didn't help out with any of the writing. (IMDb only credits him with the news reports) There were a few scenes he could have spruced up, I'm sure, especially at the cleaning crew's home base. There were a few blahh moments. I also wondered if he could've been ballsy enough to keep Angela Jones as the same character as in Pulp Fiction, instead of the ditzy not-all-there Gabriela. But I guess this was a Reb Braddock vehicle. I see this started out as a short of his. Billy Baldwin is also very good in this.

I give this a 7 or an 8, I'm not sure which I'll choose just yet. It's really a solid 7.5 on IMDb's 1-10 scale.

Definitely check this movie out.

When Curdled was in the cinemas I missed it, but now I rented the VHS and I'm happy, having seen it. I had a couple of hours of pure fun. This is a very good "black" movie: in Europe we'd rather say "noir with a touch of sophisticated humour"or "black comedy". The actresses are impressive and the plot unique. Just follow my advice: if you loved Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs don't miss it, Curdled it's even better!