CURDLED
A film review by Alex Fung
Copyright 1996 Alex Fung
(Miramax - 1996) Starring William Baldwin, Angela Jones, Bruce Ramsay, Mel Gorham, Lois Chiles, Daisy Fuentes, Barry Corbin Screenplay by John Maass & Reb Braddock Produced by John Maass and Raul Puig Directed by Reb Braddock Running time: 94 minutes
Me: *** (out of four stars)
Note: Some may consider portions of the following text to
be spoilers. Be forewarned.
CURDLED is a deliciously dark and witty black comedy, but its humour won't appeal to everyone. To be specific, let me give you an example. Do you know in PULP FICTION where Jules and Vincent go on brain detail after Marvin and his head accidentally get separated? If you thought that was completely tasteless and unfunny, don't see CURDLED.
On the other hand, if you found that sequence to be pretty funny, you have the sense of humour that CURDLED is aimed at.
Our film's heroine, Gabriela, played by Angela Jones, is a woman obssessively curious about murder and serial killers; she even keeps a scrapbook of news articles. Luckily for her, Miami is being plagued by a serial killer rampage - her scrapbook is getting pretty big.
The killer's nickname in the press is The Blue Blood Killer, because he preys on older rich socialite women, and he's played by William Baldwin (this is not a spoiler). One particularly striking M.O. on the Blue Blood Killer is his propensity to decapitate his victims.
Gabriela is watching television one day when she spots an advertisement for a firm whose line of work is perfectly attuned to her interests. She immediately quits her job, and signs on with PFCS, which stands for Post-Forensic Cleaning Service. No points for guessing what they do.
Her workmates are confused by Gabriela's fascination with murder; to them, it's just a day job. There's a hilarious locker room scene where they debate whether decapitated heads can talk, and what they would say. Gabriela's partner, Elena, played by Mel Gorham, is particularly perturbed by Gabriela's wide-eyed fascination, and becomes really upset when Gabriela volunteers them to clean up The Blue Blood Killer's latest scene - they're the messiest, you see.
Unbeknownst to them, the last victim left something on the scene which would ID The Blue Blood Killer, so he's also heading over there..
The comparison to PULP FICTION earlier on was not accidental - Quentin Tarantino executive-produced this film, which began life as a short film he saw at a film festival. Apparently Tarantino was so impressed that he helped Braddock convert this into a feature-length film.
There are other parallels - the star of CURDLED is Angela Jones (the top billing goes to William Baldwin, but really, Jones is the central character), who's probably best known for her role as Esmerelda Villalobos, the death-obssessed taxi driver in PULP FICTION. That role was written specifically for Jones based upon her similar character in the aforementioned short film, CURDLED JR.
Jones is great in CURDLED - she's wonderfully funny and maintains an amusing wide-eyed naive curiousity about murder without compromising her character's innocence or likeability. She can express so much with one lift of her eyebrow. It's a great performance.
Reb Braddock's direction is extremely sharp and clever, toeing the line between black humour and bad taste. The best scene in the film is an outrageously funny sequence involves Jones and dancing - any more than that would be a spoiler. The opening credit sequence is also inventive and amusing. Of course, it's impossible to really take this stuff seriously, but then again you're not really supposed to - Braddock knows the audience is in on the joke, and makes it a fun little romp as a result.
The one drawback of CURDLED is that it was based on a short film, and it feels like it; the material is just stretched too thin in order to fulfill a feature length running time, and some parts just seem to drag. While its running time is already a short 94 minutes, it could really stand to lose twenty minutes or so to give it better pacing.
CURDLED seems destined to be a nice cult film for Miramax. It'll be interesting to see if it will appeal to mainstream audiences as well.
-- Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca)
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