Curdled

In 1992, while doing the rounds with Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino saw a short which he later encouraged director Reb Braddock to expand to a feature. The result is this smart, over-stretched black comedy about a young Latino woman, Gabriela (Jones), who gratifies her morbid obsession with murder by working for a cleaning company that specialises in mopping up its gruesome aftermath. The childlike quality of Gabriela's macabre fascination is deftly sketched, as she pores over her collection of newspaper cuttings or tries to recreate the choreography of death suggested by the chalk marks, bullet holes and blood stains. Fantasy and reality finally merge when she comes face to face with the Blue Blood Killer, a smooth sociopath (played with icy charm by Baldwin) who preys on wealthy women. In a confrontation filmed as a single four-and-a-half-minute shot, the killer forces her to re-enact the dance of death implied by the murder scene, from both the victim's and the assailant's point of view. This bravura sequence virtually justifies the price of admission, but elsewhere the congealed blood is spread a little too thinly, a deficiency only partly made up for by a catchy, Spanish-influenced soundtrack.