OBSESSION WITH MURDER CAN'T MAKE `CURDLED' FLOW.

Byline: Rene Rodriguez Knight-Ridder Tribune News Wire

Gabriela, the ravishing heroine of ``Curdled,'' which opened Friday, has an angelic smile, a childlike curiosity and a voracious appetite for murder. Gabriela (played by newcomer Angela Jones) isn't a killer - she's sweet-natured, cheerful, unthreatening - but her fondness for reports about horrible crimes transcends morbid curiosity. Having maintained a murder scrapbook since she was a child, she devours death stories with an almost sensual rapture. When she bakes a plate of gingerbread man cookies, she takes care to decapitate each one before serving.

When a serial killer (William Baldwin) begins stalking affluent women in Miami, Gabriela gorges happily on the gory details: She follows his exploits like Jimmy the Greek followed football. And when she gets a job at the Post Forensic Cleaning Service, a company that mops up messy murder scenes after the evidence has been removed, Gabriela achieves true bliss. Not only does she get to see the aftermath of the killer's handiwork, she even gets to touch the victims' curdled blood.

``Curdled,'' which actually is a dark, dark comedy, began life as a 30-minute short made by screenwriter John Maass and co-writer/director Reb Braddock while they were film students at Florida State University. After Quentin Tarantino saw the short at a film festival, he helped the two expand it into a feature-length movie.

The stretch marks show. Even at one hour, 29 minutes, ``Curdled'' feels sluggish and watered down: There's not enough going on to support its running time. Many scenes run needlessly long, without payoff. A lot of the dialogue (such as Gabriela's conversations with her jaded co-workers at the cleaning service) seems pointless, making the supporting performances suffer (Mel Gorham and MTV's Daisy Fuentes, in her feature debut, both fare badly).

Jones, who played the similarly obsessed cab driver in ``Pulp Fiction,'' brings an endearingly off-kilter quality to Gabriela. She has a marvelously expressive face, capable of conveying innocence, amusement and just a hint of madness all at once. The miscast Baldwin underplays the serial killer to the point of nonexistence: He's the meekest psycho you've ever seen. In their own way, Jones' loony smiles are more sinister than anything Baldwin can muster. You figure that when they finally meet, he's the one who'll have to watch himself.

In its best moments, ``Curdled'' finds horrific laughs in some extremely gruesome subject matter, and part of the fun of watching it is seeing how far Maass and Braddock are willing to push things. Let the squeamish beware: They push things pretty far. The movie's final 15 minutes are memorably nasty fun, capped off with a twist that's like a killer punch line to a really long joke. It just takes a while to get there.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Curdled'' (R; vulgar language, violence, heavy gore).

The stars: Angela Jones, William Baldwin, Bruce Ramsay, Lois Chiles, Barry Corbin, Mel Gorham, Daisy Fuentes.

Behind the scenes:Directed by Reb Braddock. Produced by John Maass and Raul Puig. Written by John Maass and Reb Braddock. Music by Joseph Julian Gonzalez. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 29 minutes.

Playing: Selected theaters.

Our rating: Two Stars.