October Horror : Black Sheep
Horror Subgenre: Horror Comedy
Here’s a movie that was quietly released in limited release last year, and deserves to be recognized for its greatness. Backed by the effects team at WETA, Peter Jackson’s studio that brought you the insane gore of Dead Alive, Black Sheep is a horror comedy about genetically engineered sheep who turn deadly. Yeah, that’s right. Killer sheep. This is the first movie I’ve ever seen that could make a single shot of a sheep simultaneously hilarious and chilling. Black Sheep takes an old school ’80s approach to horror: Start with an innocent idea and make it terrifying, throw in some practical effects of grotesque man-sheep abominations, and keep it campy.
The story revolves around Henry, a young man who is terrified of sheep due to a traumatic childhood experience. His worst fears are realized when he returns to the farm where he grew up to find his brother conducting experiments on the sheep, turning them into evil mutants. And if you’re not sold on the movie off that premise, there’s something wrong with you. The high points of Black Sheep lie in the special effects, which hearken back to Peter Jackson’s early movies like Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles. The mutant sheep are sickening but they’re anchored by a healthy dose of, pardon the pun, black humor. For instance, it’s revealed later that a key character is so interested in the sheep, he really gets to know one. Biblically. There’s also an activist character who frees a mutant lamb (which looks suspiciously similar to the rat monkey in Dead Alive), and it ends up chomping on his ear.
Must-See Moment: The Sheep Battle Inside The Truck. If you’ve never seen a sheep get its head rammed repeatedly into a steering wheel, then later, drive the truck over a cliff, now’s your chance!
October 8th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
You forgot to mention that this film was paid for and distributed by the New Zealand film commission. That’s right…an entire country wanted this movie made and put on a screen for you.