In 1981, John Landis perfected the horror-comedy genre mix with An American Werewolf in London. Effects artist Rick Baker won an Oscar for his spectacular werewolf transformation make-up, a sequence that to this day is considered one of the greatest of all time. Only six years later, a young director named Peter Jackson made Bad Taste, a film that, like its title, revels in gross-outs and typically horror movie staples that are taken to such extremes that they become comical. The film paved the way for Jackson’s notoriety as a B-movie genius, which leads to his status as the A-list gazillionaire Lord of New Zealand.
Now, two decades later, these films serve to inspire Jackson’s fellow kiwi Jonathan King in his debut film Black Sheep. This insanely over-the-top shindig sheds a darker side to sheep herding in idyllic farmer-scape New Zealand. A band of country-folks find themselves in the shoes of the survivors from Night of the Living Dead. Except it ain’t zombies attacking them. It’s sheep. Bloodthirsty sheep.
The Oldfield brothers inherited their father’s shear farm when he died. As Angus (Peter Feeney) grows the family sheep business into a lucrative venture with genetics experiments, his younger brother Henry (Nathan Meister) has moved away to the city out of his childhood-induced phobia of sheep. Both brothers are the black sheep of the family, as one bastardizes their sheep farm and the other rejects it. On the day Angus holds a press event to reveal his manmade new species, Henry returns to sell his share of the farm. Things go awry when a pair of PETA wannabes, Grant (Oliver Driver) and Experience (Danielle Mason), steals a canister of flawed, mutated sheep and lets it loose. The creature’s infection spreads with every bite. Sheep turn into carnivores, while humans turn into were-sheep. Insanity!
Black Sheep provides tons of laughs. The movie really only has one gag (sheep acting like zombies), but it plays that same gag repeatedly very well. It’s hard to deny the giggles of seeing wooly, cuddly sheep munching on human intestines; or seeing our heroes blow the heads of sheep with a shotgun. In contrast, when gore is nowhere to be seen, the film loses steam. The zingers between the characters aren’t very funny, and the tons of jokes made at the expense of Experience’s faux-hippie behavior are pretty old hat. Luckily, every so often we get some sheep action, so the movie never fully winds down long enough to feel dull.
The film knows what its viewers want to see, and delivers in spades. Peter Jackson’s WETA Workshop abandons elf quivers and dwarf armors to return to their humble B-movie roots. In the spirit of Dead Alive, torn limbs are gooey and disgustingly bloody. There is a sequence in the film, a sheep stampede scene, which ends in a bloodbath that scatters guts and body parts all around. The sheer madness of the violence, coupled with the absurd image of sheep eating people, destines the stampede to be a hit with the horror crowd. It’s even in league with Dead Alive’s lawnmower scene.
The were-sheep effects are just as impressive. It has the galls to do what most werewolf movies avoid, which is to try and outdo Rick Baker’s aforementioned transformation scene. This one earns points just for trying, but more than that, it’s actually quite good. Taking cues from An American Werewolf in London, the were-sheep transformation looks painful and detailed. While it doesn’t quite uncrown Baker, the fact that WETA holds their ground is impressive.
Black Sheep is good for a laugh, and although its success mainly has a lot to do with the idea behind it, it’s still one of the more nicely done tries at horror-comedy, besides recent gems like Slither and Bubba Ho-Tep. Old school Peter Jackson fans who yearn for him to end his three-hour epic blockbuster binge and return to the horror genre that he’s adored for, you don’t want to miss this one.
"Black Sheep" opens June 22, 2007 and is rated . . Written by Jonathan King.
