“Baa baa black sheep, have you any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full! One for the master, one for the dame, and one for the little boy who lives down the lane.”
O.k. the first time I heard this poem as a child it messed with my head. Sheep can talk? What sort of a sheep cuts its own hair and sells it? Why does the boy need a bag of hair? So twenty something years later I see the preview for the Jonathan King film
Black Sheep. Within seconds I knew that I had to see this one. Perhaps twice.
I love B movies. Why, you ask? Well, these films can’t use $500M in special effects to distract you from the fact that there is no story. Instead, B movies rely on two things: first, what little story there is being told well, and secondly, an audience who brings their own (much-needed) imagination to the mix.
Black Sheep is such a movie - plenty of prototypical blood and gore, but the socio-economic political commentary makes it full of laughs as well.
And
Black Sheep sets this up better than most big budget films – hear me out. Seriously, it doesn’t take much to guess what will happen to two college students when they meet a crazy guy with a chainsaw in Texas. However, when a movie showcases capitalist greed, environmental activists, mad scientists, sheep and family jealousy - all set in rural New Zealand – well, that leads to many more imaginative situations. Granted, not being from New Zealand, I may have missed some of the more subtle political satire – but I get the feeling that the idea of a human-eating sheep zombie might be universally scary. Oddly, ducks are similarly frightening, but that has nothing to do with this movie…
Black sheep is basically a story of conflicting perspectives: tradition vs. capitalist greed, technology vs. nature and carnivore vs. herbivore (And being a vegetarian myself, I found the movie long-running meat jokes hilarious). Okay, that may be a bit too serious of an analysis. A more simple breakdown might be: mutant sheep monsters represent the complicated and messed up reality that we live in, and in the end lighting our farts is the only recourse to the problems of the world (that last bit will make sense in the end, I promise).
Having little budget to waste, the movie gets right into the setup of the underlying conflict: brother vs. brother in a sibling relationship that might have made Cain and Abel jealous. Within the first five minutes (and most likely $5 of production cost) there is a classic set up of the family troubles: older bother (Angus Oldfield) kills younger brother’s (Henry Oldfield) pet sheep, then wears the carcass like he’s hosting a demonic puppet show. Then the boys’ father mysteriously kicks the bucket, so they have to stop playing dead sheep masquerade. Not too much trauma for young kids, huh? This classic setup of the twisted family dynamic is the crucial base for any good horror flick.
Cut to a shot where the younger brother (who, for some odd reason, has developed sheep-phobia) is stuck in a sea of sheep-traffic. This scene has very Hitchcockian overtones – just substitute a herd of sheep for birds. Common fears, like animals, small spaces and heights, are all something the audience can relate to – so the writer uses this chance to poke at the rampant reliance on psychotherapy to overcome daily obstacles.
Flash forward a few years. What’s changed? Well, Henry has moved away and Angus has hired a mad scientist to create a new breed of sheep. Yeah, messing with nature and “God’s design” never has any consequences in a horror movie, right? Yikes. Enter the vegetarian environmentalist wannabes, sporting the “Meat Is Murder” bumper sticker right from the establishing shot. And to further the meat/animal jokes, the girlfriend’s called “Opossum” and the dude’s name is Grant – but with the accent it might as well be pronounced “Grunt”. When they meat … I mean
meet the evil scientist lady, Grunt promptly steals a jar of bio-hazardous waste from the lab as part of their plan to “free the world of genetically engineered devastation”. Wow, that’s a pretty sophisticated statement from someone who is going to become a human-sheep mutant hybrid zombie monster in a minute. Yeah, he quickly gets bitten by a dormant fetal mutant sheep preserved in the container – like you didn’t see THAT coming. But wait, there’s more – that feisty little fetus had just enough left to bite a sheep, thus ensuring TWO types of monsters in this romp. YAY! (The two monsters, for those keeping score: human-sheep hybrid zombies and human-eating mutant sheep. Try to keep track, kids!)
Meanwhile, back at the farm – obviously, Henry has to reenter the picture. He’s come home so that Angus (yes, like the beef – see, you’re starting to get the meat jokes) can buy him out of his half of the family business. But Henry then learns of Big Brother’s diabolical sheep-related scheme to take over the world (or at least the small fraction of it that’s related to sheep farming). Of course, Angus’ plan is about as likely to succeed as one cooked up by Pinky and the Brain – and much like those albino mice, his ideas will lead to a ridiculous series of events culminating in disaster and morbid levels of embarrassing failure.
At this point, Henry meets up with Tucker (his best buddy from childhood) and they go out in the fields to reminisce about the old days. But instead, the story kicks into high gear when they meet up with tree hugger chick. She attempts to get Henry over his morbid fear of sheep, which is good considering the rest of the movie is a virtual who-bites-who story.
Let’s do a quick run-down of the sheep chomping:- Tucker gets bitten by a truck-driving mutant sheep. He gets captured by mad scientist lady and experimented on. For some genetic reason, he’s a NICE human-sheep zombie. Good for him!
- Angus gets bitten by Grunt – more on Big Bro soon!
- And Grunt - let’s not forget about his plight. To be a vegetarian while your new sheep zombie nature is telling you with every fiber of your being that you need to eat meat - so sad. But not as sad as the scene of him, in fully mutated form, being walked in on… as he is trying to shear himself. (So, dear readers, you see why I opened up with the poem? Apparently only a genetically engineered mutant hybrid zombie human-sheep can sell its hair. Kid’s poems are messed up, but at least this movie is rated R. Adults wonder why kids can’t sleep at night - I knew there was something wrong with that poem when I was five.)
From this point on, every scene features a skinned sheep, shredded human corpse or someone being eaten by zombie sheep monsters. It’s the beginning of the end of the world… or at least rural New Zealand. How will our heroes survive?!
Well, hippy chick uses a giant guilt trip to overcome her former vegetarian boyfriend. Grunt just has to be unhappy with his new carnivorous lifestyle choice, after all. I love the running meat jokes in this movie. Sheep are eating people, sheep-people are eating people and people are making people feel guilty for eating … people.
But the swirling New Zealand style insanity spiral won’t end there. The film saved all its money for the final eating frenzy at big brother's press conference. As he gives his “I’m the bad guy, here’s my evil plan” speech, he begins to bray and transforms into a mutant sheep zombie in front of potential investors. That’s gonna hurt the stock price – but not as much as when a newly revealed mutant lady-sheep calls upon the entire mutant horde to descend and consume the crowd. Suddenly there is sea of torn-off limbs, accompanied by various disembowelments in a fashion only surpassed by the final scenes of Braveheart.
One might think that the mutant human eating sheep-hybrid feeding frenzy is the apex of the movie. But grosser yet is the final confrontation of the brothers, when Angus reveals that the new breed of sheep was made with his own DNA. Yep, he’s a sheep fucker. But it doesn’t stop there. Big bro rapidly makes the transformation from man to full-blown monster and confronts Henry – and did I mention the big silly plane that’s rolling around with no pilot? And do you remember the henchman who got shredded by a propeller in the first Indiana Jones movie? Yeah, that’s the end Angus had in store for him. Until, in traditional B movie fashion, he rises from the dead to try to command the remaining sheep. Luckily, they bite off his junk instead of listening. I just wish I had been prepared – I nearly threw up. I guess people getting your twig and berries nibbled off by sheep must not be as shocking in rural New Zealand as it is in Southern New Jersey.
To finish the film with another page out of the B movie handbook: the quick resolution of remaining problems. Little bro, his new environmentalist lady friend and his best childhood friend (who has miraculously recovered from being a mutant sheep monster) blow up the remaining herd by lighting the mutant sheep farts with a Zippo (I told you that would make sense in the end). They convert the rest of the countryside back to “normality” using amniotic fluid from mutant sheep. Yup, that almost made me projectile vomit for a second time - good work, Black sheep!
I really enjoyed this flick because of the pure oddity. It froze me in place with disgust-fueled interest and then made me watch sheep eat people. It was a wonderful departure from the typical Americana horror film: 2 students + 1 psychopath + 1 bloody cleaver = scary. Seriously, I can’t think of a better way to fall asleep - and counting sheep certainly isn’t going to work anymore...
(Doctor Dan is an evil scientist from Jersey. And yes, he sometimes shares office space with Dr. Weird, but he doesn't share in his plans to destroy the ATHF. So what IS his master scheme? I can't divulge all of it, but it starts with a genetically-modified corn chip that's 100-feet tall that will terrorize downtown Hoboken. The rest is too frighteneing to even type, but rest assured, the world will bow to him. Mwah-hah-ha-ha!)
