When I discussed Eagle Vs Shark I tried my best not to pull pess out of the NZ accent - Oops I did it again! This time though the danger factor is ramped up, as Black Sheep concerns New Zealand citizens and their interactions with the noble sheep.
I could be in trouble here.
2 young boys grow up on a sheep farm, Henry and Angus. After a childhood sheep-related trauma (if only I had a dollar for all those I heard about) Henry moves away to the big city vowing never to return, Angus takes over running the farm once their parents pass away.
Henry, now an adult, comes back to finalise the estate of his late Father and say goodbye to the farm once and for all. Of course this sets the tone for all that follows.
It turns out that there is some shady scientific testing going on at the farm, and that the efforts to engineer the "perfect sheep" have resulted in some less than ideal variants being created and disposed of. Idiot-hippies (no other kind I can think of) come across such evidence and plan to use it for their protesting evidence. When the "evidence" turns out to be alive and escapes - but only after taking a nip out of one of the hippies - all sh*t breaks loose and things go baa-nanas!...
Sorry.
So what follows is a hell of a lot of violence against puppet sheep, and an equal amount of violence perpetrated by the suddenly savage ovine hordes against their former human tormentors. Henry, now joined by one of the hippie-idiots named Experience (told you) and the farm manager Taka seem stranded without transport and must hoof it...
Sorry.
There is some great gore and extremely inventive and effective makeup effects - the team behind a lot of the Lord of the Rings stuff were involved - it's all incredibly over the top and there are liberal lashings of bright blood all over the shop.
All that and I didn't even mention the insinuation of human-ovine love. No wait I just did.
Sorry. (But it's the truth!) Most of the jokes were lighthearted and dumb in an inoffensive way - the only joke that fell altogether flet, I mean flat for me was the use of Mint Sauce as a holy water substitute, aside from that fizzer Bleck Sheep was extremely amusing and well made. I can't go further without acknowledging the blatant rips from many other classic horror films such as Evil Dead, Tremors and An American Werewolf in London, but I'd rather watch a film that rips from the best instead of settling for mediocrity.
Especially when it does so effectively and creates a minor classic like this.
Final Rating - 7.5 / 10. Nothing too original, but funny and fun, and wayyy better than 100s of US or UK films made with a bigger budget but less inspiration annually.
