Black Sheep

I don't know if you'd call it a request, a challenge, or even a dare. What I do know is that recently the Chuckman informed me that he'd seen a preview for a movie titled Black Sheep (not the one starring Chris Farley) and that he couldn't tell if it was so bad that it's good or so bad that it's just bad. The mighty reviewing skills of Craw Fu were called upon to make a judgment for the good of all. My initial reaction after seen the cover art was that the Chuckman was no friend of mine by making such a request. But since it scored a respectable 71% on Rotten Tomatoes, I thought I might as well give it a shot.

Black Sheep at it's heart is a treatise on the dangers of genetic engineering. For you see, the movie revolves around Henry Oldfield - a young man who has an irrational fear of sheep after some childhood trauma growing up on his family's New Zealand ranch. He returns home after several years to sign over his half of the estate to his brother, who unbeknownst to Henry has created a new breed of sheep with the help of a few top geneticists. As you may have guessed, carnage ensues.

As it turns out, this movie was awful. And not even better than awesome awful, the bad awful. The story was poorly written with bad lines liberally spread throughout the script. There was plenty of low brow humor of both the flatulence and the having sex with sheep (the WSU special as it's usually referred to) genre. Knowing it is a low budget film, I wasn't expecting great special effects, and I wasn't disappointed. In fact, several of the scenes are so poorly lit that you can't really see what's going on. And while I was by no means expecting Shakespearean actors, a few of the guys playing substantial roles were abysmal. Worst of all, the plot was very contrived and full of holes.

In my opinion, this movie was just about as bad as they come, however, it is not without it's audience. Throughout I couldn't help but be reminded of some cult classics I've seen like Re-Animator and the Peter Jackson opus Dead Alive. Fans of low budget horror films full of blood and guts and bad jokes should like this one as well. I find them quite tedious.