Bad Horror Club: Remembering cult New Zealand B-movie Black Sheep

Herd mentality: Looking back at 2006 cult horror Black Sheep
Harry Fletcher19 May 2020

The Bad Horror Club takes a closer look at some of the films that are horrific in more ways than one​. We take a film that’s so terrible and badly made that it ends up being hilarious and fantastic fun. This week, it’s the turn of Black Sheep.

In George A Romero’s horror classic Dawn of the Dead, the film’s legions of zombies are like sheep, ritualistically congregating at the shopping mall in a satirical, subtle critique of capitalism and consumerist society. In Black Sheep, the zombies really are just sheep.

The independent New Zealand flick released in 2006 is a monumentally dumb but ultimately fun riff on B-movie cliches, which splatters more blood onto the wall than an entire series of the Walking Dead, and tips over into the so-bad-it’s-great category with all the grace of an upturned combine harvester.

The plot is thus: a man terrified of sheep (owing to a childhood trauma, naturally) returns to his family’s farm, only to discover that his brother is running a diabolical genetic engineering programme, turning his herd into a flock of bloodthirsty killers. We soon learn that a bite can turn people into half-human, half-sheep monsters, and after well-meaning animal rights activists unwittingly set one free, fresh hell is set loose – cue 95 minutes of gratuitous ovine gore, campy action and woefully over-the-top performances.

It’s fully aware of just how ridiculous and overblown it is too – one of the pivotal scenes sees the killer herd explode in a blazing bonfire of ignited sheep flatulence, which sums up the film’s schlocky comedy appeal pretty well. You get the sense the characters – namely the meek protagonist Henry Oldfield and the curiously named activist Experience, played by a spirited Danielle Mason – are in on the joke, practically winking down the camera at some points.

The tonal shifts between comedy and outright horror don’t always work, especially with the unrelenting levels of gore. There’s an over-reliance on puerile slapstick comedy. One sequence sees activist Grant attacked by a zombie lamb, only to hit himself over the head with a tree branch as it hangs suspended from his ear lobe, which stretches down to his neck like an elastic band. Another sees a sheep attack humans in a moving car, before somehow taking control of the vehicle and driving it off the side of a cliff.

It’s not totally without merit. One thing to say about the film is how imaginative and creative it gets with its plot and setting. From horror films of the past 15 or so years, its bonkers premise is perhaps only second to Rubber – another cult horror told from the point of view of a murderous tyre with psychokinetic powers, rolling from town to town on a killing spree in the Californian desert. While totally outrageous and entirely unconvincing throughout, there’s also a likeable originality about the whole thing, and the bucolic landscapes are actually fairly beautifully realised.

The effects it achieves with puppetry is also rather impressive for such a small scale release. In fact, the lambs look more like chest-bursters from Alien than fluffy farmyard creatures. The body horror elements are pretty cool, with effects that take inspiration from the movies of genre master David Cronenberg, albeit with added horns and hooves.

Compared to the previous Bad Horror Club entry Hobgoblins, it’s an Oscar-worthy triumph. Sure, it’s lacking a satirical bite and the whole movie is profoundly, gloriously naff, but there’s a spark of originality that makes it well worth seeking out – not so much a bad horror as a baaaaad one.

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