Jaws - With Fleece

The Age

Friday August 31, 2007

Michael Helms

As if equine flu isn't bad enough, the Kiwis are threatening to send us killer sheep, writes Michael Helms.

HOBBITS might have been exported from New Zealand disease-free, but not so the titular wool-bearing carnivores that run amok in Black Sheep. That's right right: killer sheep! And specifically, the type that want to rip out your throat. Black Sheep is the new Kiwi horror/comedy that really does show you the violence of the lambs while presenting itself as a high-class entry into the festering sub-genre of nature-on-the-loose flicks.

Ever since premiering at the Toronto Film Festival last September, this low-budget but entirely clever film has been bleating and bleeding all over the international festival circuit, and is now being herded into multiplexes worldwide.

In April last year, while making Black Sheep , its writer and first-time feature director Jonathan King commented: "The idea kind of arrived fully formed. It sort of seemed like an obvious idea in a way. Just like Rogue is about crocodiles, you think of something either natural to your country or which hasn't been filmed and go, hey! A New Zealand film about sheep attacking people makes sense."

"I hadn't had any ambitions to make horror-comedies, or to start hammering New Zealand or anything like that," adds producer Philippa Campbell. "I thought the pitch was fabulous, one of the best that I've come across as a producer. I think that to make a movie that plays with New Zealand iconography and our self-image, in a naughty kind of way, is a fantastic opportunity.

"New Zealanders take themselves pretty seriously quite a lot of the time and I think this story gives us an opportunity to laugh at ourselves and invites other people to have a bit of a chuckle about who we are and where we come from."

Of course, King needed to visualise the large number of effects required by the script that posits an ovine infection spreading to all humans - one that affects people in a variety of ways but mostly leads to some form of mutation. Even if they just have to fall into an offal pit, no member of the all-New Zealand cast is safe.

Black Sheep was initially planned to have production values that would have relied heavily on computer-generated information.

But that budget did not eventuate, and Black Sheep had to be shepherded down the tried and true but now definitely old school path of physical effects.

King explains, "It became apparent early on that we wouldn't be able to go the full 'CGI Monty'. But as soon as we got that point and embraced it, it clarified what the film would be like and um . . . you know, I felt there's so many big Hollywood films with CGI that are just so bad. Think of Cursed. You don't sort of believe it for a second. Instead we look to something like American Werewolf In London, which is a big influence. It's 25 years old and completely holds up today.

For day-to-day effects wrangling, they had to hand over the reins to modern Star Wars veteran (via Hellraiser) Dave Elsey.

"There is a ton of drool on this set," said collaborator Richard Taylor with a laugh. The sheep become like rabid dogs and when I first heard about it we imagined The Omen where you had that scene in the graveyard where the dogs attack. It's like that but with sheep. I was sort of wondering, well, how are we going to make that happen, and whether or not it's going to be possible to make sheep vicious?

"I knew it was a comedy but the whole idea is to make the sheep actually threatening as well. But, as we've been making it, I've been absolutely amazed.

"Sheep are quite terrifying, actually. We had sheep come down to the workshop so we can look at them and take measurements off them, and they're big! They're huge! They're much bigger than dogs and they're heavy.

"Basically, if they want to go where you are, they'll do it. You have to get out of the way. And they're loud, too. So, I'm like, 'OK, this could work.' "

Taylor offered an overview of the effects work that required the help of an Australian.

"We've done a significant body of work," he says. "We've probably done about the equivalent work that was in Braindead in about half the time, although we have had twice the crew.

"The level of sophistication of the animatronics is considerably more. It's really lovely to think that there are still projects out there demanding heavy animatronics. We have used very little over the years. Since we finished Meet The Feebles (just out on DVD) we haven't done much at all.

If you only have the slightest inclination to laugh at the foibles of genetic engineering and interspecies breeding, flock in to Black Sheep.

Meanwhile, King, whose script for horror film The Tattooist began filming just after the Black Sheep shoot, will be hard at work on a monster movie for very young children.

Black Sheep is on general release.

© 2007 The Age

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