Toronto: Sheep Gone Wild!
There's a certain kind of comedy acting that I find pure genius, and it's not the craft that they teach in the Strasberg Institute. When an actor holds a puppet or doll up to their neck, screams "It's got me! It's biting me!" and throws himself to the ground as if the thing has deadly jaws clamped to him--I fall to pieces with laughter. Matt Dillon did this in SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, and someday they'll show that clip when he gets he's lifetime achievement Academy Award.
Early on in BLACK SHEEP, a rather convincing looking mutant sheep fetus from goes on a neck-biting rampage, and I completely lost it. I'm not alone. The New Zealand made horror-comedy had a great reception at last night's Midnight Madness premiere, and today's press and industry screening was packed with buyers. The movie's now the subject of a bidding war and will surely be sold by festival's end. The movie couldn't be much sillier, but it's got enough shock and gore to please genre fans. The story has two feuding brothers--an evil scientist who's been tinkering with ovine DNA and younger one who's become farm-phobic after a long ago tragedy.
The creature effects do become excessive, but they're well done (from the WETA Workshop), and no joke about men left alone with livestock goes unexplored.