Baa Baa Ha Ha

Black Sheep is a spectacular film about mutant sheep that get loose, bite people and turn them into weresheep.

New Zealander Jonathan King wrote and directed this ovine glopfest, which is in the Shaun of the Dead/Evil Dead category of clever, funny horror flicks.

The fun starts when Grant the hippie activist steals a cylinder holding a mutant sheep. Being a hippie, he breaks the thing and gets bit.

His cute accomplice makes her way to the farm and sort of hooks up with the good son. The bad son, who has a Bruce Campbell manner to him, is the one creating the mutant sheep.

This Kiwi Klassic moves fast. The sequences make their point, get their laughs and move on. And, thankfully, the special effects are relatively primitive, and we don't get the kung fu/room moving around/video game crap that computer animation geeks insist on.



We're talking hypocritical hippies. Attack sheep. Weresheep. Clever use of ovine flatulence as a motif. Biplane with dangerous spinning propeller. Many gallons of blood. Gobs of guts. The politically incorrect screenplay skewers so many sacred lambs you could serve shish kebab. No nudity, disappointing as female lead is certainly worth seeing nekkid.

Best thing I've seen in years. Three and a half coils.

Spring Solution

On the one hand, it's cold and windy as hell out. On the other, it's Spring, and sunny.

So the combination of winter-weight suit, oxford shirt, and festive colors suggests itself.

(Dark brown wingtips below)

Let This One In

Oskar and Eli and Rubik

Let the Right One In (2008) is a nifty little Swedish vampire flick about disaffected Yoot. And unlike the American examples of the teen angst/vampire genre, this film is also a taut, creepy thriller, and nobody forms a band.

Oskar is a goofy, slightly effeminate kid who is bullied at school. He acts out his revenge fantasies by stabbing a tree and doing a "Deliverance" riff.

Which is how he meets Eli, the little vampire girl, who is also a whiz at the Rubik's cube.

Eli's protector is an extremely inept provider of blood, so she has to go on the prowl her ownself, and the mooks in the Stockholm suburb, though chumps, are, ultimately, missed.

So eventually the truth comes out.

"Let the sunshine in"

We're talking savage little 12-year old vampire girl. Dressing a victim much as you'd dress a deer. Exploding vampire victim. Unfortunate and mercifully brief look at little girl nekkid. Arm rolls. Corpse on ice. Comical gym teacher. Stupid drunk Swedes. Subtitles don't match the dubbing, but the discrepancies are not amusing, merely annoying. Good moody sequence shots. Good tension building. Not especially gory, but ghoulish all the same. Three coils — check it out.

Clutch Dressing

The clutch is stuck — but I'm not. I'll fix it later.

"30 Days of Night" and 90 Minutes Down the Drain

David Slade's "30 Days of Night" is a vampire flick with a terrific premise — why wouldn't vampires enjoy spending a month in Barrow, Alaska, at that time in the year when the sun does not rise for a solid month?

Kinda like snowbirds heading to Florida after Thanksgiving, and almost as sinister.

The movie's not bad for the first half — Slade sets the tone, the vampires (who speak some kind of ancient vampire language that sounds like retching) are dominant, and a small band of intrepid survivors has to go into hiding and wait out the month.

They about pull it off, too.

But there is way too much plot getting in the way of the story.

Finally Sheriff Eben injects himself with some leftover vampire blood so he can get the drop on the chief. Unhappily for Eben, the sun also rises, and he turns into a giant scab.

Some glop, maybe a bucket or two. Fun with giant drills and garbage compacting equipment. Some of the worst dentistry ever seen on screen. No nekkidity. Ultimately seems like it was based on a horror comic — oh, wait, it is.

Two coils.

Pushing Spring

It wasn't all that spring-y but I tried to push it along Sunday, deploying a seldom-used chambray shirt in the process. I won't wear a dark blue dress shirt — looks too much like a "Law & Order" character — but the color is fine in a sport shirt.

Also dug out a pair of Wal-Mart jeans that are the best-fitting of their kind, at least for me. Alas, they discontinued these non-blue jeans some time ago.

In my long-running battle with jeans I have come around to Dr. Hobson's stance — any color except blue.

"Dead Snow" Gives Guts and Guffaws

The Norwegian Nazi-zombie flick "Dead Snow" takes the familiar "bunch of attractive young people go to a remote cabin and all hell breaks loose" formula, adds some excellent and creative splatter and winds up being about as amusing as a Nazi-zombie flick can be.

This is a tough subgenre, which as far as I know only has two other entries: the immortal "Zombie Lake," which features not only zombie love but pointless nekkid volleyball, and "Shock Waves," which puts to rest the oft-stated canard that Nazi zombies can't handle salt water.

Martin and the rest of the gang go off to a cabin in the Norwegian outback for fun and frolicking. Two things mar the trip from the git-go, though: Martin's girlfriend Sara is skiing in, and she hasn't arrived, and this old guy shows up, insults their organic coffee and mentions that the area they are in was terrorized by an especially brutal German unit during the war — and while the populace eventually rose up and slaughtered some of them, the remainder vanished.



The whereabouts of Sara functions as a MacGuffin, since we saw the film's opening sequence in which Sara is tracked down by the undead soldiers, and serves to get Martin away from the others on his ski-doo.

Everybody dies, but not before some really first-rate zombie-kid interaction. We're talking chain saw surgery. Also fishing line surgery. Heads roll. Heads are ripped apart. Drawing and quartering, frozen zombie-style. Sex in outhouse. Splendid use of intestines as climbing rope. Inane Yoot dialogue sounds much better in Norwegian.

Automatic one-coil deduction for no nudity — highly shocking in a Scandinavian film. Three coils.



And an opinion on the modern, fast-moving zombie:

I understand the impulse that created the speedy zombie. A fast-moving enemy makes for better action scenes, and allows for the sudden "Boo!" moment.

But the real horror of "Night of the Living Dead" was not the individual ghouls, which were relatively easy to subdue.

It was their sheer number, and their inexorable, dumb progress toward the farmhouse.

The nimble zombie, which seems to be quicker-witted as well, is too human. Next thing you know, they'll be talking...oh, wait, we've had that.

No, the original 1968 stumbling, uncoordinated, ramshackle ghouls are much scarier.

Coming Up...

I have three promising flicks to watch this rainy, boring weekend — among them "Dead Snow," the latest in the highly specialized subgenre of Nazi zombie films.

So if you are tired of stupid clothing posts visit again Sunday evening.

Spot the Trad

Rolling

It's the time of year for weather to vary tremendously. Guess which photo contains long johns?

The Wet, Nasty Day, or the Triumph of Frump Over Form:


The Flip Dark Chill Winter Bastard Though Dry, or Stop Me Before I Reread Anthony Burgess Again:




El Hombre Secreto, or Do Republicans Dream of Pink Elephants?