I love Mega Snake (2007)! I can’t help it. Think what you will. Over the years I’ve probably seen damn near every Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie ever made and a lot of them are fairly forgettable once they are over (doesn’t stop me from watching though). Mega Snake, on the other hand, is both memorable and fun.

It starts out 20 years ago in a church full of snake handlers. Young Les and his brother Duff watch helplessly as their father dies after a poisonous snake bite. Nobody in the congregation helps even though little Les is screaming “Help him! Call a doctor!” 20 years later Les (Michael Shanks) grows up to be an EMT afraid of snakes, and Duff (John T. Woods) is annoying and buys poisonous snakes for snake wranglers at the Holiest Fire Church of Christ. In search of two deadly carolina pygmies, Duff goes to a shop where you can conveniently get both a tattoo and a deadly snake. The shop is run by Leonard Screamin’ Hawk, a no nonsense Native American that lets Duff know exactly how annoying he is. Leonard has one particular snake that is not for sale, because it is really super deadly and sacred. This snake has a very cool Native American name that I cannot really pronounce or spell, but basically it is a really awesome snake that has rules you must obey. Kind of like a mogwai but different.

Never let the snake out of the jar
Never let the snake eat anything living
Never fear the heart of the snake

So, Duff takes off with the snake, breaks the first rule and a series of events lead to the creation of Mega Snake. There is also an amusing side story with Les and his inability to have a committed relationship with his dream girl Erin (Siri Baruc). Many of the characters are entertaining exagerated sterotypes. My favorites are the hilarious hillbillies who load up a pick-up truck full of make shift weapons then proceed to drive around playing loud rock music in attempt to lure Mega Snake to them. Also good is the chauvinistic know it all park ranger Big Bo (Todd Jensen) who doesn’t believe Mega Snake exists until it eats several of his co-workers. Another highlight of the film is when Mega Snake goes to the county fair and bites the heads off of people while they are riding carnival rides. Timing really is everything.

In the end Mega Snake is as big as a dinosaur. Can a man afraid of snakes have the courage to take on Mega Snake?

“It’s big, it’s bad and it bites!”

Mega Snake tagline

Black Sheep (written and directed by Jonathan King) is set on a huge sheep farm in New Zealand where two brothers Angus and Henry live and work with their father. The older brother Angus has a leg brace and is quite jealous of his younger brother receiving more attention from their father. Angus kills Henry’s pet sheep and traumatizes him by wearing the sheep’s carcass. The cruel prank is interupted by the housekeeper who tells the boys their father has died in an accident. Years later, Angus (Peter Feeney) is running the farm, and Henry (Nathan Meister) has a crippling fear of sheep. At his therapist’s suggestion Henry travels to the farm to face his fears. Meanwhile two environmentalists have snuck onto the farm to take photographs and collect evidence against the genetic research laboratory that resides there. One of them goes a bit crazy and steals a biohazardous container with a deformed sheep fetus inside. While running from the laboratory staff he trips and the container with the sheep fetus breaks open. The contaminated fetus bites him and a nearby sheep, and that is how the contamination began.

I knew I had to watch this film after seeing the trailer. The tag line is actually “Get ready for the Violence of the Lambs”. How could I or anyone resist? I’ve enjoyed watching Black Sheep (2007) several times now, and each time I watch it I pick up on a new aspect of the film that either makes it funnier or grosser. Well acted and produced, Black Sheep is the perfect mixture of farm, gore, and humor. I think a farm is the perfect setting for a horror film. It’s isolated and supposed to be peaceful, and to me sheep are a hilarious villain. I’ve only seen sheep at a petting zoo, and they just seem so harmless and dimwitted that it adds an extra element of amusement to see them eat someone alive. As if it weren’t bad enough to have body parts eaten by genetically altered sheep, the sheep infect and alter the genetics of those they bite. Thats right, if you are bitten you mutate into a part human part pissed off sheep creature called a were-sheep. Really, I cannot say enough good things about this film.