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 The local mad doctor keeps a large sheep embryo in his laboratory where it
grows into a "monstrous 8-foot mutant sheep." The sheep's birth was
precipitated by "[g]aseous vapors from an ancient mine." Also the "racist"
mayor of the town is trying to stop a black man from buying real estate and
this involves an attempted lynching. The sheep escapes from the lab and starts
roaming across the countryside. It blows up a gas station, dances with a
"hippie chick," and gets lassoed by cowboys. The mayor then puts "the damaged
mongoloid beast on display." 1973, 89 minutes, DVD
If you're like me, then you're always at the local bijou on opening night
whenever a new "giant monster on the loose" movie is released. Whether
it's spiders, a praying mantis, grasshoppers, rabbits, or frogs, I'm right
there in the front row, family-sized tub of popcorn and extra large cherry coke
in each grubby paw, ready to cheer on the mutant beasts, regardless of how
minor league the special effects are. It was with a little outrage then, that
I picked up this DVD from Something Weird Video and realized that way back in
1973 a movie about giant sheep had escaped my attention! How could that have
ever happened? Was I so busy listening to Cher sing her smash hit, Half-Breed and reading Once Is Not Enough by Jacqueline Susann once I had returned to the States from Australia where I
had been attending the opening of the Sydney Opera House, that this rolled into
the my local theatre and left before I could get there? As it turns out, I was
not remiss in my duties, as the ample liner notes kindly provided by Something
Weird Video indicated that, inexplicably, this tale of a rampaging sheep never
was released theatrically! How short sighted! Luckily for us, SWV has rescued
this one from the vaults so that we can own our very own copy to watch over and
over again about one time or so. Eddie is a simple sheep rancher (or herder or
whatever they're called) who takes time out from his flock to go to Reno where
he gets lucky with the slot machines and scores himself a pretty good stake.
He hooks up with some questionable characters who take him back to the local
saloon in Silverdale, whereupon some whore promptly steals all his money. They
beat him up when he whines about this hoochie taking his bread and throw his
sheep-loving arse out into the street. As fate would have it, the local mad
scientist (he's got the secret lab up in the old mine called Indian Flats)
picks him up and gives him a ride home. One thing you'll notice is that this
scientist dude, named Professor Clemens, has one of these real important
sounding
cartoon voices like Space Ghost or the Blue Falcon. You know the kind - it's
pretty deep and he sounds like he's really learned except that everything
coming out of his mouth is pure gibberish. Clemens drops Eddie off at the
sheep ranch and tells him to sleep it off. Eddie reunites with his sheep (he
calls them "God's children!") and he has a vision of some crazy stuff with
golden lights and really big sheep (you've got to start paying a minimum of
four dollars a bottle for your wine, man) and the next thing you know he's
horrified when one of his sheep either gives birth to the biggest, nastiest
sheepling you've ever seen or has pretty much shat everything inside of it,
out, into the stable.  If this movie stayed on task and was solely about the wondrous odyssey of a
giant sheep and his befuddled and alcoholic owner, you would have had a classic
on your hands. However, the bulk of the movie deals with (for no apparent
reason) the town of Silverdale (or is it Indian Flats as the liner notes say?)
and its crooked mayor, Mayor Silverdale (now I know his name isn't Mayor Indian
Flats). Mayor Silverdale babbles endlessly about recreating and keeping the
past alive in town and uses this as a reason to refuse to sell mining leases to
Barnstable, a black dude that has shown up in town representing a really
powerful mining company. The real roadblock I think Barnstable suffers from
with the closed-minded locals is this awful cowboy get up he wears for most of
the movie. He's wearing this black and white spotted vest that makes him look
like he's the assistant manager at your local Gateway Country store (and a
personal aside to those of you thinking about buying a new computer - don't get
a Gateway unless your trailer park is right next to one of their retail
stores, cause you'll be over there most of your adult life getting it fixed.).
Silverdale controls the town and he has a right hand man named Maldove that
spends a lot time trying to look menacing in spite of his prissy looks. There
is also a sheriff that Silverdale has in his pocket and you can tell he's a
class act since he's a big fat guy that's prone to wear very tight white
undershirt tank tops with his badge pinned to it! He also runs all the
surveillance equipment so that Silverdale can keep track of what the local mad
scientist is up to. I didn't really understand the point of that, because if
they were worried about him and wanted to shut him down, why would the sheriff
(he also runs the local Radio Shack type store in town) sell them cables and
things to continue with their giant sheep experiments? Okay, Silverdale
politely refuses to sell Barnstable anything and so Barnstable hangs out in the
town trying to convince him otherwise. As fascinating as all this non-wheeling
and dealing is, I paid my money to find out exactly what in tarnation a
Godmonster was. The morning after Eddie had his sheep visions, the professor
and his easy hippie assistant, Mariposa show up at Eddie's sheep farm to check
on him. They find him hiding under a bunch of hay next to a gigantic sheep
embryo. Clemens immediately pulls out his mutant-sized portable tape recorder
(you know how those 70s tape recorders looked - about like 70s women) and
starts babbling about what a gigantic embryo he's found and how important it
is. They load it up (it just looks like a really big, bloody, malformed
cowpie) in the specially designed incubator he carries around in the bed of his
pickup for just such occasions and head back to the Indian Flats Research
Center.  At the lab, Clemens continues his diatribe about various gases and giant sheep
and the movie frequently cuts back to him so that he can dole out more info
about
the area and why there's a giant sheep embryo in his lab. He talks about how
the ancient miners (1800s) used to speak about a strange and terrible
prehistoric beast that roamed deep in the mines and that it was most likely
bunk except for the funky looking fossils that Clemens has found. He takes
Mariposa deep into one of the mines for some reason and all this nasty orange
gas comes out and chokes out Mariposa. Of course, the professor is far ahead
of her in the mine, happily digging out fossils and bones that are conveniently
laying pretty much on top of a pile of dirt (Hey, there's an Archaeopteryx!
) and doesn't realize that she has
passed out until he comes back, babbling on and on about something and smells
something fishy (lay off the pork and beans when we're down this far,
Mariposa!). Clemens gets her and gets out of the mine fast and once they are
up to the surface, this dude is still talking, explaining about how all this
gas down there must have been from the dead prehistoric creature and that it
seeped into the ground and the grazing lands of the sheep and the sheep ate
some of this contaminated stuff and then had a mutant baby. He explains a good
portion of this "Gassy Sheep Theory" while he is walking her back and forth,
trying to get her to shake off the after effects of the gas. I'm sure if she
would have been more coherent, she would have told him that she's had enough
hot, smelly air for one day. At some point during all these gas attacks and
giant sheep outbreaks, Mariposa finds time to fall in love with Eddie and hook
up with him. Of course, once the giant sheep thing is brought back to the lab,
Eddie's role is reduced to standing around the lab, making faces at the sheriff
and instigating a pie fight at the local Bonanza Days festival. In fact, I
would have a hard time telling you who the star of this deal is. It seemed
like we spent most of our time with Silverdale and Barnstable. In fact, we
should probably check back in with Barnstable right about now. As mentioned
previously, there is something called Bonanza Days going on in Silverdale.
Now, don't get too excited, because this isn't some sort of tribute to the
great TV series starring Lorne Greene (probably best known to you as Captain
Adama on the atrocious Battlestar Galatica program or from the classic Alpo
commercials) and Michael Landon (probably best known to you as a guy who played
pious characters on treacly TV series while cheating on his wife in real life).
No, Bonanza Days is one of those horrid affairs where the "old days" are
celebrated with events like parades, gunfighting exhibitions and pie-eating
contests (Didn't you know that miners used to unwind after a tough day of work
with pie-eating contests? And you probably thought they just blew all their
money on hookers and booze!). Barnstable decides to try and cozy up to the
locals by hanging out and being "one of the guys." This is where that
dastardly sheriff puts his nefarious plan into action. He convinces his dog to
act like he's been shot by Barnstable during one of these shooting events
that's going on. This will get the town really P.O.ed at Barnstable and no one
will want to deal with him then. The plan goes off without a hitch and they
even have a funeral for the dog in a church with a little casket! Don't worry
about Rover though, he's okay - the sheriff sent him down to stay with
relatives in Albuquerque ! As you can imagine, the townspeople are completely
mortified by this terrible turn of events (they all loved the sheriff's dog!)
and they refuse to even answer the door when Barnstable comes around to try and
buy up mining leases. Geez, I love a fake dog funeral as much as anyone, but
when are we going to see a giant sheep attack? This scheme perpetrated by the sheriff and his dog should have been the end of
the whole Barnstable storyline allowing us to release the sheep, but for some
reason we still have something like another twenty minutes of anti-Barnstable
plot to go. Okay, remember that really femme right-hand man that Silverdale
has? His name was Maldove or something. Well, he has this thing against
Barnstable like he ignored him at the rally or something and he concocts his
own scheme to get Barnstable out of the picture (only after Barnstable refuses
to do some dirty business deal with him instead of Silverdale - why would
Barnstable care who he deals with, so long as he can get those dang mine
leases?) Maldove smashes a booze bottle upside Barnstable's head, then shoots
himself and puts the gun in the unconscious Barnstable's hand, then has him
arrested for attempted murder. Later Maldove and some of his buddies in the
Society of the 601, what ever that is, bust into the jail, and take Barnstable
out to lynch him. He's rescued by the whore that runs the saloon, and they go
up to Indian Flats in hopes the professor will help. He's worried about a
giant sheep though, so he says no, then the 601 shows up and the professor
agrees to give Barnstable up (though he wasn't going to help him anyway), if
they'll leave his sheep alone or something. Things get out of control at about
this time as the bad guys try to use some type of gas to get Barnstable out of
hiding there and all this gas results in our mammoth mutton finally busting
loose! The Godmonster is now on the warpath and it is a sight to behold. The
filmmakers went with the "guy in a giant sheep suit" with this one and it is
the ugliest, cruddiest looking giant sheep you've ever seen. It lumbers around
on its hind legs and one of its front legs is really shorter than the other
(which hangs limply down) and sometimes it emits a noxious orange gas. The
sheep runs off into wilderness with Mariposa following it. It is at this time
that she tries to talk to the Godmonster and begins dancing with it, but Eddie
(thanks for joining us!) gets jealous and throws a rock at it and it runs off
to terrorize some kids and blow up a gas station. Finally, Clemens and the
mayor join forces to capture the sheep alive. This involves the ridiculous
scene where a bunch of cowboys circle the sheep and lasso it to the ground.
The sheep is put in a cage and driven out to the town dump where the mayor makes
the exciting announcement that the sheep is going to be put on display as a
tourist attraction and that oh, by the way, I went ahead and sold the town out
to this really rich mining dude that Barnstable was working for. The town
revolts and throws trash everywhere, and some people are chased by cowboys and
the truck with the Godmonster on it is pushed down a mountain of trash where it
explodes, thus ending the Godmonster's brief run as a giant-monster threat.
Huh? 
I thought I did pretty well following the barnyard shenanigans of this movie,
but I really don't have any idea what was happening at the end. Who was doing
what to whom and why? This whole business with the mayor and Barnstable,
was alternately boring and confusing, serving to distract from a good story of
a giant sheep run amok. The liner notes seem to allude to the fact that
this is one of those cautionary tales about ecology or pollution or racist
mayors and fake dead dogs, but I don't know what they were trying to tell me.
Is progress good? Or bad? The mayor is obviously a bad guy, but he represents
an anti-progress view, at least until he suddenly sells the town out at the
end. Was it about pollution and too much waste? That didn't have anything to
do with an prehistoric monster's farts creating a giant sheep. What was the
point of all the stuff that happened at the dump? The images there looked like
they were trying to warn us about our over-consumption, but why were cowboys
and a secret society chasing people down the garbage mountain? And why did
they blow up the poor Godmonster? I'll confess that I sat in rapt attention
throughout most of the film, mainly because I wasn't sure if I was really
seeing what has happening and also because I was giddy with anticipation over
the much-promised giant sheep, but I felt a bit deflated by it all once it was
finished, the fatal flaw being not enough Godmonster and his wacky tale and way
too much real estate bickering between guys in ugly cowboy outfits. Since this
is a Something Weird Video DVD, you get a giant sheep movie and much, much
more! They also throw in some educational films from the fifties about
controlling rats and flies! You get the dude who played Professor Clemens
singing his hit song You Cannot Fart Around With Love, a tune as catchy as its title, and one that we hope someone like Elton John
covers sometime soon. There's the fifteen minute long short film called The Geek which involves hippie campers finding Bigfoot and regretting it. This Bigfoot
dude was played by a guy in a real awful costume and his pecker was hanging
out of it! Anyway he ends up hooking up dog-style with some hippie chicks in a
scene that they must have cut of the Six Million Dollar Man's encounter with
Bigfoot. You also get a seventy-minute long feature (it's called The Girl and the Geek on the video packaging and Passion in the Sun in the movie's title screen) about a stripper and a circus geek who get mixed
up in some chase or other, but all I recall is this ugly chick running through
the woods, half naked carrying a brief case while she was chased by a couple of
thugs. Truly awful, forgettable stuff, that the folks at SWV knew didn't
deserve its own DVD release (thanks guys!). All in all, a spectacular
compilation of strange trash, you've probably never seen before (unless your
relatives made this things). No barnyard monster-movie fan should be without
it!
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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