Standout horror flicks are an endangered species, with sightings of respectable send-ups of same almost extinct. Black Sheep, Jonathan King’s feature début as writer-director will not alter this situation, even though the film displays a sophomoric ability to smile at itself, an appropriately amateurish cast, and hokey but most welcome non-computer genre effects.

A midnight screening on top of Peter Jackson’s homemade sick flick Bad Taste aka Roast of the Day, was the initial impetus for fellow Kiwi King to “explode” their nation’s reputation for scenery and sheep, building from a shock contrast between the romantic bucolic former and the docile ruminants’ metamorphosis into unlikely aggressive carnivores. Add recent controversy over DNA and stem cell research, cloning -- Edinburgh’s 1997 Dolly was, remember, a ewe -- to the warhorse of an obsessive science disastrously tampering with Nature, flesh out stick-figure humans to initiate and resolve things, and you’ve got it.

Broad humor, including “sheep-shagging” and other puns, lifts this predictable B-movie a shade above the inanity of most of its recent brethren. That, along with the Richard Taylor Weta Workshop actual physical (if ill-lit) prostheses, makeup, animatronics (basically, remote-controlled or pre-positioned mechanized puppets), rubber innards and fake splatter, imparts some saving soul to the whole.

The Jurassic Park franchise, among others, will occur to younger viewers, but, with fashionable genetic engineering here replacing H.G. Wells’s original anti-vivisection stance, The Island of Dr. Moreau (or . . . of Lost Souls) is a more direct ancestor: “humanimals” courtesy of a hammy sadistic colonialist Charles Laughton, a Burt Lancaster, an affectedly silly Marlon Brando.

Be it collateral damage from chemical waste, atomic testing or mad scientists, the conflict, complication and resolution are straightforward, as Henry Oldfield (Nathan Meister’s first full-length rôle) returns to the family’s rural Glenolden holdings on North Island. Hardly the scion of five generations of sheep farmers, he has suffered from a paralyzing dread of those timid animals since he was ten (Nick Fenton) and, just terrified by his older brother (Eli Kent), was suddenly faced with their father’s accidental (or was it?) death.

An innocent and neurotic twenty-five, he sells the land and buildings to sibling Angus (Peter Feeney), thinking thus to close the unpleasant past and begin with a clean slate. But a nightmarish present must first be wiped clean: for profit and fame, Angus has set up a secret experimental station where sheep are tortured in the name of genetics, to develop a sturdier Oldfield breed that will replace the dominant merinos, Drysdales and Romneys.

Headed by mannish Dr. Rush (Tandi Wright), with whom Angus has had an anomalous affaire, the lab-coats discard their goop into an open Offal Pit, inviting the ecological disaster being protested by a nearby vegan commune from which hippie Grant (Thoreau look-alike Oliver Driver) and naïve Experience (Danielle Mason, another feature début) have come to sabotage the works.

Science’s sludge produces film-form monster results. Hundreds if not thousands of wooly ovine extras become murderous mutants, even to a weresheep (Kevin McTurk), with overbites that transform nice young manager Tucker (Tammy Davis), various invited observers, and eventually villainous sheep-lecher Angus, into hoofed predators that, when not slashing flesh, pursue fated-for-each-other Henry and Experience through flimsy doors and into dark barns and de rigueur tunnels.

SPOILER ALERT

Aided by resistant Tucker and housekeeper Mrs. Mac (Glenis Levestam), previously up to her cooking elbows in gooey gizzards, the pure of heart will win out with an antidote, to save their country from “revolting . . . Frankensheep,” though not before the bad guys get hoist with their own petard (or propeller, related to the spiral double helix of DNA).

The heroine’s misunderstood chakras, the body’s energy-channel centers in yoga, point the way to restoration of harmony and peaceful return to “your roots” on the land. Recognizing “little to recommend [in Angus’] extreme position [but not] rejecting outright . . . the use of science to improve on nature,” King nevertheless grounds his parable in the happy ending intended to soothe teen males’ dates. They and their macho mates may enjoy Black Sheep, but the film’s trial of innocence through gore will probably not do for anyone else. 

(Released by IFC First Take; not rated by MPAA.)