Barn of the Blood Llama (1997)

Perfect cast and a good story

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

The first must-see film of the year.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

It has been two full years since I bore witness to this unholy mess and my brain still hasn't shaken loose the horrors within. It is probably in my best interest that a copy of the film is not to be found anywhere because the effects can be quite damaging. All I can tell you is that I have seen it twice and I know that another viewing wouldn't help me understand this movie any further. But, you know, I don't think that the movie was ever meant to make any sense. The plot lays in about six different pieces stitched together like a failed Frankenstein experiment.The movie is in about six different pieces all haphazardly stitched together into one insane monstrosity. One involves a pair of nutty inbred hillbilly brothers named Jug and Gibby who own a Llama farm named "The World 'O Wool". Now, just from that description you might think that there are some tributes to Deliverance and a new definition of "animal husbandry" is just waiting to be noted. Well there are, but I'll spare you the details and move on.The farm includes a research facility run by a certain Dr. Albert who has a fondness for a certain Blessie Sue, one of the farms attractions. He is overtaken with grief when his beloved is struck by a passing motorist on the day that he and Blessie are to be wed (a casket built for a dead llama has to be seen to be believed). The motorist is Toni, a likable city girl who spends most of the movie waiting for her car to be fixed. Actually she's being set up as bait. Toni issues my favorite bit of dialogue: "Does everything in Texas spit toxic cud?" Also into this mess comes Bock a rockstar/songwriter on a comeback tour who comes to Dr. Albert so the doc can cure his case of writer's block. He is accompanied by three bimbettes called Janet, Bea and Tiffany who are promised a part in his new video. After all the introductions are made, it is revealed to us what the doc's experiment includes: He is creating genetically enhanced llamas who have one fatal flaw in that they go crazy when in the presence of menstruating women. Please don't ponder that as long as I did, it will give you an excruciating case of eye strain.With this element in place, you can bet your bottom dollar that one of Bock's strumpets will flower into womanhood right there on the farm. This causes a very strange (not to mention long) killing spree as the beloved llamas go about killing anything that moves. Its that bad! I'm not absolutely certain what this movie is suppose to be about, nor do I understand the presence of three women on their way to the bowling alley who stop by the farm to get their balls waxed. Nor can understand why the movie shifts back and forth between color and black and white. Nor can I understand the presence of a man with a ping-pong ball attached to his eye-patch. Nor can I understand the presence of reps from the Dali Llama selling canned brains and helpfully offering that "When you ask for something as special as a brain even Buddha is going to give you the run around." Your brain cannot comprehend this movie. You can't begin to understand the mental knots that this movie can tie in your brain. But you can rest easy in the knowledge that you've never seen this movie and you can be smarter than I was an avoid it at all costs. I wasted two hours on this movie, two hours at which I could have been furthering the fulfillment of my own life. Two hours, gone up in smoke. Excuse me, I have to got jump off a bridge.

This was one of those movies that was so bad it was hard to watch. At times, however, I caught a definite glimmer that the filmmakers were kidding us and knew exactly what they were doing. I have to say it kept me watching, just to see what was going to happen next. The usual young-misses-driving-through-a-small-town-in-Texas-find-trouble plot line went all wacka-wacka early in the picture, and it got us into the seamy underside of the business of llama farming. A farm called World O Wool outside Justiceburg, TX proves to be a den of incest, veterinary experiments gone terribly awry, unorthodox youth-enhancing treatments, interspecies romance, brain transplants, and the illegal detainment of bowlers, among other things. It all comes together in the end, believe it or not. I like this one without respecting it in any way.

As you may be able to tell from the title this is a slasher movie. But, it is not, repeat NOT in anyway an ironic Scream type parody. This is the film that the "seen to be believed" cliche was made for. All on a budget of exactly no dollars and no cents.Then there is the script. Lines like "How can you stand there and talk about something as ridiculous as that? You know what that Llama meant to me" just seem natural in this. The "obligatory music video scene" is just priceless, and this is probably the only film you're ever likely to see with a Llama funeral in it.And the cameo at the end from the greatest Llama of them all, the Dalai Llama (sic.) fits in almost as well as the "acting".

Shot on more film stocks than Oliver Stone ever dreamed of, BARN has it all: bestiality, cheap tramps, rock star hitchhikers, llama funerals, severed heads, brain transplants, haggis. This satire on rural horror movies is truly a nightmare of bad animal husbandry gone awry. It's also a hoot. Even fans of Roger Corman and early Sam Raimi (Evil Dead) will not be prepared for it. The performances are so deliciously raw and over the top The MST3K guys would shudder in gleeful terror.