As cattle to Texas and reindeer to Lapland, so are sheep to New Zealand -- the docile domestic protein source of choice. But what happens when the meat acquires a taste for the customers?

The grisly, gristly answer is found in "Black Sheep," a deadpan horror satire about a genetic-engineering experiment that turns cud-chewing sheep into man-chewing carnivores, opening Friday at the Harris Theater. When you fool around with Mother Nature, well -- as my own sainted mother would say -- then there'll be tears.

	Ken George Peter Feeney stars as Angus in "Black Sheep," directed by Jonathan King. Click photo for larger image. 'Black Sheep' Director: Jonathan King. Starring: Nathan Meister, Danielle Mason, Peter Feeney. Rating: R for extremely graphic bloody images and violence. Web site: blacksheepthemovie.com/

Writer-director Jonathan King opens the proceedings with halcyon landscape shots of young brothers Henry and Angus Oldfield idyllically herding a flock of sheep. "Good on ya, boy!" their dad says to Henry -- while the elder Angus scowls in jealousy.

Good and Bad Shepherds thus established, cut to 15 years later: Henry (Nathan Meister) has long absented himself from the farm due to a crippling case of ovinophobia -- the pathological fear of sheep -- but is now returning to settle up with Angus (Peter Feeney) for his $2 million share of the property. His therapist told him to come, but as sheep surround his taxi, Henry has an ovinophobic anxiety attack. So much for psychotherapy in New Zealand.

Nearby, two radical animal-rights activists are spying on the place, preparing to make a strike for sheep's rights. These bleating-heart liberals -- a hippie space-cadet girl named Experience (Danielle Mason) and gonzo goon Grant (Oliver Driver) -- are anything but sheepish. Grant grabs, then stupidly drops, a bio-hazard specimen jar containing mutant mutton -- a kind of "Alien" Lamb Chop with oversized choppers.

The gore in this Inconvenient Fiction has nothing to do with Al. It starts with lamby-pie latching onto Grant's right ear. Once bitten, the twice-shy vegan acquires a taste for blood himself -- turning into a werewool. What started out Hitchcockian now becomes Romeroan. Sheep zombies start multiplying, dividing and subtracting humans from their turf. It's Night & Day of the Living Dead Livestock.

Mastermind of the sheep's transmutation is starchy mad scientist Dr. Rush (Tandi Wright). Charged with genetically engineering a better breed, she took it a few steps further and, now, sheep may safely graze on her lab assistants.

Meanwhile, Angus (Dei or Diaboli?) has a little mutant lamb, its fleece is white as snow, but unveiling it to a group of foreign investors triggers a stampede-rampage of its ravenous relatives -- zombie sharks in sheep's clothing.

Thwarting them falls to Henry and Experience, but they're in deep sheepdip. "My God," she says, surveying one bloody scene, "the feng shu of this room is terrible!" When they fall into a well-hole of rotten sheep guts, she lights an aromatherapy candle. Will Henry's pal Tucker (Tammy Davis) and gun-totin' Mrs. Mac (Glenis Levestam) come to their rescue in time?

Funny moments like the globalization investors' massacre are made funnier by their relative rarity. This "splatstick" is in the grand tradition of Sam Raimi and King's fellow New Zealander Peter Jackson. Like the latter's "Dead Alive" (1992), in which monkey bites produced similar zombies, or "Night of the Lepus" (1972), in which 150-pound rabbits threatened the globe, King's shock-flock-and-awe mixes mayhem with black comedy. Limbs, lips and noses are bitten off, entrails are yanked out. It's a shame nobody reads entrails anymore. There's enough here to fill a year's worth of Entrail-Readers Digest.

Mostly physical (rather than digital) special F/X give "Black Sheep" a nice throwback look to the days when you couldn't simulate evisceration or metamorphosis by just a mouse click. When they pull the wool over Tucker's eyes in his transitioning from man to sheep, it's reminiscent of "American Werewolf in Paris."

No baaa-humbug philosophical pretense here, just ovine mayhem (one wag has dubbed it "The Violence of the Lambs") appealing to fans of "serious" zombie movies and spoofs thereof -- roughly half-way between "Dawn" and "Shaun" of the Dead.

Meister and Mason play it straight and well, but I have a brilliant substitute-casting suggestion for the sequel: Norma and Harry Shearer. Who better to handle sheep than the Shearers? And, though Victoria Kelly's eerie music is excellent here, it's obvious that the second "Sheep" score should be composed by Ewe-2.