Beware The Ides Of March! For Julius Caesar it was a dire prophesy of death. For Bob Bergland (bass), Mike Borch (drums), Larry Millas (keys/guitars) and Jim Peterik, it was more like a harbinger of 50 years of rock and roll fame. The band started out as the Shon-Dels in Berwyn just outside of Chicago. The name turned out to be a conflict with another group, and it was changed to BattMann And The Boy Wonders. Of course, that didn't stick, but Bergland's penchant for paying attention in literature classes led them to The Ides Of March. The lads were only around 15 at the time. Fifty years later, the band is out performing the old hits and still writing new songs.

To be fair, the band wasn't really together all of that time. Jim Peterik went on to have a pretty strong career with the band Survivor. He was the chief writer in Ides Of March and filled that role in Survivor, penning hits like The Search Is Over and Eye Of The Tiger for a Rocky film. He also wrote hits for the band .38 Special like Hang On Loosely. From the mid 70's until the early 90’s, Ides Of March was pretty much inactive. Reuniting for a local festival that wanted to pay tribute to them, the band slipped into the old groove and has been touring and recording ever since.

“That’s exactly what a zombie would say.”

It has been some time since I’ve been able to watch a parody film and speak about it fondly afterwards. If memory serves, the last time that occurred was A Haunted House. (The sequel was an obvious money grab.) Now, I wouldn’t quite put The Walking Deceased in the same caliber of that film, but it does manage to deliver enough crowd-pleasing hijinks to entertain.

When picking up a copy of Jonathan King’s Black Sheep, you know exactly what you are getting into: a lot of bloodthirsty sheep. For about 83 minutes, the film delivers exactly what is promised on the front cover. That being said, the film is definitely catered to a rather specific audience, consisting of people who would actually want to watch Black Sheep. However, hiding under the implied lunacy, is a rather intelligent pastiche of the genre tropes put forth by its many predecessors.

King’s directorial debut focuses on the Oldfield brothers, Henry (Nathan Meister) and Angus (Peter Feeney). Still traumatized by a childhood incident involving his pet lamb, Henry (now terrified by sheep) returns home to sell Angus his inheritance of the farmland, in hopes of leaving his trauma behind him. Unbeknownst to Henry, Angus has turned the once beautiful farm into a laboratory dedicated to genetically modifying the DNA of sheep.

This film did not hold my interest at all. I know, I know…kind of a crude way to start off a review. However, I just don’t see the point in sugarcoating my feelings about this film. I had envisioned a completely different movie in my head before popping the disc into the Blu-ray player, and the idea in my head and what was displayed did not match up in the slightest. Perhaps that is my fault; I know better than to go into a film with expectations. And on that front, I will accept my role in my displeasure with the overall product. However, Housekeeping did nothing to help its case, in my opinion.

The plausibility of the film was a major factor in my inability to connect with the story. A young medical student named Lucy (Adriana Solis) is forced to take on a crap job in order to support a brother in trouble. Okay sound premise, I can get behind this; I have seen many a tale of a responsible sibling being forced to do something they don’t want to do to bail out a sibling whose only talent is making the former’s life more difficult. It’s the delivery that I struggled with.