Beloved memories from your childhood are primed for slaughter again. As if the same cast members, stretch of UK property and general lackadaisical approach to the creative process don’t immediately give it away, the shilling-ante slasher Mary Had a Little Lamb emerges from the British colons of the British makers of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, likely the worst movie I’ve seen grace a theater screen. (What’s next, “Three Blind Mice”? Yes, now that you mention it.)
Carla (May Kelly) hosts a true-crime radio show on cases almost as cold as her ratings. On the verge of cancellation, she’s given one week to find fresher content … or else! With a posse of five tagalongs, Carla alights to the woodlands to investigate a missing couple. What her nose for news reveals is ghastly: a kooky crone named Mary (newcomer Christine Ann Nyland) who has a lamb for an adult son and constantly hums the titular nursery rhyme. What are the odds?
Actually, the lamb is an upright man-lamb who’s the product of rape and likes to kill people. Worse, he’s homeschooled.
The movie’s even more grueling second half entails the radio gang walking through overly dark corridors and stairwells while Lamb (as he/it’s credited) and his weapon of choice pursue them. Like the Pooh of the aforementioned turd, Lamb’s head is always stationary with no movable parts. It resembles an emaciated ALF with all of the skin diseases. Attempting to make this menacing, Gaston Alexander resorts to flailing arms and unintelligible gurgles and growls that echo within his mascot head of a costume. Think of a minotaur, but with glued tufts of mangy cotton where the bull noggin would be. Ewe.
After ripping off Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s legendary dinner scene, director Jason Arber (Divide by Zero) rips off Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s iconic ending … and then sticks with its truck for several more beats than even untrained editors know is allowable — so long, you expect a transition into anything but the closing credits. This is not Mary’s only instance of wasted time.
Being less pedestrian than Blood and Honey, this Lamb has a leg up on its relative. We’re talking by a minuscule amount, so be sure to go with something else. If you insist upon being fleeced, however, pair it not with a nice mint sauce, but loads of peppermint schnapps. —Rod Lott