Film Brain - and his disconcerting Mickey voice - reviews this slasher, one of several designed to exploit the public domain status of the world's most famous mouse. Oh gosh...
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00:00Hello, and welcome to Projector, and on this episode, the mouse is loose, and it's full scream ahead in Screamboat.
00:07Partender and aspiring artist Selina, played by Alison Pittel, bores the last Staten Island
00:28Fairy of the Night just before it sets sail. But below deck, mutating mouse Willy, played by David
00:34Howard Thornton, has been released after 90 years in hiding, taking control of the ferry and slashing
00:40his way through the passengers. We're currently in a major time for the public domain, especially when
00:46it comes to movies. Up until fairly recently, the public domain in the US had largely been stalled
00:51by copyright extensions, most prominently by the Sony Bono Act in 1998, which meant that, at a minimum,
00:57works would be covered by copyright for 95 years at least. That meant that works made in 1923 would
01:04not enter the public domain until 2019, almost totally freezing the US public domain for decades.
01:11And the public domain is important, not least of which because anyone can make their own adaptations,
01:17and that's a big reason why characters like Sherlock Holmes have endured is because their copyright had
01:22lapsed. When Winnie the Pooh entered the public domain in 2022, a group of filmmakers capitalized with a
01:27quickly filmed horror version of the characters subtitled Blood and Honey. It didn't matter the
01:32film was complete and total Pooh, the shock value of using a beloved children's book character as a
01:37slasher film meant it got huge press attention and kicked off a whole sub-genre for slashers using
01:42public domain IP. But the big prize for these horror producers has been Mickey Mouse, the beloved
01:48mascot of Disney, as Steamboat Willie entered the public domain in 2024 and several parties quickly
01:54seized upon it. This is of course deeply ironic, as Disney were a major force behind the Sonny Bono
02:01Act, which was derisively nicknamed the Mickey Mouse Act because it was largely to keep the
02:06character in copyright. And it shouldn't be overlooked that many Disney animated films like Snow White and
02:11the Seven Dwarfs, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast were all adaptations of public domain IPs.
02:18But Screenboat can't even claim the prize of being the first Mickey Mouse horror film which goes to the
02:23Mousetrap which was spat out last year using the low ambition strategy of just sticking your killer
02:28in a costume party mask like Blood and Honey did. And it's not even the second, as days before it,
02:35there was Mouseboat Massacre and both of them passed without anyone noticing or caring because this trick
02:41is already getting old hat. Screenboat, however, is garnering a little bit more attention because a
02:47fraction more effort was applied. It's directed by Steven Lamorte, who directed The Mean One,
02:53an unofficial horror movie version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. That wasn't a public domain IP,
03:00but it was another example of a children's book character done as a slasher. And here he's reteaming
03:05with David Harold Thornton, who played The Mean One but is best known as Art the Clown in the Terrifier series,
03:12none of which I've seen because, really, extreme gore just isn't usually my thing. This also has
03:19some of the producers of the Terrifier films on board too. Now, I will fully admit I adored Mickey
03:25Mouse as a kid. I mean, I'm wearing the shirt right now. I've got quite a few bits of Mickey
03:31Mouse paraphernalia elsewhere, but that doesn't mean I can't enjoy him as a slasher killer. Plus,
03:36Disney is notoriously defensive about their copyright, so this is a proud bit of copyright trolling by the
03:42filmmakers. And right from the off, they try to rile the feathers at Disney by having a quote from
03:47Walt himself at the top of the film saying that a kick in the teeth might be the best thing in the
03:51world for you. Although, rather curiously, he's attributed as just Walt D. And there is a bit of
03:58hesitation in that the killer mouse is actually named Willy after the short's title and not Mickey.
04:04But generally, it is a bit of differentiation because if you try to do killer Mickey merchandise,
04:09then that may well be something the Disney Company might come after you for.
04:13But the film's biggest and most obvious dig at Disney is the sequence where Willy's backstory is
04:19revealed. Where a captain named Walter, or Walt as he likes to be known, discovered Willy,
04:24who was the result of scientific experiments to make a child-friendly mascot. This whole bit is done
04:30as an animated sequence in the Starless Steamboat Willy short. So Willy has the exact likeness of classic
04:36Mickey, like the one on my shirt that I keep pointing to. And Walt is caricatured as the man himself.
04:42And it concludes with the old timer telling this story saying that the reason why Willy's boat became
04:48the ferry is they're constantly recycling old parts to cut costs. Which seems to me to be a jab at the
04:54long line of Disney remakes recently. This is by far the ballsiest, most brazen part of the whole film.
05:02And I was stunned because it is so near the mark, I was surprised they could even get away with it.
05:08This is the filmmakers taunting Disney's legal department like a red rag to a bull. And as such,
05:14it's probably the best bit about the film. It will no doubt get posted on YouTube very quickly.
05:20And when it does, those two minutes will almost entirely be the only part worth watching.
05:26Because almost everything else about this is utter junk.
05:31If there is anything else worth salvaging, it's largely David Howard Thornton as Willy,
05:35who is clearly having a lot of fun, decked out in a ridiculous costume that looks like Mickey had
05:41a regrettable one night stand with Freddy Fazbear. Thornton has carved a niche out for himself playing
05:47dialogue free cartoonist serial killers, and this is no exception. Willy doesn't do the classic
05:53falsetto Mickey Mouse voice. Yes, I can do that. It's very unfortunate.
05:58Likely because that part is still copyrighted for a few years.
06:02So instead, he either laughs or whistles like he does in the Steamboat Willy short.
06:07And I've got to be honest, he doesn't really sound like Mickey so much as just itchy from
06:13Itchy and Scratchy, especially when he's laughing at the sadistic suffering that he's doling out.
06:19Even the costume doesn't even really look much like Mickey, either because the filmmakers
06:23wanted to create their own identity or because they were still being wary.
06:27So most of the film is kind of like the mean one, where we know what it's based on,
06:32but there's enough plausible deniability to claim this as a parody.
06:37But Thornton finds a way of giving Willy a sense of personality with his physicality and comic timing,
06:42and that's accentuated by the fact that Willy is mouse size.
06:45Which means that Thornton was probably green screened into most of this film later,
06:49and barely interacted with the cast during filming, because a lot of his shots are very tight close-ups.
06:55The effects that shrink Thornton are almost adorably terrible,
06:59and Willy's scale changes from shot to shot almost as much as the characters in Cats.
07:04In fact, I'm not gonna lie, it straight out reminded me of a Charles Band film.
07:09But one of the few laughs I had during this was Willy gladly whistling away at the wheel of the ferry,
07:14while standing on the captain's freshly slain corpse.
07:17And Screamboat should have embraced more of that twisted energy,
07:20because at least then it would have been fun.
07:22Which it ain't.
07:24If it seems like I spent a lot of time thinking of legal defenses for this film,
07:28then that's probably because I needed something to occupy myself with,
07:31because Screamboat is so bloody boring.
07:34Emphasis on bloody.
07:36The setup is painfully horror movie by numbers,
07:39just throwing a bunch of people on a ship and picking them off,
07:42pretty much replicating Jason Takes Manhattan,
07:45except in the opposite direction, and they never get off the boat.
07:49So basically, none of the good bits of a crap film you don't even want to mow your film on in the first place.
07:56To make matters worse, the cast is filled with such awful, horrendous characters,
08:01that it's more relief when they get dispatched,
08:03because at least then you don't have to listen to them anymore.
08:07It's almost like the main qualification for the casting was the ability to do a broad New York accent,
08:12and call someone a jerk off occasionally, because this is a veritable smorgasbill of terrible wooden acting.
08:18By far, the worst of these are a group of obnoxious drunk women on a birthday party
08:23that Selina is desperately trying to get away from,
08:26who I think are meant to be based on the Disney princesses.
08:29They've got names like Cindy, Jazzy, Bella, Ariana, and Rory.
08:35I know they're meant to be shallow caricatures that exist to up the body count,
08:39they're meant to be kind of influencer types you want to see die,
08:43but they're so utterly insufferable and unfunny,
08:45it's like watching a horror film from 2008.
08:48It's a gag that really doesn't work,
08:51and there's room for a ruthless send up of Disney in the vein of someone like Joe Dante.
08:55It's not even a hard target,
08:57but most of the film sells for cheap shots that don't even land.
09:01It certainly doesn't help the actors as the script has tons of crowbarting quotes and references
09:06to other Disney films, from The Happiest Place on Earth, to A Whole New World, to Let It Go.
09:14That's almost as big a groan as someone saying,
09:17this is going to be a fucked up cartoon someday.
09:19Oh, Screamboat, you're slaying me.
09:24Even the nominal main characters are barely characterised.
09:27Alison Pittel's Selina is ostensibly struggling with whether or not
09:31she should give up being an artist,
09:32but that's an arc that's almost completely forgotten until it's resolved at the very end
09:37by her doing absolutely nothing to change in the process.
09:41Someone just gives her art book back to her after she throws it in the bin.
09:45That's your resolution!
09:47Unfortunately for Pittel, any chance to escape this with some dignity dies at the point
09:51where she has to do an embarrassing bit of dress-up in the climax.
09:54Alongside her is Jessie Posey as Pete,
09:57who reluctantly assumes the title of Captain Pete.
10:01Get it? Like the antagonist in the cartoon?
10:04And Posey's presence likely explains why his better-known brother Tyler shows up in an extended cameo,
10:10probably shot in an afternoon, where he sits at a radio for the entire film.
10:14The terrible writing makes clear just how rushed together Screamboat is,
10:18despite having a little bit more effort than its fellow Mickey Mashes.
10:23It just puts its killer mouse on the water with a bunch of people to kill and just calls it a day.
10:28Even the weirdness of staying on the Staten Island ferry of all places
10:31can be explained by easy opportunism.
10:34The film was shot on a ferry that Saturday Night Live members
10:36Colin Jost and Pete Davidson bought in 2022.
10:40No, really.
10:41All the Mickey stuff in this movie.
10:43And that is the film's oddest detail.
10:46Unfortunately, even as a vehicle for kill scenes, Screamboat sinks.
10:50Most of the film is just the cast wandering around dimly lit corridors endlessly,
10:55with no sense of geography and even less tension.
10:58I mean, it's really saying something when this horror film
11:01is less scary and intense than Runaway Brain.
11:05And it isn't even for a shortage of deaths,
11:07because there's plenty of those every few minutes.
11:09And to their credit, they're practical and rubbery.
11:13They're not always very convincing, but there's a certain charm to their roughness.
11:17It certainly isn't a gorefest of terrified proportions.
11:21It's playing much more for laughs.
11:23As far as I'm concerned, that's a relief, not a criticism.
11:26But a lot of the slaying is clumsily staged and often so dark,
11:31you can barely even see what is happening half the time.
11:34The central gag of a killer Mickey Mouse runs out of, um, steam,
11:38well before the halfway mark.
11:40And by that time, he's slaughtered most of his way through the ferry,
11:43which gives the film almost nowhere to go.
11:46And the filmmakers clearly knew this because this is one of those horror films
11:49that keeps introducing new dead meats,
11:51who are somehow completely oblivious to literally everything that has been going on
11:56to instantly get killed off.
11:58If you told me these were reshoots that were just added to up the body count,
12:02yeah, I believe you.
12:03Because they're so disconnected from the rest of the film.
12:06The most shameless of these is a scene that's clearly meant to court controversy
12:10by throwing in some gratuitous nudity.
12:13Which means that Willy can chop off someone's, um, Willy.
12:17Haha, penis!
12:19But none of that can help with the absolutely leaden second half
12:22that moves so painfully slowly,
12:24it makes the 100 minute running time feel like it's at least twice as long.
12:28And frankly, 100 minutes for such a one joke movie is about 20 minutes too many.
12:34In fact, I got so bored at one point,
12:36that I actually started to wonder how long the Saturn Iron Ferry takes,
12:40because I've never been to New York,
12:42but surely it doesn't take as long as it does in the movie,
12:46even with Willy taking them off course.
12:48So I looked it up, and it turns out that it takes 25 minutes or so.
12:53And I think that pretty much says it all.
12:55In the time it takes to watch Screen Boat,
12:58you could ride the ferry about four times,
13:01and it'd be less tedious and repetitive.
13:03Screen Boat definitely isn't the worst of a very cynical subgenre.
13:06I mean, there's far too much competition for that to be easily decided,
13:10and it gets some minor points for at least having
13:13some degree of creativity and invention,
13:15when some examples don't even attempt that.
13:18But this is still bad trash.
13:20I didn't dislike it because I was shocked or offended,
13:24because at least that would imply that it inspired some other emotion in me
13:28other than a weary sigh.
13:30I disliked it because it's cheap, sloppy, mean-spirited, and mostly joyless,
13:35aside from the moments of Disney-baiting.
13:38It's not so bad, it's good.
13:40It's just bad.
13:41Even that edginess feels so calculated and obvious,
13:44just jumping on a bandwagon of slashers whose point is so dull by now,
13:48it could be a butter knife.
13:51One day, someone will do something interesting with these characters
13:53who have entered the public domain.
13:55For now, though, a lot of costume shops are having George as a Mickey Mouse mask,
14:00especially because this film ends teasing a sequel.
14:03That's more a threat than a promise.
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14:27Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, feeding out.
14:36Ha ha!
14:37Penis!
14:40Oh dear.