Released: 2nd April
Seen: 26th May
On the 28th of December last year, I subjected myself to the absolutely horrific piece of garbage known as The Mouse Trap which had the distinct honour of being the first horror film to take advantage of the fact that Steamboat Willie entered the public domain. That film was so god awful that it made it to the top of my worst of the year list, an honour it would’ve gotten even if last year was a normal year for me where there were 10 films on such a list. It was a truly putrid film that was the perfect example of a film made to cheaply cash in on something being public domain. No cleverness, no joy, just a shitty generic slasher with a Mickey Mouse mask on because you could legally get away with it. At the end of my review of that “film” I pointed out that the next film that was going to play with the idea of Mickey Mouse as a killer would be called Screamboat and all I wanted was for it to be somewhat better than The Mouse Trap was…well, Screamboat is the exact film I was hoping for when I heard that they were making a horror movie about Steamboat Willie.
Screamboat takes place aboard the Staten island ferry on a late night trip where a bunch of complete randoms, including a bachelorette party, a mother and son, some colourful locals, an Emergency Medical Technician named Amber (Amy Schumacher) and our main heroine Selena (Allison Pittel) are just trying to get home. The ship has a pretty large crew but the one who we’re going to probably care about the most is lovable deckhand Pete (Jesse Posey). With everyone on board and the ferry heading out things would be OK, except that also on board is a mouse that’s roughly a foot and a half tall, has a pissed off look in his beady little eyes and a desire to kill every single person on board. That little rodent is Steamboat Willie (David Howard Thornton) and he’s going to make sure that the famous orange ship is red by the end of the night.
It would be fair to say that I am a sucker for cheap silly horror films that take public domain works and flip them about to make something stupid and scary. I enjoyed Blood and Honey 2, I thought Popeye the Slayer Man was a ton of fun, I am the target audience for this nonsense and Screamboat is exactly my kind of trash. Screamboat works because it gets why “Steamboat Willie but a shitty slasher film” is a hilarious idea and it plays that idea to its logical extreme which makes for a fun time. It gets that no one is going to take this seriously as a horror film, it’s a big dumb joke for dummies and it plays it exactly like that. It’s playing up the cheese factor, it’s leaning in as far as it can to make sure it hits what’s funny about this concept and that honestly makes for an endearing viewing experience. After a while it’s hard not to be charmed by the pointed silliness of it all, they put actual effort in because they understood the assignment and that should be respected.
Is Screamboat the best written movie on the planet? No, it’s overloaded with Disney puns and dialogue that can border on expositional but it’s also a movie called Screamboat, you shouldn’t be expecting anything other than silly puns and corny dialogue and that’s what you get. It’s the little touches like naming main characters after Disney characters, throwing in silly references to the films, little shots that reference the classic Disney movies that show they actually took half a second to think about what they’re using for a source. You can really tell that everyone understood what they were referencing and actually wanted to make something fun with that reference. Take what the original cartoon did, find a horror twist on that, this isn’t a hard thing to do and Screamboat did the best possible version of it and was having enough fun with the stupid idea that it made for a fun time.
Is Screamboat the best-acted movie on the planet? Well, it’s not awful; everyone delivers a campy horror performance that works in this context. Again, we’re not asking for a lot here but as a fan of cheesy horror films there have been worse. The characters are presented as likable, you want most of them to survive and you actually buy that they’re scared of the little mouse that’s running around the boat. That little mouse is honestly fucking hilarious, David Howard Thornton does not miss when it comes to playing mostly silent killers and his spin on Steamboat Willie is kind of perfect. It’s over the top and cartoonish enough that we get the reference but it’s twisted enough to be its own unique thing. It’s just funny seeing him dancing about on top of dead people while whistling, I don’t know how to justify it. If you’re going to have a demented murderous Mickey Mouse you might as well have one that’s this funny and fucked up.
Is Screamboat the best-looking movie? I mean, it’s better than it has any right to be. It’s genuinely impressive that they got to use the actual Staten Island Ferry to film on; they made sure to use that location to the best of their abilities and create some pretty fun images. Sure, some of the effects are kind of shit (lightning effects rarely look good in low budget films) but they get the job done. The effect of Willie’s height works better than I expected it to, the amount of practical gore is greatly appreciated and is often quite gnarly which is made even funnier when it’s done by a foot-tall rat. There are some shots that hold a lot longer than they should, some framing is pretty bad and there’s a fair amount of the film that feels like they needed another go over with the colour correction but it’s also a silly low budget horror film based on Steamboat Willie, I’m not expecting the world here. Hell, it’s impressive that instead of just using the original cartoon for backstory, this film fully reanimated its own version of Steamboat Willie to give their killer a more nightmarish and twisted origin. It’s a small thing to do, but again it proves that the people making this actually tried to make a fun film instead of just a cheap cash grab.
Look, no one is going to pretend that Screamboat is a masterpiece. It’s a goofy little slasher film filled with halfassed Disney references and gore, but that’s all it needs to be. If the very notion of a horror movie based on Steamboat Willie sounds bad to you then Screamboat isn’t going to change that opinion; if anything, it’ll reinforce it because it delivers the exact thing you’re thinking it’s going to deliver. It’s not aiming for anything higher, it’s a cheap fun movie that knows the joke it’s expected to tell and does it as well as you can expect. It’s not a high bar to clear and it’s wild that so many films seem unable to clear it. Screamboat is just plain old stupid fun that whistles while it works, it doesn’t need to be anything more. It’s enjoyable for what it is. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a fun piece of trash to enjoy.
Movie Meister Reviews 