In January 2022, the 1926 book Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne entered the public domain, and it wasn’t long before sickos turned everyone’s favorite honey-loving bear into a slasher in films like “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” a 2023 venture that was reportedly made for just over six figures and grossed just under $8 million. As everyone knows, it’s the Age of the IP. And it’s a lot easier to play with familiar imagery than to create your own from scratch. So, when we learned that “Steamboat Willie,” the character who would launch an empire known as Disney, would enter the public domain in early 2024, well, the clock started ticking on who would make the most profitable flick about a bloodthirsty mouse.
Enter Steven LaMorte, who directed and co-wrote “Screamboat,” a love letter to both Disney and New York City that plans to get a lot of mileage out of the fact that David Howard Thornton (aka Art the Clown from the “Terrifier” movies) is stepping into the oversized shoes of Willie, reimagined here as a sort of deformed NYC Pizza Rat intent on vicious murder. “Screamboat” is the kind of thing a lot of critics would ignore, but it’s better than similar micro-budget horror flicks, in large part because it never takes itself seriously. How could it?
Of course, “Screamboat” needs a final girl, and here it’s a clothing designer named Selena (Allison Pittell), who is at that phase of living in the Big Apple where she’s seriously considering moving back to Minnesota. She boards the Staten Island Ferry late one night, trailed by a group of princesses celebrating a birthday party—dressed in garb that makes them look like Disney icons. With names that echo Ariel and Jasmine, they are a part of the fabric of a film regularly poking fun at the Mouse House empire in a way one would think might produce a Cease & Desist. When one of them said, “I want to be where the people are,” I couldn’t help but sing the following line; given this is also a film that includes a man being killed by having his genitals cut off, there might be a few Disney Adults aghast at the mental connection.3
Of course, Selena, the princesses, and all the other “Very NYC” passengers are just fuel for the engine that is a movie about a two-foot-tall mouse murdering people in the most creative ways it can conjure. The creature design of “Screamboat” is one of the film’s most notable flaws, rendering the villain as a sort of CGI cartoon that never really looks like it’s sharing the same physical space with the other characters, and burying the expressive Thornton under even more make-up than Art. It would have been wiser to create a giant, Thornton-sized Willie and allow him to unleash carnage in a more tactile way. As is, you’ll wonder why someone doesn’t just step on him.
Actually, you probably won’t. People paying for a ticket to see “Screamboat,” opening on a stunning 600 screens, don’t care about the physics of a murderous anthropomorphic mouse. They’re here for the gore and the humor. And for the very existence of this movie. I have to admit to getting a kick out of how much LaMorte plays with the public domain, having Willie whistle songs like “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Pop Goes the Weasel” instead of, you know, “It’s a Small World” (although that phrase is used, of course). Even the dumbest Disney nods, and there are many, made me chuckle, picturing the writers’ room trying to come up with the goofiest ways to blend their love for Walt with their passion for gore. Yes, there are Disney Adults who also have “Terrifier” posters in their living rooms.
It’s hard to imagine anyone stumbling into “Screamboat” without being aware of its intentions. It’s not something people buy a ticket to when their arthouse movie of choice isn’t available. On that level, it almost works enough to recommend even to those not clamoring to see it. It could be funnier. It could be a lot smarter. It could look better. But it also could have been significantly worse, working as much as it does because it knows that you don’t need to be great if you’re this Goofy. (Wait, that character isn’t in the public domain yet.)
