It’s public domain IP time, folks! After Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey waded into the concept of bringing horror riffs to classic, childhood favourites, a number of projects were queueing up to put their own scary spin on a number of beloved characters as soon as those pesky copyright issues were out of the way. Peter Pan and Popeye have both been given a macabre makeover and Screamboat is another production to ride that wave, announced just one day after the Steamboat Willie incarnation of a certain mouse was declared. It’s taken longer to get here than masked killer flick The Mouse Trap – let’s be honest, I’ve ordered Blu-Rays that took longer to get here than The Mouse Trap – and with relatively short distance but distance nonetheless, Screamboat may suffer less from the passing association than it could have.
A pre-title card sequence puts our rancorous rodent in play after being unwittingly freed from captivity and his decades of resentment are about to be unleashed on the passengers taking the late night Staten Island Ferry, including Selena (Alison Pittel) who has designs on working in the world of fashion but is running out of enthusiasm as regards her time in the Big Apple. She’s also less than thrilled that she’s part of the high energy, even higher pitched birthday celebrations of a group of “princesses” (geddit?) with names such as Ilsa, Bella and Jazzy (geddit?).
Where Blood And Honey felt like a variation on The Strangers where the original bad guys could have been cut and pasted over with A.A. Milne’s creations, Steven LaMorte’s movie at least takes the standard slasher set-up – a bunch of folks trapped in one location at the mercy of a psycho – and leans the action at least a little into the wheelhouse of its diminutive murderer, whistling while he works and played with panache by David Howard Thornton. Yes, he of Art The Clown infamy, bringing his talents as a mostly silent performer to bear here, whether it’s falling in love with the Final Girl or breaking into a dance routine on the top of a block with which he’s just splattered some poor bloke’s bonce.
With a runtime of a hundred and two minutes, Screamboat threatens to run aground in the middle section, which leaves it becalmed for a while following a breezy first act which gets the craft on the water in timely fashion and chucks in a couple of gruesome early kills for good measure. It’s the section of the movie in which the backstory of Willie is sketched in, courtesy of the voice of experience and exposition that is Barry (played by Jarlath Conroy) who’s playing a less grizzled version of his Bill McDermott from Day Of The Dead. To help him along there’s an animated (well, sorta) flashback, which doesn’t come close to hitting the impressive heights of the similarly formatted opener from Blood And Honey, but doesn’t have its drawback of those subsequent live-action scenes making the viewer long for the cartoon sequence.
The screenplay by LaMorte and Matthew Garcia-Dunn might not be big on the development of its protagonists, other than a potential romantic subplot between Selena and unambitious ferry company employee Pete (Jessy Posey), but its sense of dropping as many people as possible into Willie’s kill zone as possible to be offed in various, bloody ways will be music to the ears of the less discerning gorehound. And if you, like I, have travelled on the Staten Island Ferry and thought “That’s not long enough a trip to sustain a feature length movie” then there’s an unplanned extension to the voyage.
Speaking of unplanned extensions, one of the kills does feature a police officer’s appendage being lopped off in the midst of the film’s one attempt at including a little gratuitous nudity, which it grabs with both hands – not literally, before you get too excited – and unveils with the line “Can you feel the love tonight?.” The frequent, semi references to the House Of Mouse might be about as subtle as the hammer Willie uses to batter one of his victims (before feeding him into the ferry’s propeller to make sure) but this does demonstrate that, as scattershot as the approach is, some thought has also gone into it. I can not deny that.
Shot on board a decommissioned ferry and featuring plenty of good, old fashioned practical effects, Screamboat may feature wobbly acting (save for DHT and the Conroy cameo) but it has genuine production values and a sense of fun that’s lacking in the other spins on public domain horror we’ve been treated to so far. I’m going to forget the digitally rendered fire, it rarely looks good, but if you’ve got a prosthetic dick kicking around from one of the set pieces, why not use it in a hilariously childish way somewhere else? I laughed out loud at this point and I am not embarrassed to admit it. I wasn’t asked to review Citizen Kane here.
The final act may make a slightly odd play for sympathy towards Willie, considering he’s slaughtered a literal boatload of people over the previous hour and a half, but at least this is still undercut with the comic strip-style daftness which permeates the rest of the film and it’s bolstered further by Thornton’s comedic talents. The ending, like so many other slashers, leaves the proceedings open for a potential sequel. The very thought of this may terrify the viewing public far more than anything on display in Screamboat, but I had a far better time with this than I thought I would.
So, is Screamboat a great movie? Absolutely not. However, it takes a potentially flimsy premise and runs with it, resulting in a movie experience that’s often as clunky as the Staten Island Ferry itself, but just about wins through in the end with its weird charm, silly gags and a number of pleasingly gory set pieces. If you’re looking for something undemanding, be our guest.
Screamboat (2025) is currently on limited cinematic release, only at Vue.