Screamboat (dir. Steven LaMorte)

by Jack Martin | Apr 1, 2025

Certificate: 18

Running Time: 102 mins

UK Distributor: Signature Entertainment

UK Release Date: 2 April 2025

WHO’S IN SCREAMBOAT?

David Howard Thornton, Allison Pittel, Amy Schumacher, Jesse Posey, Rumi C. Jean-Louis, Kailey Hyman, Jesse Kove, Jarlath Conroy, Charles Edwin Powell, Tyler Posey, Brian Quinn, Joe DeRosa

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Steven LaMorte (director, writer, producer), Matthew Garcia-Dunn (writer), Steven Della Salla (producer, cinematographer), Michael Leavy, Martine Melloul and Amy Schumacher (producers), Charles-Henri Avelange and Yael Benamour (composers), Patrick Lawrence (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A murderous mouse (Thornton) terrorises the passengers of a late-night ferry ride…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON SCREAMBOAT?

The irony of Screamboat being a “copyrightsploitation” (screw it, I’m officially coining that phrase) take on Disney’s newly public-domain cartoon Steamboat Willie, famously the first-ever to star Mickey Mouse, is that the titular rodent himself was the result of a copyright issue. Legend dictates that Walt Disney vowed to never again loan out his own works after the rights to his and Ub Iwerks’ character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit fell exclusively to Universal, leading to the two animators creating arguably the most famous cartoon character of all time in a short that was further revolutionary for its incorporation of sound effects in the largely silent era of 1928.

But even Disney is immune to the rules that dictate when a property has been around long enough to fall into public ownership, and so like Winnie-the-Pooh, Peter Pan and most recently Popeye before him, Mickey Mouse – albeit in his Steamboat Willie form – is now free from copyright. To the likes of filmmaker Steven LaMorte, he’s also fair game to be transformed into a murderous villain in a movie that, like a lot of other recent copyrightsploitation horror movies, is really only distinctive for who the killer happens to be, with everything else being more or less what you’d expect from a slasher movie. Though in the case of Screamboat, it’s not even a very good slasher.

The film takes place on a New York ferry boat, where a handful of passengers including cynical Selina (Allison Pittel), chipper paramedic Amber (Amy Schumacher) and a group of drunken party girls – more on them in a bit – are travelling late at night toward Staten Island. Soon, though, the passengers and crew come under attack by a small mischievous rodent known as Screamboat Willie (David Howard Thornton), whose tiny stature is made up by his deadly nature as the cruise turns into a fight for survival.

One should be lenient toward Screamboat because, when it comes to slasher incarnations of Steamboat Willie, it’s at least a lot better than last year’s The Mouse Trap, which took the cartoon’s imagery and nothing else for a dull run-of-the-mill horror flick. But that doesn’t excuse this movie from being its own helping of mindlessness, for the script (which director LaMorte co-wrote with Matthew Garcia-Dunn) remains at a consistent level of stupidity that almost never improves upon itself. Even for a movie about a killer mouse that whistles non-copyrighted tunes and wears a black-and-white hat and shorts, Screamboat makes absolutely no sense with plot twists and character reveals that come out of nowhere, in between a checklist of familiar slasher tropes from the old man who prophesises this doomed voyage to sneaking down dark hallways where the killer is very likely to spring out of. It’s like if Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan – not a hyperbolic comparison, given its setting of both New York and on a boat – was also an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon, but somehow the results aren’t as inspired as they might have hoped.

It’s also, surprisingly, neither as violent nor even as funny as Itchy & Scratchy (or Jason Takes Manhattan, for that matter). There are definitely some gory moments where the mouse is causing all sorts of bloody mayhem, from beheading people to electrocuting them to death, to cutting off appendages that earn him a different layer of meaning to the name “Steamboat Willie”, but often the camera doesn’t appear brave enough to show much of it, cutting away or to a more restrictive angle whenever things threaten to get too violent, when it isn’t marred by some darkened and shaky camerawork. As for the comedy, it’s the kind of film that adopts a very tongue-in-cheek approach to its concept (because, let’s be honest, how else could one do a slasher movie based on a near-century old cartoon?) and takes every available opportunity to remind the audience that they’re riffing on Disney, which can not only get irritating after a short while but takes you right out of the movie, or at least whatever there is to be taken out of.

Nowhere is that better summed up than with a group of drunken party girls designed almost exactly after certain Disney princesses, from Cinderella to Ariel to Belle to Jasmine to Aurora from Sleeping Beauty (hint: she’s the one who’s introduced yawning her head off). In a movie already filled with thin characters, to where Screamboat Willie himself is the most interesting and unique out of them all, as well as the only one with a definable personality (such is the non-verbal performative power of David Howard Thornton, and that of the rather impressive effects used to bring him to life), these ones are by far the most obnoxious. Their only role in the movie – aside from being easy targets for the main killer – is to either be as loud and crass as possible, or to make reference after reference to classic Disney lines that constantly push the limits as to what they can get away with in a movie built around the famously litigious company. However, the movie simply isn’t smart enough to offer any feasible commentary or legitimate satire with these characters, who end up feeling like rejects from one of those awful Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer parody movies (any of which Screamboat is far more dignified than, even in its own bad state).

Really, though, what were any of us expecting? It’s a slasher movie based on Steamboat Willie, for (Captain) Pete’s sake. It was never going to offer any high-brow entertainment, it just had to be an enjoyably dumb watch, as most of these copyrightsploitation movies are. However, while there are times when the movie really embraces its cartoon origins, especially with the titular killer mouse himself, Screamboat doesn’t have as much enjoyment to offer, ironic or otherwise, that offsets how genuinely stupid a lot of it is.

The mouse may now be anyone’s to do with what they will, but hopefully that means someone will eventually come up with a much smarter and more worthwhile take on Disney’s most iconic creation.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Screamboat is a dumb copyrightsploitation slasher take on Disney’s Steamboat Willie that goes through the motions of a typical slasher with thinly-written and often obnoxious characters contributing to its underwhelming blend of horror and overly referential comedy, though David Howard Thornton’s vaudevillian rendition of the titular mouse is amusingly cartoonish in spirit.