I want you to picture the most bizarre juxtaposition
imaginable. Okay, color me intrigued. So what
happens when a beloved like nearly 100 -year
-old cultural icon of pure, unadulterated childhood
innocence suddenly loses its legal protection.
You'd think you get a heartwarming tribute, right?
Exactly. But you do not get a heartwarming tribute.
What you get is a mutant, homicidal mouse wielding
a blowtorch on a Staten Island ferry owned by
Pete Davidson. It is, I mean, it's the ultimate
collision of wholesome nostalgia and absolute...
messy modern chaos. It really is. So welcome
to today's deep dive. Today we're focusing on
the 2025 American comedy horror film Screamboat,
directed by Steven Lamour. And we've got a fantastic
stack of sources here to go through. Yeah, they
provide a really comprehensive look at the film's
production, its wildly subversive plot, and the
critical reception it received when it hit theaters.
But our mission today isn't just to recap a slasher
movie, right? No, definitely not. We are going
to explore how filmmakers weaponize public domain
law to create what the industry calls splat stick
horror. And just to define that term for you
right out of the gate, splat stick, is that highly
specific, highly visceral collision of slapstick,
physical comedy, and extreme practical gore.
Right, like early Peter Jackson films. Exactly.
Dead Alive, Bad Taste, that kind of energy. And
we're going to look at what this bizarre cinematic
experiment actually reveals about our modern
relationship with nostalgic intellectual property.
Yeah, we're unpacking the legal shifts, the hyper
authentic settings required to make the absurdity
work. And, you know, the twisted psychology of
turning what we loved as kids into. the monsters
of our nightmares. So, before we get to the blood
and the guts on the boat, we have to start with
the legal reality that actually made this movie
possible. Right, the exploration of copyright.
Okay, let's unpack this. On January 1st, 2024,
the Steamboat Willie version of Mickey Mouse
officially entered the public domain. Which,
I should point out, is a very specific legal
boundary. It meant the Walt Disney Company no
longer had exclusive rights to that specific
1928 iteration of the character. Just that one
version, right? Exactly. The modern versions,
the red shorts, the white gloves, the high pitched
voice, those are still fiercely protected by
trademark and copyright. Oh, definitely. They
will come for you if you touch the modern stuff.
They absolutely will. But that early black and
white whistling riverboat captain that was suddenly
free for anyone in the public to use without
permission. And when we say suddenly, we mean
immediately. Exactly one day later, on January
2nd, 2024, Screamboat was announced. The timeline
is staggering. They wasted no time at all. Not
a single second. But looking at our sources,
there is a major misconception I want to clear
up for you. Oh, about the creators' motives.
Yeah. Because you would assume a movie like this
is made by people who harbor a deep, burning
hatred for the Disney brand. Like, just cynical
opportunists who want to tear down the house
that the mouse built. Right, that's the natural
assumption. Yet the sources tell a completely
different story. They really do. Director Steven
Lamorte and his co -writer Matthew Garcia Dunn
are not Disney haters at all. In fact, Lamorte
explicitly calls himself a Deep Cuts Disney fanboy.
Yeah, he actually grew up wanting to be an Imagineer.
Wait, really? An Imagineer? Yes. And he deeply
admired Walt Disney as an inventor and a storyteller.
That is wild to me. It's like finding the keys
to a pristine, classic car that's been locked
in a garage for 95 years. But instead of taking
it for a respectful joyride, you decided to intentionally
enter it into a demolition derby. That's a perfect
analogy. So I have to ask... Why would a super
fan want to turn something they supposedly love
into a horrifying blood -soaked monster? Well,
what's fascinating here is that true subversion
is almost always born out of deep intimate knowledge.
What do you mean by that? If you don't actually
understand the mechanics of why people love the
source material, your parody or your horror adaptation
will just feel hollow. It will feel like a cheap
shot. I see. It lacks the emotional weight. Exactly.
Lamorte layered this film with obscure Easter
eggs that only a true die -hard fan would know
to include, because he is one. For instance,
the source's mission a very specific numerical
reference hidden in the background of the film.
Yes, he specifically framed an appearance of
the number 33. Okay, and why does that matter?
A casual horror fan wouldn't even blanket that
number. But a Disney fanboy knows exactly what
that means. It's a direct reference to Club 33.
Oh, the super exclusive secret VIP club hidden
inside the Disney parks. Precisely. Which proves
he knows the lore inside and out. To properly
deconstruct something, to turn it inside out
and make it terrifying, you have to know how
it was built in the first place. You have to
understand the load -bearing walls of VIP. Right.
LaMorde's admiration for the mechanics of the
original animations and the theme parks is exactly
what allowed him to dismantle those exact things
so effectively. Because you cannot effectively
break the rules until you have mastered them.
Completely agree. And that pursuit of doing things
correctly, of grounding the fantasy, is what
drove the production design of the film. Because
you cannot just put a guy in a mutant mouse suit
anywhere and expect it to be scary. No, the environment
has to anchor the fantasy. Right. If you have
a cartoon monster, the setting for his rampage
has to be incredibly aggressively real. The setting
is the straight man to the monster's punchline.
That's a great way to put it. And they found
the ultimate straight man. The movie takes place
almost entirely on a Staten Island ferry named
Mortimer. Which is such a brilliant location
choice. It is. And this wasn't some plywood soundstage
built in a studio with green screens. This was
a bright orange, real deal, decommissioned Staten
Island ferry. And not just any ferry. No. To
add a surreal layer of pop culture trivia to
an already surreal movie, it is the actual ferry
owned by Saturday Night Live stars Colin Jost
and Pete Davidson. Which is just a magnificent
detail. I love that so much. The sources even
note that the production used so much fake blood
during filming that they had to hire a specialized
cleaning crew afterward just to scrub down Pete
Davidson's boat. I can only imagine that invoice.
Right. But Lamorte and his wife Amy Schumacher,
who actually stars in the movie as an EMT and
also produced it, they were absolutely relentless
about getting the details of this setting right?
Yeah, the sources say they rode the normal operating
Staten Island ferry 15 to 20 times in a single
day. 15 to 20 times. Just endlessly going back
and forth across the New York harbor. Analyzing
the architecture of a commuter boat. They were
scouting for what they termed cartoon carnage.
Looking at the little hatches, wondering where
a mouse could realistically crawl out of. And
exploring the surprisingly massive engine room
that the public never gets to see. They even
instructed the props department to use the genuine
keep beer that is actually served at the Ferry's
Liberty Cafe. It's all about the details. And
the passengers reflect highly specific commuter
archetypes, you know, Midwest transplants, loud
party girls, street performers. They basically
built a hyper authentic micro universe of New
York transit. Which honestly makes the production
logistics absolutely baffling to me. I'm struggling
with the reality of filming this. Oh, for sure
it's a nightmare. You have a massive ensemble
cast, practical gore effects, unpredictable maritime
weather, and you are shooting on a floating decommissioned
ferry in New York Harbor. Not an easy shoot.
Why subject an independent film to that nightmare
when you could easily build a controlled, generic
boat set up in Canada where it is famously cheaper
and easier to film? Well, it all comes back to
that baseline of reality we were talking about.
For a horror comedy to actually land with an
audience, you need that stark contrast. OK, make
it make sense. I will give you Lamorte's direct
quote from the sources because it explains the
psychology behind this logistical nightmare perfectly.
He said, as a New Yorker, You just know. You
can just tell. You can smell when it's Canada.
You can just feel it when it is not right. Smell
when it's Canada. That perfectly captures the
instinctual feeling of watching a movie where
the setting just feels slightly off. Exactly.
If the boat feels like a fake Hollywood set,
then a mutant mouse running around just feels
like a cartoon superimposed on a cartoon background.
It falls flat. It's just goofy. Right. But if
the boat feels hyper real, if you as a viewer
can practically smell the cheap beer, the sticky
floors, and the harbor water, then the mutant
mouse suddenly becomes a genuine surreal terror.
The authenticity of the fairy is what sells the
absurdity of the slasher. Nailed it. That hyper
-realistic environment is the perfect stark canvas,
which makes the completely unrealistic, trope
-heavy characters who board the ship stand out
even more. Because this film actively weaponizes
classic, wholesome tropes, turning them into
prime slasher fuel. And the character roster
is a master class in navigating copyright loopholes
while winking aggressively at the audience. Oh,
they push the legal boundaries of parody right
to the very edge. They really do. The main group
of victims in the movie are a deeply twisted
take on classic Disney princesses. Right, the
bachelorette party or the birthday party? Yeah,
we've got a birthday girl named Cindy, which
is clearly Cinderella. There's Ariana for Ariel,
Jazzy for Jasmine, Bella for Belle, Ilsa for
Elsa, and Rory for Aurora. And if the names weren't
enough, the costuming department leaned all the
way into the visual cues. They weren't subtle
about it. Not at all. Variety noted in their
review that the girls are actually color -coded
to match their animated counterparts. Cindy is
dressed in blue. Belle is in yellow. Jazzy is
in turquoise. And the references extend beyond
the core group. Amy Schumacher's character, the
EMT, is named Amber. A nod to Princess Amber
from the series Sofia the First. There's even
a fairy employee named Pete, referencing the
original 1920s antagonist Pegleg Pete. So good.
And the villain himself, the sentient, humanoid
mutant mouse, is played by David Howard Thornton.
Which is huge for horror fans. Yes. For anyone
familiar with modern indie horror, Thornton is
known as Art the Clown from the Terrifier films.
Which is brilliant casting for a project like
this. Thornton is known for a very specific,
silent, pantomime style of acting. Ray, he doesn't
talk. He doesn't rely on dialogue to convey menace.
He relies on exaggerated physical movements,
which fits a corrupted 1920s cartoon character
perfectly. And Bolton's physical comedy is what
drives the kills, because we're talking about
pure, unadulterated cartoon carnage executed
entirely with practical effects. The gore in
this is wild. Steamboat Willie uses a forklift
to impale Jazzy and Ariana. He crushes the first
mate Tommy's head with a heavy monitor. It's
so brutal. And at one point Willie stops an angry
mob of New Yorkers by spraying them down with
a fire hose and then triggers a power box to
mass electrocute everyone standing in the water.
That is the splastic element functioning at its
peak. It is gruesome. undeniably, but the mechanics
of it, using a hose and a power box to take out
a crowd, feel exactly like a dark, twisted Linney
Toons gag brought into the real world. Here's
where it gets really interesting, though. It's
not just the visual gags that subvert the source
material, it's the dialogue. Catchphrases. Yes.
The script features these incredibly dark drops
of famous, beloved catchphrases. I want you to
imagine the cognitive dissonance of hearing a
phrase like, it's a small world after all, or
be our guest, or let it go, right before someone
gets brutally murdered with a harpoon or a blowtorch.
It is a deliberate hijacking of the audience's
neural pathways. Hijacking, exactly. When you
hear Be Our Guest, your brain is conditioned
by decades of pop culture to expect a grand,
comforting musical number. Your guard drops.
You feel safe. Right. So by following that audio
cue with absolute on -screen butchery, the filmmakers
create a jarring psychological whiplash. You're
hearing the language of childhood comfort, but
you are seeing the imagery of an adult nightmare.
And the film... takes that emotional manipulation
a step further by actually trying to make you
feel empathy for the monster. Which is a classic
trope. Yeah. There's a scene where an old 1960s
fairy deckhand named Barry gives Willie this
incredibly tragic backstory. Barry explains that
mad scientists experimented on Willy for years
until a kind -hearted captain named Walter Captain
Wall obviously rescued him. Naturally. Wall took
pity on the creature, befriended him, and set
him free, but then Willy vanished after some
mysterious tragedy. Which perfectly sets up the
thematic climax of the film. We learn that the
tragedy that drove Willy way was losing his female
mate. Her disappearance is what broke his mind
and turned him evil. He hijacked the fairy not
just to kill, but to search for her. So Selena,
our bartender protagonist who has dreams of being
an artist, figures out this psychology. She uses
a trunk of old theater costumes to dress up exactly
like Willie's lost love. She tricks him? She
tricks him. During their confrontation, he knocks
her over the ferry railing and he flashes back
to his mate drowning in the exact same way. The
monster actually has a moment of genuine empathy
and pulls Selena back to safety. The film actively
weaponizes the tropes of classic animation against
the audience here. It gives the monster a romantic
backstory, a lost love, and a moment of redemption.
All the ingredients that traditionally earned
the beast a happily ever after. But how does
Selena repay that moment of classic emotional
resonance? By exploiting his empathy to get close
enough to stab him directly in the head with
a pair of scissors. He falls into the water,
seemingly dead. Though of course, in a classic
post -credits scene, we hear Pete on the radio
proving he's still alive. And we see Willie on
a trash barge, finally reuniting with his lost
love. That climax synthesizes the entire point
of the movie. Instead of rewarding empathy, it
subverts the genre entirely with a gruesome execution.
It's so dark. It uses the narrative rules of
a fairy tale to lower your defenses, and then
applies the brutal logic of a slasher film. It
is a fascinating structural exercise, but we
have to ask the ultimate question. The movie
clearly achieves its goal of practical cartoon
carnage, but did critics and audiences actually
buy into this subversive experiment? The numbers
in the reviews give us a pretty clear, if highly
polarized, picture of how this landed with the
culture. Okay, let's look at the stats. Screamboat
released theatrically on April 2nd, 2025. It
grossed $393 ,011 at the box office. Not bad.
Now, for a micro -budget indie horror film shot
on a boat, that is a specific kind of financial
success. But the critical reception was decidedly
split down the middle. It is sitting at 51 %
on Rotten Tomatoes and a 44 out of 100 on Metacritic.
A true polarizing piece of media. Variety actually
seemed to really get a kick out of it. They highlighted
that splat stick vibe we discussed, and they
specifically noted that the movie provides an
illicit thrill in desecrating powerful brands.
Screen rant also gave it props, praising the
shockingly gory practical effects and prosthetics
that gave it that campy late -night B -film feel.
But then you look at a prominent horror publication
like bloody disgusting. And their take is much
more cautious. They gave it two out of five stars.
They admitted that the violence is enough to
make Disney purists rage and Disney objectors
snicker. They gave the director points for sheer
enthusiasm, but they offered a strong warning.
As a subversive slapstick comedy, the novelty
loses its appeal sooner rather than later. Ah,
I see. So what does this all mean? I want to
push back on that Variety review for a second.
I hear that they praise the illicit thrill of
desecrating a powerful brand, but I am struggling
to see how that is sustainable. You think it's
a gimmick. Isn't this just a gimmick? Once I
see the mouse use a blowtorch once, the shock
wears off. I find myself leaning more toward
bloody disgusting's take that this kind of novelty
has a very short shelf life. Well, if we connect
this to the bigger picture, you are absolutely
right that a visual gag can wear thin. The shock
value of a mouse with a weapon has diminishing
returns. Yeah, exactly. But Variety hit on something
crucial in their conclusion that goes beyond
just a cheap thrill. They argued that as grisly
and incredibly violent as Screamboat is, it arguably
feels less disrespectful to the original intellectual
property than many of the safe, sanitized, corporate
-mandated live -action reboots we see flooding
the theaters every year. Wow. Less disrespectful
than the official studio -sanctioned reboots.
That is a heavy critique of modern Hollywood.
It is. But think about the mechanism behind it.
A sanitized corporate reboot often strips away
the soul and the unique artistry of the original
work just to create a safe, easily marketable
consumer product. Right. They just want to sell
toys. It treats the IP like an asset in a vault.
Screamboat, on the other hand, is made by independent
super fans. They understand the mechanics of
the original so deeply that they can twist it
into a new, passionate, albeit grotesque piece
of independent art. It's an act of genuine creation.
Exactly, even if the subject matter is destruction.
They are treating these characters not as corporate
assets, but as a shared cultural mythology, much
like how ancient cultures would continually reinvent
and twist the stories of their gods and monsters.
That is fascinating. And this raises an important
question for all of us. Who actually owns pop
culture once it enters the public domain? That's
the million dollar question. Does it belong to
the corporation that locked it in a vault for
95 years, or does it belong to the culture that
grew up with it, the people who now want to process
those childhood memories through the lens of
adult horror? Well, the law dictates that it
belongs to the public now. And the public apparently
wants to put it on a Staten Island ferry, hand
it a harpoon, and see what happens. And the experiment
is not stopping anytime soon. We've taken a wild
journey today, starting from the expiration of
a 1928 copyright, moving through the logistics
of shooting on a blood -soaked commuter ferry,
and analyzing how a team of passionate filmmakers
used hyper -realistic settings and splastic humor
to completely upend one of the most guarded cultural
icons in history. It's been a ride. And the cinematic
universe of public domain terror is only expanding
as more copyrights expire. Oh, absolutely. Yes,
it is. As a final update from our sources, a
sequel is already in active development. It is
officially titled Screamboat 2, Nothing Stays
Dead. And this time around, Minnie Mouse is joining
the bloodbath. The legal and creative floodgates
are wide open. They truly are. So as we wrap
up this deep dive into the sources, I want to
leave you with a final thought to mull over.
A little homework for the listener. Exactly.
We've spent a lot of time analyzing the psychological
thrill of desecrating these powerful nostalgic
brands. Think about your own favorite childhood
characters, the ones that brought you pure, unadulterated
comfort when you were young. The ones you felt
safe with. Right. When you look back at them
now through an adult lens, which ones are you
secretly waiting to see turned into monsters?
Good question. And more importantly, what does
our modern insatiable appetite for destroying
the very things we used to love actually say
about us? Are we just craving cheap novelty,
or is this how we reconcile the sheltered innocence
of our past with the chaotic reality of our present?
It is a perfect mirror for the culture. Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep dive
into the sources today. We wish you well and
we'll be waiting right here for our next exploration.