TAKING THE MICKEY

ALL ABOARD FOR A TOON RIDE OF TERROR IN COPYRIGHT-DODGING DISNEY SPOOF

- ROBBIE DUNLOP

FOR THE MEAN ONE DIRECTOR Steven LaMorte, a long-held desire to set a horror movie aboard a Staten Island ferry perfectly aligned with the classic 1928 Mickey Mouse cartoon "Steamboat Willie" entering the public domain.

“A lot of people don’t know this, but the ferry was originally steam-powered,” LaMorte tells SFX. “I said, ‘What if you threw a killer mouse on there, with New York City as a backdrop?’ And, you know, one thing led to another.”

The result is the horror parody Screamboat. With the producers of the Terrifier sequels on board, writer-director LaMorte cast Art the Clown actor David Howard Thornton - with whom he had previously worked on The Mean One - as the malevolent mouse who really doesn’t want the ferry’s staff and passengers to live happily ever after.

Bringing to mind the Zuni doll from Trilogy Of Terror and the troll from Cat’s Eye, Steamboat Willie is proof that being bigger isn’t necessarily better.

“We knew the only way this would really be funny, the only thing that would keep him from looking like a guy in a suit or a mascot at a theme park, is that he had to be a creature, and he had to be small,” LaMorte says.