MOUSEBOAT MASSACRE (2025)

New On Demand from ITN Distribution!
Directed by Andrea M. Catinella.
Written by Harry Boxley.
Check out the trailer here!!

Mimi (Lauren Leppard) suffers from a drug addiction and her parents take her and her brother and sister to a remote house by the lake. Looking for something to watch on the television, Mimi stumbles across some old video tapes, one of which plays an old cartoon that summons a man in a mouse mask (Jay Robertson) who stalks and kills those around her. Though she pleads for help, Mimi’s screams fall on deaf ears as her parents believe all of this are symptoms of withdrawal. Meanwhile, more blood is shed by a whistling masked killer.

This is the second movie of this type I’ve seen involving a family bringing a drug-addicted member to a secluded place with their therapist in hopes to give them an intervention. This was the premise to THREE BLIND MICE, another riff on an old nursery rhyme, which was all the rage before low budget filmmakers decided to prey on public domain characters like Steamboat Willie. And since both THREE BLIND MICE and MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (another nursery rhyme slasher riff) were produced by the same company, and MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB and MOUSEBOAT MASSACRE are written by the same person, Harry Boxley, I do believe there are some shenanigans afoot in repeating the premise of a story and simply changing the killer. Instead of three blind mouse monsters, though, this one has a bloodthirsty Mickey Mouse-masked man who is summoned by playing a video cassette a la THE RING. So, yeah, I guess that’s different enough. Harry Boxley seems to be a Steamboat afficionado, though as he also wrote MOUSE OF HORRORS, but it seems these two films are distinct from one another and not part of the shared Pooniverse alluded to in that travesty of a film.

MOUSEBOAT MASSACRE at least seems to have thought about how to make this Mickey scary, lighting the mouse-man moodily enough. Jay Robertson plays the Mouse as a slow walking Michael Myers type, only moving quickly when he needs to slash and gouge someone. The film also manages to amp up the scares with a whistling edcho, reminiscent of the whistling Mickey does in the cartoon and occurs every time Mickey goes in for the kill. These two details as well as a brutal ruthlessness to the kills make this mad mouse stand out as one of the better versions of Steamboat Willie. At least on the surface level, though I still like Willie in I HEART WILLIE the best. But the wake this Steamboat Willie leaves behind is blooooooooody! Each scene hits on a visceral level be it the Mouse sawing away on someone’s neck with a butcher knife or one victim trying to stop a chainsaw by blocking it with his forearm. Taking a page from the TERRIFIER series, this killer puts some showmanship into his work with some toe-curling acts of bodily dismemberment. “Why stop with one stab to the gut, when twenty will do the same trick squelchier?” I always say.

That doesn’t mean MOUSEBOAT MASSACRE is a good movie. The Mouse’s origin is beyond idiotic. Something about a mad scientist slash sailor trapped at sea who befriends a mouse before he is rescued. Then the mad scientist slash sailor somehow splices the mouse with a death row inmate and then somehow that mouse slash death row inmate bleeds on a video cassette. Now the video cassette is haunted and whomever plays it is stalked by the ghost of the mouse. I feel dumber having just written all of that down. The non-ending is remedial as well as it ends with an act that makes sense, but then it immediately undercuts that end for a more lackluster end to the film.

MOUSEBOAT MASSACRE does some of the scares right through some nice with moody light and creepy sounds. It does have a distinct beginning and end, more than I can say about some of the other Steamboat Willie films, but man is this script dumb. So as long as you don’t pay attention to the story, you’re going to get some unbridled carnage and some spooky scenes with the Mouse. For some people, that’s enough. Just look at the success of the TERRIFIER series. But so far, I have yet to see a Steamboat Willie adaptation that is even close to worth recommending.