'Mouse Of Horrors' Review
Image source: YouTube
It’s that time again.
When Blood and Honey became a financial success, it guaranteed waves of imitators. The industry did not disappoint (unless you’re talking about the quality of the films), and thus the past several years have seen more and more beloved children’s icons becoming slasher serial killers. With Steamboat Willie becoming public domain, things got out of hand, with several slasher movies centered around the character being put into production, including The Mouse Trap, which is one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I have no illusion of quality for any of these, but Mouse of Horrors intrigued me ever so slightly because of the killer’s mask. It actually looked slightly creepy, so when I found the film free on Tubi, I fired it up.
Whoo boy.
Now, obviously, the budget for the film was whatever change the director found in his car’s cupholder, but directors have done more with less. A notable problem right off the bat is that whoever was doing the sound mixing and editing for this movie needed to watch a few more YouTube videos on how to do it. The film has bizarre sound choices, such as adding in a loud, out-of-place footstep sound whenever someone is running. The sound effects were often far too loud, sometimes even drowning out dialogue. This is especially noticeable at the beginning of the film, where the protagonist and her father are talking about her going off to college, and the sounds of the seaside are often louder than their talking.
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Image source: unobtanium13
The story is pretty standard slasher fare. The protagonist is going off to college and wants to spend one last night with her friends. A rat version of Mickey Mouse/human hybrid created by a mad scientist picks them off one by one, hoping to use the body parts to create a perfect wife for himself. Okay. Fine, I suppose. The issue is that nothing all that creative is done with it. He just kills the friends around the protagonist until she beats him, and the movie ends. A baffling thing that I didn’t know going into the film is that the other monster created by this mad scientist is Pooh from Blood and Honey. Not the same character, but the same mask. Why? Don’t know. Out of all of the cheap rubber masks they could have gone with, they went with one that’s relatively recognizable to horror fans from a movie that has absolutely no connection to this one.
The acting is about what you’d expect from something like this. Nobody is good, strictly speaking, but I do have to give a few of them credit. They’re actually trying to turn in a good performance. The guy who is playing Mickey is doing his absolute best to come across as creepy and threatening, but he’s often just annoying. He doesn’t talk at all, instead choosing to do the same insane, evil laugh throughout the film. It gets old pretty much instantly, to the point where it’s neither amusing nor unsettling. He does completely commit to the role physically, so that’s admirable. You can see the influence from David Howard Thornton’s Art the Clown.
The actor playing the mad scientist probably gives the best performance, and you can tell that he’s having fun with the role. The characters are all flat and uninteresting, especially the protagonist’s friends. If you asked me to name any of them, I wouldn’t be able to do it.
The special effects are garbage, though again, that’s to be expected for a movie with a budget this low. They’re not good at all. I can’t think of a single effect that they tried that looked even the slightest bit beyond something a high school student could do in Photoshop or Movie Maker.
Overall, it’s as good as it could have been, which is to say, not at all. Between a soundtrack that drowns out everything else, weird sound effects, flat characters, a boring story, terrible acting and writing, and horrible visual effects, this is one best skipped unless you like z-grade horror films. Is it as bad as The Mouse Trap? No, but that’s hardly high praise. If you’re super interested, it’s free on Tubi or YouTube.
Rating: 1/10
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