Fred: The Movie (2010), Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred (2011), and Fred 3: Camp Fred (2012)

The early days of YouTube were really a case of you had to be there to understand. YouTube in the present day is a place to watch videos and find the community that you fit into. YouTube back then was a world of stars. People were elevated beyond niche communities into legitimate fame. In some instances, fortune, too.

For some of the stars, YouTube was a stepping stone to bigger, better things. Bo Burnham’s comedy got big on YouTube, which led to specials, an acting career, and even a chance to direct the very good Eighth Grade. Shane Dawson was a part of a reality show that put him in the director’s chair for the very not good Not Cool. Ryan Higa got to star in a movie I’ve never seen that I’ve only heard bad things about and will likely get around to seeing at some point for this very blog.

Then there was Lucas Cruikshank. He was a little different than the others. Sure, other YouTubers from that time did some sketch stuff. That was a big thing in the early era. Lucas took that to a whole new level. His entire YouTube career was in character as Fred Figglehorn. More people probably know him by his character’s name than his actual name. That’s how big that single YouTube character was.

Lucas Cruikshank eventually got the movie treatment as well. His character, Fred, was picked up by Nickelodeon. They made a trilogy of movies following the character and his exploits. Fred made the jump from computer screens and the smartphones of the time onto… Well, it wasn’t the big screen. They were television movies. So onto bigger screens than what Fred had been on but not as big as the screens could have been.

Fred: The Movie was the perfect encapsulation of YouTube at the time. It was about Fred Figglehorn (Lucas Cruikshank) and his journey across his city as he tried to meet up with his crush, Judy (Pixie Lott). She used to be his neighbour, but her family moved to a different neighbourhood. At the same time, Fred had to avoid his bully, Kevin (Jake Weary). That’s about it for the story. Everything else just built on that stuff.

How did it encapsulate what YouTube was at the time? Well, this was 2010. The people who came to stardom on YouTube were still homing in on what the aesthetic of that streaming platform would be. There was a lot of jump cutting going on. There was a lot of talking to the camera. Those are still things that happen on YouTube, but not in the jarring way they happened back then. Fred: The Movie picked up on that style and brought it into the world of movies.

There were many scenes throughout Fred: The Movie that involved Fred running maniacally around his house screaming at the camera in his obnoxiously high voice. It was the same thing the character would do in his YouTube videos, only now it looked professionally made instead of filmed on a Canon MiniDV. It made much of the movie feel like a high-budget YouTube video instead of a movie. The story took a back seat to the vlogging style of Fred Figglehorn.

Anytime Fred: The Movie got away from that YouTube aesthetic, it turned into a series of sketches. Many of those sketches had some sort of taste of that aesthetic. None of it ever really gelled together. There was the scene where Fred dug a hole into the neighbour’s yard, only for it to be the wrong neighbour. There was the scene where he was buried at the beach. There was the scene where he saw a darker Lucas Cruikshank character on the bus. Kind of a yin and yang scenario. These didn’t build the story or push it forward. They were their own self-contained moments within the thin story being told.

The only scene/sketch I really liked in the entirety of Fred: The Movie was near the end when Fred and his best friend Bertha (Jennette McCurdy) put together a fake party video to try and make all their schoolmates jealous. Fred wasn’t invited to Judy’s party, so he was going to make his own. The best party ever. People would call it great. They would call it the greatest. There wouldn’t be another party as great as Fred’s. They would say that Fred threw the best parties, even though they weren’t there. Anyway, the scene where they made the fake party video felt the most like a movie out of anything in Fred: The Movie. Maybe it was just that I’d been worn down so much that having something like that was just refreshing. Maybe it was actually a good scene. I think it was because the scene felt like it did something for the story instead of being a tangent for Fred to be a goofball. It was the one time that what essentially felt like a sketch had been in integral part of the story being told.

Interestingly enough, the sequels would take a slightly different approach to how they portrayed Fred Figglehorn. Let’s get into Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred. This Halloween-themed Fred film saw Fred (Lucas Cruikshank) go up against his new music teacher, Mr. Delvin (Seth Morris). The teacher had replaced Fred’s favourite teacher and started dating his mom (Siobhan Fallon Hogan). At the same time, Fred was connecting with Talia (Ariel Winter), the sister of Kevin (Jake Weary). I should also mention that Fred’s dad was played by John Cena and Bertha was now played by Daniella Monet.

There were still moments in Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred that saw the titular character breaking the fourth wall to speak to the audience in a flurry of jump cuts. That wasn’t all gone. It was still a movie based on a YouTube character who was known for that style of YouTube video. However, it was pulled back a lot from what Fred: The Movie had done. More focus was placed on the story and letting that play out.

With the focus landing on the story rather than the YouTube of it all, it flourished in a way the previous movie couldn’t. It was no longer beholden to staying true to the original format. It was allowed to grow. Not too much, though. Fred still had to be Fred. He still had to, as he called it in his YouTube videos, “spaz out” at the audience occasionally. But the character was able to grow beyond his own little YouTube bubble. He was forced to be a little less self-centered. Breaking him out of that hosting position allowed for the growth.

Much like with Fred: The Movie, Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred had its best moment when an online video became part of the story. In the climax of the movie, Fred livestreamed himself venturing into his teacher’s house, looking for proof of Mr. Delvin being a vampire. People were watching the video. There were hiccups in the video. It was essentially a found footage horror film being live-streamed to everyone Fred knew. It allowed Fred’s vlogging personality to shine without it feeling the exact same as any old Fred YouTube video.

This growth of the franchise from being a modestly budgeted rehash of Fred videos into movies that felt like movies only continued in Fred 3: Camp Fred. This time, Fred (Lucas Cruikshank) was sent to Camp Iwannapeepee, owned by Floyd Spunkmeyer (Tom Arnold). It was the run-down seeming camp, compared to the pristine rival, Camp Superior, where his bully Kevin (Jake Weary) was staying. Fred didn’t like his camp and tried to figure out what was wrong with it, until a rivalry competition showed him how to find the perfection in imperfection. Yeah, it was a ragtag group of camp underdogs. That’s my kind of movie.

The most interesting thing about Fred 3: Camp Fred was how it ended up being a dissection of the two movies that had come before. That’s not the right word, but dissection works for now. The third movie played with what the first two movies were, before becoming its own thing. It even made some meta commentary along the way. It started with the vlog-like style as Fred talked about going to camp, as he got to camp, and as he suspected there were things going wrong at camp. It became what Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred had been, a movie about Fred trying to stop a monster. However, that was all flipped on its head about halfway through (whoa! A halfway turning point, like a real movie) when Fred allowed himself to start connecting with his campmates and enjoy his time at the less luxurious camp.

After that, Fred 3: Camp Fred felt like its own thing. It became a standard summer camp movie, only with Fred Figglehorn attending the camp. The fourth wall breaks were few, if there were any. The suspicion of monsters was gone. The third entry didn’t even include a climactic online video release. It became a narrative movie where Fred Figglehorn just happened to be a character. It became what the film series should have been from the beginning, a proper film series. Oh, and the meta aspects? The one that most stuck in my mind was Fred in a dream, talking in a normal voice, saying he dreamt that he had an annoying high-pitched voice. This was a movie that set expectations, subverted them, and became something special in a trilogy of not-so-great movies.

I would never try to claim that Fred: The Movie, Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred, or Fred 3: Camp Fred were good movies. None of them were good. But there is something to be said for watching a film series grow with each installment. Watching it begin as one thing and change over time to become something else. Usually, that’s for the worse. In the case of the Fred movies, they got stronger with each outing. The writers learned that when adapting a YouTube personality to film, it would be better to come at it from the perspective of film rather than the perspective of YouTube. The movies didn’t need to be YouTube on a bigger budget. They needed to show what could be done with a YouTube character in another medium.

Fred Figglehorn was one of many YouTube personalities who made their way to the bigger screens. Again, these were television movies, so they weren’t the big screen. They were just bigger than the YouTube screens of the time. Other people like Shane Dawson and Bo Burnham and Ryan Higa also made the jump to movies. Most of them didn’t have success. What worked in one medium didn’t necessarily work in the other. But when they allowed themselves to grow, like the Fred movies grew or like Bo Burnham has always grown, they managed to carve out their own little world in film where some special things could happen.

YouTube isn’t like those early days anymore. At that time, the whole of YouTube was one large community. It was the YouTube community. Things have since gotten much more specific. There are the gamers, the film people, the architecture people, the roller coaster people, the comedy people, the music people, the makeup people, the travel people, and many others. Even within those, there are smaller niches. Do you like puzzle video games, RPGs, shooters, multiplayer games, platformers, or speedrunning? Each of those have their own worlds. We won’t ever see the likes of early YouTube again because so many people stay within their own smaller communities. The stars aren’t as plentiful. YouTube has changed.

Now let’s get to the notes, and I’m sure there will be a lot:

• I’m going to start with a link to Not Cool, since I brought that up in the post.
• There were two people who debuted in Sunday “Bad” Movies this week who appeared in all three Fred movies. They were Lucas Cruikshank and Siobhan Fallon Hogan.
• Fred: The Movie and Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred featured Stephanie Courtney, Alicia Favela, and Pixie Lott.
• Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred and Fred 3: Camp Fred featured Peter Hogan, Carlos Knight, and Daniella Monet.
• The first person to be featured in more than just Fred movies was Frank Welker. He did some work on Fred: The Movie. He was also featured in eight other movies for Sunday “Bad” Movies. They were Anaconda, Mortal Kombat, Hudson Hawk, GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords, Super Mario Bros., Godzilla, Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins, and Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster. That’s a lot of movies.
• John Cena has officially joined the five-timers club. He was in all three Fred movies, and previously showed up in The Marine and 12 Rounds.
• Beverly Polcyn made her fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Fred 3: Camp Fred. Her other three appearances were Date Movie, Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star, and All About Steve.
• Another fourth appearance in Fred 3: Camp Fred came for Tom Arnold. This recognizable face was also in Exit Wounds, The Stupids, and Golf Punks.
• The final fourth appearance was for Jake Weary. He was in all three Fred movies. He was also in Zombeavers.
• John Gatins was in Norbit before reappearing in Fred: The Movie and Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred.
• You may have noticed Chris Wylde in Fred: The Movie and Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred. He also had a role in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• Fred: The Movie featured a performance by Eddy Martin, who was previously seen in Hansel and Gretel Get Baked.
• Kirsten Berman was in Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star and Fred: The Movie.
• Do you remember Gary Anthony Williams in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows? He showed up in Fred: The Movie, too.
• The final Fred: The Movie actor to be in another movie for Sunday “Bad” Movies was Franklin Ruehl, who appeared in Balls of Fury.
• Onto Fred 2: Night of the Living Fred, we have Ariel Winter. She was also in Nic and Tristan Go Mega Dega.
• The other Fred 2: Night of the Living Dead actor to mention is Ben Wang, who was in Independence Day: Resurgence. This isn’t the Ben Wang who is becoming a popular actor right now. Different Ben Wang.
• Madison Riley popped up in Fred 3: Camp Fred. She also popped up in Bratz.
• Jack and Jill and Fred 3: Camp Fred each featured Luke Broadlick.
• I promise this will be the final time Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star comes up in this post. It featured Adam Herschman, who was in Fred 3: Camp Fred.
• Philip Albuquerque took a wrong turn from Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster and ended up in Fred 3: Camp Fred.
• Finally, Romel De Silva was in Fred 3: Camp Fred and He’s All That.
• Have you seen any of the Fred movies? What did you think of them? Share your thoughts in the comments or find me on Bluesky and let me know there.
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for a future Sunday “Bad” Movies post, get a hold of me in the comments or Bluesky and let me know. I’m always open to movies I haven’t seen yet.
• Okay, it’s time to give a quick look at what’s coming up in future posts. I have one more post before I get spooky. Office Romance should be coming up next week or the week after. Then we’ll get to October, where I have a pair of horror movie posts planned. One will be the result of continuing my voyage through the Evil Bong franchise with Evil Bong 777. Following that, I finally got to check out Tommy Wiseau’s Big Shark. That seems like a solid spooky season lineup to me. I’ll see you soon for more Sunday “Bad” Movies stuff.

Love on a Leash (2011)

Sunday “Bad” Movies started a long time ago. Nearly fifteen years ago. I’ve seen a whole lot of movies as I ventured my way through this blog. Some were better than others. Some were worse than others. But I don’t think I’ve ever been on a stretch of bad like I’ve been on for the past year. My posting rate has gone down the past few years. Not so much year to year, but there was a point when I stopped posting every week. Yet, somehow, in the reduced number of posts, I’ve managed to up my frequency of bottom tier quality movies.

Let me look at the movies since January 2025. Fast and Furriest might not quite make the lowest tier, but it was close. Amityville: Evil Never Dies was bottom tier based on the sound work, alone. 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus was a poorly made fever dream of religion and Covid. War of the Worlds… Well, that’s a well known bottom tier now. Santa’s Got Style might be one of the worst Hallmark type Christmas movies I’ve ever seen. Twisted By Love is the only movie I’ve seen edit two different takes of the same exact scene into a movie AND have one shot that is two takes with the actors breaking character between while talking to the director. That was all within a twenty-nine movie span. Now I’m going to add one more movie to the bottom tier while we bring the total up to thirty.

Love on a Leash was an odd little movie. Lisa (Jana Camp) was a down on her luck woman who loved the colour green. Prince (Stephen Kramer Glickman and Aneese Khamo) was a man trapped in a golden retriever’s body whose only way back to his human form was to find true love. He found Lisa and wooed her in his dog form and, later, his human-by-night form to try and create a lasting bond.

There are going to be heavy spoilers ahead. Pretty much the entire movie’s story. So be warned.

It didn’t take too long for Love on a Leash to cement itself as a terribly made movie. Right off the bat, the movie had bad sound quality. I’ve covered a few bad movies with terrible sound quality. This didn’t reach the same levels as Amityville: Evil Never Dies, but I’d put it down there with Birdemic: Shock and Terror and A Talking Cat!?!. The sound would completely drop out of the movie when nobody was talking or narrating. There wasn’t even a score to cover up the emptiness. It was a lot of nothing and then voiceover that sounded like it was recorded in an alleyway out back of someone’s fast food job, and dialogue that sounded very flat. It just hit me why. There was no room tone to the sound design. It was only vocal sounds, which made everything feel unnatural.

The next notable thing was how Prince was introduced into Love on a Leash. He was walking around alone in some city park during the absolutely silent opening credits. As soon as he started talking, in voiceover, he asked where the women were. When a dad and son were petting him, he told the dad to lay off because he wasn’t a gay dog. If I had been drinking, I would have spit that drink all over the room. That moment caught me so off guard. This was within the first two minutes of the movie. It was a strong start for the bad moments.

I should also note that Prince wore a collar with a tag on it. Collars with tags tend to have names and home address or some such information on them. Prince walked around the city and park solo wearing this collar. Wearing this tag. Nobody questioned it. People let him walk around without a care in the world. Nobody stopped him. Nobody tried to figure out where he came from. Nobody took him to the local animal shelter. They just let it be none of their business and moved on with their days. Sure, any of those scenarios would have made the story non-existent. Would that have been all that bad, though?

The meet cute moment was twofold. First, Prince found Lisa in a park and stared at her. That was about it. Lisa’s friend ran up and pet him, calling Lisa “America’s last virgin.” He was hooked in from that. But it wasn’t love at first sight. He needed to manipulate Lisa to get her to let him into her life. He dirtied himself up and stalked her to the gas station, hoping that the sight of a dirty dog would make her want to give him a bath. The plan worked. I’m not sure how it worked, but it worked. She took him home and cleaned him off.

Lisa took in this random dog. I’m not entirely sure why she took him in. He was still wearing that collar with the tag that would, most likely, have an address and some contact information on it. Either way, the next step was to come up with a name. She settled on Prince, even though the dog kept saying his name was Alvin Flang. It didn’t take him long to drop that name for Prince, though. There was one scene of Prince complaining about the name. When he became human later in the movie, he never once brought up Alvin Flang.

Another thing the dog brought up early in the movie was Lisa’s obsession with the colour green. It was almost like someone had used a One Wish Willow on her that would make her like green more than anything else in the world. Walls? Green. Every piece of clothing she had? Green. Her car? Green. Everything had to be green. Prince called it out early and Lisa somehow understood what he was saying, even though he was a dog at the time who could only bark at her. This was also right around the time she asked what Prince was looking at and, in his best ten-year-old speech, he said “Nothing much” while looking directly at her. Yeah, there were a lot of odd moments in the first twenty minutes of Love on a Leash.

While this coerced adoption was happening, Lisa had a bunch of problems going on at work. She had customers who were rude to her because she dared suggest that something that didn’t fit a customer might not be the right size for that customer. She had a coworker she went on a date with who was revealed to be a gay man looking for someone to marry him as a beard to protect his family’s honour. And then she had an abusive boss who berated her at work, before coming over to her house to try and rape her. She lost her job for not letting him. She was better off without that job anyway.

Let’s get back to the main story, the budding romance between Prince and Lisa. Yes, a romance between a woman and a dog. I brought that up earlier. I should give a little more context that will make you question things even more. When Prince was at the park during the opening credits, he visited the corner of a pond where there was some sort of magic voice. It told him that the only way to become human again was to find true love with a human woman. Well, now he had worked his way into Lisa’s home. He went back to the pond. The voice said he was doing it for selfish reasons, rather than actually loving with Lisa. It was true. But, somewhere along the way, the pond voice granted him the ability to be human when sunlight wasn’t on him. Something like that. The rules had some blurred boundaries later.

Now there was a lady in love with a reverse werewolf, only the wolf side of him was a docile golden retriever. This allowed for one of the funniest romance scenes I’ve ever witnessed. In his human form, where he was kind of a buff-looking Will Forte type, they went to the bedroom. They did a couple kissy-kissy things before the lights went out. They faded back up in the daylight. Lisa woke up and rolled over. BOOM! She was sleeping with a dog. She had sex with a dog. She screamed. I laughed.

Right about now (the funk soul brother) was a chunk of the movie that didn’t really have too much memorable stuff going on. Prince had a job as a dog actor and could somehow make money from it that Lisa didn’t know about. I’m not entirely sure how that worked. No studio head is going to just give money to a dog. Yet, somehow, Prince had a fat stack of cash from his gigs. I doubt he was sneaking out to the studio in the middle of the night to pick up the money, when the offices were probably closed anyway. There was also a dinner that Prince went to so he could meet Lisa’s relatives. And Lisa’s friend stopped being friends with her because she hadn’t been told about Lisa’s new boyfriend. Just a few little bits and pieces that didn’t need a whole lot of focus.

I want to get to the pool scene, though. We have this scene where Lisa went to the house of a potential new boss for a barbecue and pool party sort of thing. Maybe not all that, but they ate food next to a pool. It was the middle of the day. Lisa needed to show her stable relationship to this almost boss for some reason. She convinced Prince to accompany her, even though we all knew it would be a bad idea. By we, I mean the characters and anyone fortunate enough to watch Love on a Leash. It was an overcast day. What could go wrong? They got to the party. They had some food. They had a good time. Lisa stepped away for a moment. In that moment, the clouds went away and Prince turned into a dog. You know, daylight and all that. People fell in the pool, there was a rescue, Lisa was embarrassed. Not a good time.

About two scenes later, Prince realized he was actually in love with Lisa. On his way to confess his true feelings, he was struck by a car and killed. In dog form. With a bunch of the worst looking fake blood matted into his fur. Lisa stayed single forever. Okay, not forever. There was still one more scene where an old Lisa was greeted at her door by a resurrected Prince, in human form, and they were able to rekindle their romance. This time it wasn’t a romance between species. It was a romance between generations.

Love on a Leash ended on a nearly two-minute silent scene of Lisa and Prince kissing after being married. I would say while the credits rolled, but there was a long chunk of this silent scene where there were no credits at all. It was one of the most awkward endings to a movie that was so awkwardly put together.

The story in Love on a Leash was bonkers. The sound quality was atrocious. The acting, especially in the voice-over dog talk portions, was pretty darn bad. There was still something about it that spoke to me. Even with all the bad, it took great strides to become something memorable, something entertaining, something special. Sure, it was one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a while. Not THE worst. But among the worst. I still had a bunch to talk about just by sharing how ridiculous it was.

That’s the special thing about Sunday “Bad” Movies, really. The overall quality might not be the best. The word bad is in the title of the blog. That should give you an idea of the level of quality we’re talking about here. Bad movies can still manage to entertain as much as the good. Sometimes even more. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the point of my writing about all these movies. Every movie deserves a chance. When you only watch what people think are good movies, you can truly miss out on some special experiences.

Now it’s time for a few notes about Love on a Leash:

• I mentioned a few movies during this post. They were Fast and Furriest, Amityville: Evil Never Dies, 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus, War of the Worlds, Santa’s Got Style, Twisted by Love, A Talking Cat!?!, and Birdemic: Shock and Terror.
• The only actor from Love on a Leash to appear in another movie for Sunday “Bad” Movies was Davis Choh, who was in Zombie Strippers!.
• Have you seen Love on a Leash? What did you think of it? Share your thoughts in the comments or find me on Bluesky.
• You can use Bluesky and the comments to let me know what movies I should check out for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts. I’m always open to being told about movies I might not know about already.
• Here’s a quick look at what’s coming up soon for Sunday “Bad” Movies. The next post, which will hopefully be sooner (I had a busy past couple weeks, so this one kept getting pushed back), will be about the three Fred movies. You know, the television film trilogy based on the early YouTube star. After that, the plan is to take a look at Office Romance. Then, based on it being mid-August now, I’ll probably start taking a look at a couple movies for spooky season. I’ll let you know soon, and I hope to see you soon for the next post.

Screamboat (2025) and How the Producers of Terrifier 2 and 3 Used Disney Properties

A year or so ago, I wrote about a movie called Mouseboat Massacre. It led me into the topic of the public domain and how movies were being made based on intellectual properties that had run their course in the world of copyright. A few months before that, I wrote about a movie called Stream, which was from the production company behind the Terrifier sequels. Well, I’ve gotten to the point in my bad movie watching where I’ve checked out the movie that was the perfect intersection of those two.

Yeah, that’s right. The people behind the Terrifier movies and Stream made a movie based on an intellectual property that recently made its way into the public domain. Fuzz on the Lens Productions is the company. I might as well name the company behind the movies. They took Steamboat Willie and turned him into a horror villain, just like Mouseboat Massacre. However, they did it in a different way.

Screamboat was about a bunch of people on the Staten Island Ferry who were hunted down by an evil mouse (David Howard Thornton). That’s about it to the story. Selena (Allison Pittel) was a bartender trying to get to the ferry while avoiding a birthday party she served earlier that night. Pete (Jesse Posey) was a deckhand who helped her. Cindi (Kailey Hyman), Ariana (Savannah Whitten), Bella (Stephanie Bates), Jazzy (Poonam Basu), and Rory (Allie Seibold) were the birthday partiers. They were trapped on the boat together and had to try to team up to escape.

The only similarities between Screamboat and Mouseboat Massacre were that they were horror movies and they used the recently public domain Steamboat Willie animated short as the inspiration for the terrifying things that happened. Other than that, they were two completely different horror movies. One of them was a serious look at drug addiction, withdrawal, and support systems. The other was an ultra-violent horror romp filled with love for the Disney brand.

That love of Disney is what I want to get into with Screamboat. It did everything it could, within the confines of a horror movie based on Steamboat Willie, to pay tribute to Disney as a company. That was a little tough to do, when they were only working with elements of Mickey Mouse. See, the only bit of Mickey that was in the public domain at the time they released the movie was Steamboat Willie. The classic Mickey design hasn’t made it to the public yet. No gloves, no red pants, and a different facial shape. Same with the version of Minne that we know now. Many of the animated Disney feature-length movies so many of us grew up on haven’t made it to the public domain yet. It’s the same reason Winnie-the-Pooh can be used by anyone, but the classic Disney red t-shirt look can’t. Only certain elements have come out of copyright.

Screamboat was put in an interesting place. They could do a straight horror version of Steamboat Willie. That’s what they had the rights to. They would be free to do whatever they wanted with that version of the character as long as they didn’t impose upon any other elements that were still protected under copyright law. Or they could go all in on Disney, as long as they were very careful with their workarounds. That was the route they chose to go.

Take the birthday partying women, for example. They were each based on a Disney princess. Their names and the colour of their birthday dresses were references without being direct copies, to skirt the copyright issues. Cyndi instead of Cinderella. Bella instead of Belle. Jazzy instead of Jasmine. Rory instead of Aurora. Ariana instead of Ariel. The name changes were enough that they were different, but entirely recognizable. Enough to avoid copyright infringement, not enough that audiences wouldn’t catch on. They even wore colours associated with those characters. Pete, the deckhand, was named after a Steamboat Willie character, which was fine because Steamboat Willie was in the public domain.

In a less copyright-bound situation, Screamboat also had their own version of Minnie Mouse. She wasn’t named, but there was a romantic backstory for Steamboat Willie that involved a missing love interest. Selena dressed up as the mate at one point to try and use Willie’s emotions against him. The character of Minnie Mouse had appeared in Steamboat Willie, which meant that her likeness could be used because it was now in the public domain. Her name, however, was still under trademark by Disney. Much like with Mickey, this meant that their names could not be used. Hence why neither of them was named in Screamboat.

It was crafty little workarounds like changing names that helped Screamboat succeed in using the now public domain Steamboat Willie characters. As long as they weren’t naming the Disney-created characters, they could use the characters all they wanted. At least, they could use these older versions. Any versions of Mickey and Minnie that originated after the release of Steamboat Willie, such as Minnie having a bow instead of a clapper girl hat, were still off limits.

There were pieces of dialogue throughout Screamboat that also showed that the filmmakers cared more about Disney than using it as a cheap cashgrab. Not that they weren’t trying to make some money off Steamboat Willie hitting the public domain. At one point, someone said “Let it go” which was a clear reference to Frozen. There were other moments like that, too, which I just can’t remember at the moment I’m writing this.

The final element that I believe showed that the people who made Screamboat liked Disney was the fact that they kept the mouse small. He might not have been as small as your average mouse. He was maybe a foot tall. But he wasn’t a human-sized mouse terrorizing people. He was like a yappy little dog that would usually be all bark and no bite, only he was all bite and no bark. It was nice to see him truer to real size than, say, the Hundred-Acre Wood characters in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. Not every horror murderer needs to be the size of an average person. This one wasn’t.

Screamboat wasn’t a movie that was going to blow anyone’s minds with filmmaking quality and expertise. It was a schlocky horror movie based on one of the earliest popular outings of Disney’s most famous character. However, there was enough care put into it to elevate it above many of the other movies within this realm of public domain children’s characters turned into horrific nightmares.

The three elements I listed above showed that the people behind Screamboat cared about what they were making. They cared about the source material almost as much as they cared about the quick buck they were hoping to make off the lapsed copyright. They included references to characters from throughout the history of Disney’s animated catalogue. They pulled pieces of dialogue from those movies and used them in their own ways. And, most importantly, they stayed true to Mickey in terms of his size and his love of Minnie. Sure, there was a lot of violence along the way. But, in the end, it was a violent love letter to the cartoons we all grew up watching and loving.

Movies like Screamboat are only one of the reasons I write these Sunday “Bad” Movies posts. Even in a world where the writing might not be great, the acting might be even worse, and the intentions might be some easy money, there can still be heart to the projects. Putting effort into something can go a long way into making it more enjoyable and more notable than it otherwise would be. That’s art, man. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be able to move you in some way.

These notes won’t be moving you in any way, I think:

• I mentioned Stream and Mouseboat Massacre in this post.
• Screamboat featured two actors who were in both Sharknado 2: The Second One and Stream. They were Michael Leavy and Steven Della Salla.
• Allyson Sereboff returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Screamboat, after first appearing in Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.
• Brian Quinn made a cameo in Screamboat. He was previously seen in Vulgar.
• Yoga Hosers and Screamboat each featured Tyler Posey.
• Finally, four actors from Stream made their second Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Screamboat. They were Gilbrando Acevedo, Allison Pittel, Charles Edwin Powell, and David Howard Thornton.
• Have you seen Screamboat? What did you think of it? Have you seen any of the horror movies based on children’s characters? Let me know your thoughts on this stuff in the comments. Or you could hit me up on Bluesky.
• The comments and Bluesky are also good places to suggest movies for me to watch for future Sunday “Bad” Movies posts. Let me know what I should be checking out.
• Now it’s time to take a quick look at what’s coming up soon. The next post will be about a movie called Love on a Leash. Then I’ll take a look at the three Fred movies. I’m not sure what will be after those. I have a few movies in mind. I still need to get those two posts written. And some other stuff I’m working on. That’s what you have to look forward to, though. Love on a Leash and the Fred trilogy. See you soon for those posts.

Crash Dive (1996) and Villains Starting WWIII

I’m going to start this post off with a little bit of insight into my thought process when it comes to this blog. I’m not going to get into how I choose a movie, but rather how I come up with post ideas. This was a tougher post to get into. I didn’t want to deep dive into a topic because I just did that with my look at Killer Sofa. I had also done a really long post for another blog recently, so I wanted something a little shorter. Not too short, though. My post for Breaker! Breaker! was an easy, breezy short post. All that was to say I wanted something that fell into the middle ground of length.

The Breaker! Breaker! post was a simple review. I watched the movie and talked about what the movie was. That was it. I didn’t want to do that again. At least, not so close to the last one. That’s not my style. I, instead, wanted to find a topic that would give me some middle-ground length. Not too big, not too small. Something that might end up around 3000 words instead of 1500 or 6000. No deep dive into the history of Sunday “Bad” Movies, but also not a basic look at a movie. So I sat down and started brainstorming. I put my pen to paper and, eventually, my fingers to typing. All that led to this exercise to see if I could find something to write about that wouldn’t take up too much time. And I think I finally found a topic. But first, the movie.

Crash Dive was a 1997 direct-to-video movie that came in the decades long wake of Die Hard madness. It was one of the many “Die Hard in a…” movies, this time taking place on a submarine. James Carter (Michael Dudikoff) was tasked with boarding a nuclear sub he helped design because it had been hijacked by terrorists. With all the personnel taken hostage or killed, he had to eliminate the terrorists to prevent an attack against the United States.

That synopsis got me thinking about something. Let me quickly get out my Jerry Seinfeld costume. What’s the deal with terrorists in action movies who frequently want to start World War III. I don’t understand the appeal of that endgame. This would be a no-win situation for the entire world. If you started World War III, nuclear missiles would deploy around the world. The fallout would kill all life. The bad guys never see this as a “we want to wipe out the Earth, us included” scenario. They see it as a bargaining chip, to get something they want. Money, power, or revenge are frequently the motivations. But this type of threat, if followed through on, can only end one way. The destruction of all life on the planet. No survivors.

Take the movie that inspired this post, for example. Crash Dive saw a group of terrorists aim to start World War III by attacking the United States with a nuclear submarine. They threatened to send missiles at the eastern seaboard. At first, it seemed like the terrorists just wanted money. They were holding the submarine hostage as leverage to get $100 million. If they didn’t get the money, they would send some nukes at Washington. However, the leader had every intention of detonating the nukes, regardless of the monetary situation. That was when I got confused.

The whole endgame for these types of situations never sits right for me. They’re kind of like when somebody wants something and can’t have it. Their mindset switches to “well if I can’t have it, nobody can.” Then they go on a path of destruction to ensure that nobody can have the pleasure of the object of their desire. However, in a movie like Crash Dive, there was never an object that was desired. It wasn’t a case of if the terrorists couldn’t have the $100 million, then nobody could. The $100 million was never a desire for the lead terrorist. He wanted to watch the world burn just to watch it burn. Kill humanity just for the sake of killing humanity. That lost me a little bit. Where was the motivation?

Some movies at least tried to give a poorly thought-out motivation. Expend4bles shared the idea of the bad guys trying to start World War III. Only, in that case, they were taking a nuclear vessel into Russian waters and letting the Russian army kick off the war. A motivation was revealed late in the movie that had to do with war profiteering. However, the villain never spent the time to think about the war that was being started. They only thought about the profits. The war would have ended humanity. It was being started with nukes, it would have ended in a nuclear apocalypse. There wouldn’t be any profiting off a war in that case. A few buttons would be pressed and human life, as we know it, would cease to exist. This villain probably wouldn’t even be alive to earn any money off the war. And if he did somehow manage to survive the barrage of nuclear explosions that would surely engulf the Earth, there wouldn’t be the people or infrastructure for money to even have meaning. Toilet paper and bottled water would probably be the biggest trade chips. We saw that during the Covid lockdowns.

Going back to Crash Dive, it’s hard to imagine a situation where, if the bad guys won, the whole world would not be ended in a similar way to the World War III nuclear apocalypse. The only difference was that the villain didn’t have any additional motivation. Sure, things started as a nuclear sub hostage situation where the villain claimed he wanted money. That was only a claim. Like I said, he never wanted the money. He wanted to attack the United States with a nuclear warhead. As soon as that nuclear warhead was sent on its collision course, the United States was likely to retaliate. And other countries, not knowing who was firing missiles until the United States retaliated, would try defending themselves from the United States. It would likely lead to more missiles flying. Countries attacking each other out of fear of being the next attacked. That sort of stuff. Not good.

The point of these movies isn’t so much to get into the villain’s mindset, though. The villainous plan was meant as a simple setup to get the hero(es) where they needed to be. The hijacking of the sub was a way to get a Die Hard type of plot into a sub instead of a building. The threat of attacking the United States with the nuclear missile was meant to ratchet up the intensity. It was a way to raise the stakes. It was a ticking timebomb that James Carter had to defuse to save both his country and the world. The villain didn’t need any depth to create that scenario.

If you’re looking for a recent movie that tackled nuclear missiles in a way that thought about this sort of stuff, you need look no further than A House of Dynamite on Netflix. It wasn’t a movie about someone threatening to end the world with a nuclear attack. It wasn’t a movie about people dealing with the aftermath of a nuclear attack. It covered the moments before a nuclear missile hit the city of Chicago. The debate about what to do. The discussions of what was going to happen. People reacting to the impending doom that was being brought upon them.

I wouldn’t say that A House of Dynamite was a great movie. It was alright, if repetitive through the way the story was told. The interesting part was the conversation that happened in the leadup to the missile. Which, I guess, would be the conversation of the whole movie. The government, while trying to figure out what to do, weighed the options. To do nothing would make them look weak. It would make it look like someone could attack them and they wouldn’t fight back. To retaliate against an unknown enemy was going to start a catastrophic war. It was a no-win scenario for the government and they had to figure out an option that would cause the least amount of bloodshed.

The characters in A House of Dynamite considered the implications of a nuclear missile being fired at a major city. Sure, they never figured out who fired the missile. It was the deliberation that was the important part. No motivation was necessary for the villain because the villain was never seen. Crash Dive never had the debate. The bad guy that was seen throughout the movie never thought about what would happen after he got his attack out of the way. The heroes never considered what would happen beyond the initial attack. Nobody really thought about the destruction of the planet. They simply thought about an attack on Washington, not the war that would likely result from it.

During the writing of this post, I went to the theater and saw the new Masters of the Universe movie. It wasn’t a nuclear war movie or a movie where a bad guy threatened to attack something with a nuclear missile. It did sum something up nicely, though. I want to bring that aspect into this post because it really put things into perspective. In a scene where Adam tried to reason with Skeletor, Skeletor rejected the reasoning by saying straight up that he was “the villain.” Sometimes bad guys just do bad things because they are bad. That’s it. Simple as that. When it comes to villains who want to attack with something nuclear, without thinking of the repercussions… Sometimes they’re just bad people.

Crash Dive might have been one of those movies. The villain acted like he wanted the money. Then it was revealed that the whole hijacking was solely so he could attack Washington with a nuclear missile. There wasn’t really any motivation behind it other than he wanted to do it. He was a villain who wanted to be a bad guy. That was it. It doesn’t matter how much I question why he would want to commit an attack that would likely wipe out all life on the planet. Sometimes bad people do bad things because they’re bad people. He was one of those bad people.

This topic stemmed from a question I’ve thought of while watching a bunch of action movies. Why don’t the villains think about the fact that starting World War III would likely mean the end of the world? So many countries hold nuclear weapons and know the destruction they could cause. If one were to send off a nuclear missile, there would likely be response from many of the other countries. End of Ze World video, anyone? But now I know, thanks to a recent theatrical release, that sometimes villains are just bad because they’re bad. They do bad things not because they get anything out of it, but because they are bad people. Simple as that.

I came up with that question as a topic after starting this post trying to figure out what I would write. I called for something longer than my last post, which was 1100 words. I just looked it up, so I’m correcting my claim of 1500 from the beginning of this post. I wanted it to be fewer than the 6000 words from the post before. It was actually 6500 words. Anyway, this one is far shorter. A good old… Probably around 2200 words once the notes are completed at the end. I’d say that was successful.

All I needed so that I could write up the post I wanted was a topic I could ramble my way through in a slightly coherent way. I found that. I’d say I did a good job. You can disagree with me. I don’t care. I write these posts for myself anyway. I use them as a way to make sense of some of the things tumbling about in my mind. Now, that’s the type of insight I’m sure you wanted.

And here are those notes:

• Kane Hodder made his sixth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance in Crash Dive. He was previously in Jason Goes to Hell, Friday the 13^th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, 3 Musketeers, Hardbodies, and Wishmaster.
• Did you recognize John Lafayette in Crash Dive? He was also in a couple movies called Jaws: The Revenge and Remote Control.
• Crash Dive featured Michael Cavanaugh from Iron Eagle.
• Catherine Bell was one of the primary performers in Crash Dive. She played the titular character in The Good Witch.
• Reiner Schöne played an important role in Crash Dive. He was also in a little movie called Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
• Crash Dive wasn’t the only movie featuring Pasha D. Lychnikoff in Sunday “Bad” Movies. The other movie was Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star.
• Time Winters was in both Lavalantula and Crash Dive.
• Christopher Titus returned to Sunday “Bad” Movies in Crash Dive after previously popping up in Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
• Finally, the star of Crash Dive was Michael Dudikoff. He also had an important role in Ringmaster.
• Have you seen Crash Dive? What did you think of it? What do you think of movie villains who want nothing more than to start World War III? Let me know in the comments or get a hold of me on Bluesky.
• If there’s a movie you think I should check out for Sunday “Bad” Movies, let me know what it is. You can tell me on Bluesky, or leave a suggestion in the comments.
• And with that, we take a look forward to what’s coming up for Sunday “Bad” Movies. The next post will be for a little horror movie called Screamboat. I followed that up with a romantic comedy called Love on a Leash. After those two is a franchise week, and I’ll be checking out the three Fred movies for that one. Yeah, you have some spicy movies to look forward to. I don’t know when the posts will be ready, but those will be the next three posts. I’ll see you when the Screamboat post is ready.