If you're wondering if the world has indeed gone mad, consider the Pooh slasher film

As the world searches earnestly for the reason everything seems to have gone off the rails of late, the fact that someone thought it was a good idea to make a slasher movie out of Winnie the Pooh seems like a good place to start.

Let’s take the heartwarming bedtime story of a lovable, honey-obsessed roly-poly ursine and turn it into “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey,” a horrific tale of rage, blood and viscera. Smart.

According to Wikipedia, the film “follows Pooh and Piglet, who have become feral and bloodthirsty murderers, as they terrorize a group of young university women and Christopher Robin when he returns to the Hundred Acre Wood many years later after leaving for college.”

Viewers hated it, but couldn’t look away. “The film received overwhelmingly negative reviews, but was a financial success, grossing $5.2 million worldwide against a $100,000 budget,” the website said.

OK, not that I’m buying into this in any way, but I would have pegged Eeyore as the psycho-killer. His clinical depression was clearly evident: “Good morning. If it is a good morning. Which I doubt.” I mean come on, there was a mass shooting waiting to happen. You visit Eeyore’s Facebook page and you’ll see pictures of AR-15 high capacity magazines and lengthy and angry manifestos about how Pooh just won’t shut up about the honey already.

But no. Without the human around to feed them, the animals kill and eat Eeyore, and when Christopher Robin returns with his wife Mary, “The couple is ambushed by Piglet, who fatally strangles Mary. Pooh and Piglet then drag Christopher into the woods, showing him Eeyore's skeletal remains and burning Mary's corpse.”

Piglet? Piglet is the psycho? Yeah, should have seen that coming. It’s always the one you’d least suspect. Timid, fidgety, lacking confidence — acts like he just got released from an extended stay in the nervous hospital. And look at that complexion, all pale and such, so you know he’s been existing in front of a computer screen in his parents’ basement and suffers from a serious lack of Vitamin

Obviously, things get a little ticklish here for the script writers. Who are you going to kill next, Owl? That’s nothing that Oregon loggers haven’t already done.

Typically, whenever horror writers hit a dead spot, they always add a handful of young college women to the mix, and that makes things satisfactory again. So if you have a weakness for the classics, you’re in luck.

A pack of college girls arrive on the scene for some reason, and Pooh Bear and Piglet obligingly dispatch them one by one, including a young woman who gets a machete drilled through her open mouth.

There’s no good way to die (I’ve never even been comfortable with the supposedly comforting assurance that pap died “surrounded by loved ones"; makes it sound like there was a shootout) but this particular method has to be way down on the list. So the movie gets points for that.

Indeed, one reviewer said that the film suffered from “poor dialogue, lack of humor, and connection to its basic source material” but that “the gore and inherent grotesqueness of the material worked well.”

So it has that going for it. Which is nice. It reminded me of a critique of a 1950s song to the effect of “That ‘doo wop a pop mom pop bam boo” is great, but the rest of the words don’t make any sense.”

Winnie the Pooh was grist for this horrific spin because the story just emerged out from under the protection of American copyright laws. So it seems certain you can expect some copycat flicks with other content that is entering the public domain: Be on the lookout for “Icky Mouse” and “Lady Chatterley's Dagger.”

As Pooh would say, Oh bother.

Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

If we lose our democracy, it's because we lost our ability to communicate first

Win a bowl game, get doused with mayonnaise: Corporate sponsors demand a lot from coaches

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Who thought making a slasher Winnie the Pooh film was a good idea?