Surprise!
As i said prefacing the review for Popeye The Slayer Man, i’m not gonna change the schedule for these films, but since i also don’t want to have these hanging off the “to do” list like dingleberries, we’re doing overtime.. well, I am doing overtime, let’s cover these now and hope i won’t have to do another round of Popeye-xploitation in the fall.
And yes, i guess i should have done this before Popeye The Slayer Man, since it came out earlier and it’s actually the first one to capitalize on Popeye’s character falling into public domain (the other free idea bucket alongside mythology), and surprising no one it’s by one of the production companies behind the Winnie Pooh Blood And Honey movies (though it’s not part of their Twisted Childhood Universe), heck, it’s written by Harry Boxley (Dinosaur Hotel 3, Jurassic Triangle, Tsunami Sharks, and of course a couple of the Steamboat Willy-xploitation flicks, Mouseboat Massacre and Mouse Of Horrors), and directed by William Stead, curiously not his feature lenght debut, as directed something called “Children Of The Night” back in 2023.
The plot is that in a UK coastal town, a boy with abnormal arms and a pronounced chin is born, his appereance leading to him getting relentelessly getting bullied at school (where he often dons his sailor outfit), until one day he snaps and fights back, killing one of his bullies.
His parents hide him in the basement for his own good, but the townspeople form an angry mob and they torch down Popeye’s family home, with his parents dying in the fire and apparently him drowning in a nearby lake.
Years later some douchy young adults inherit the house, unaware of his dark history, but as they try to settle in more and more of them keep disappearing off…
You know what this sounds like?
/Trick question, this sounds like it could be any slasher, especially a 80s slasher, with the killer’s backstory being bullied at school and all, but specifically, this to me feels a lot like Hatchet (which you should watch instead of this), sure, it’s not a swamp this time around, but it’s another water adjacent-based location, meaning – by transitive property – that’s also very Friday The 13th..
The question is if this is really worse than Popeye The Slayer Man, and…. actually, it might take the cake, win the turkey trophy.
It has a opening animated scene done in the same sketchy “storyboards are fine, too” art style of the one in the first Winnie The Pooh Blood and Honey… and honestly it looks worse, i don’t like having to “praise” that movie but at least it was better than this frankly embarassing animatic, i’ve seen people pull off better motion comics, come on.
Which already makes clear how much of a mess it is, i mean, what kind of stupid bullies would pick on the child which has ripping adult forearms just lacking a “i can squeeze the life out of you in 5 seconds flat” tattoo on them? Why thrown him into the basement? Why nobody called the police?
Heck, why nobody – again, maybe the police should have -went down to check if Popeye actually drowned? Heck, even leaving that aside, i would be worried if the house i went over to rebuild and renovate had been misteriously rebuilt by unknown hands.
This is just vomiting generic backstory bullshit, all done so quickly in this 3 minutes “animated” opening scene in an obvious attempt to cram it down your throat fast hoping you would be overwhelmed enough to not notice how flimsy the whole premise is.
It doesn’t work, arguably it backfires, as this approach does nothing but raise questions, and in case you missed it, immediatly after we get the same basic premise told by some guys filming some episodes on haunted houses for a webseries they have, until they’re offed by “Popeye”.
Despite this backstory and expecting to see a slasher style Popeye character, this is even more unfitting to the character than Popeye The Slayer Man, and than movie chose an even lazier way to make him somewhat of a victim of circumstances, but still worked better than this mess, where you really can’t emphatize a little with him, despite the backstory clearly being there for that purpose.
Popeye itself doesn’t have a silicone mask slapped on in this one, but doesn’t matter as Popeye doesn’t talk here (until he says like five words at the end), the Popeye costume/get-up is about as “good” here as it was in The Slayer Man, though i can’t say this movie handles it much better, they both reveal the look of the “Popeye” very early too, here he carries around an anchor most of the time and he doesn’t have the silicon mask on…i kinda preferred that, somehow, the burned face really feels off (and that is more a Nightmare On Elm Street thing than a Friday The 13th rip-off), even more off that Popeye just going around killing random people unprovoked, that is.
Speaking of which, the kills and effects are… pretty lame, actually, often they don’t even bother with actual gore effects and instead incorrectly have someone spray cheap fake blood from offscreen, and they’re incredibly bereft of any gusto, mostly they have him use the anchor in some way, would be more interesting if this was a Pokemon slasher about a Dhelmise using a person to kill people.
Instead no, even when they get less boring, it’s something hastily done, like the spine rip, or reused like the mower kill, i’ve seen worse but somehow even these are getting lazier and cheaper.
The only positive thing i can say is that at least here they did something with Olive Oil, opting to basically have her the equivalent of Monica Brown in the Terrifier films, the enabler, as she was the only friend Popeye had back then and now she’s helping him getting revenge….
Acting is wildy uneven, with some decent or good performance alongside terrible ones, the pacing is sargassum ass slow, calling the direction “uninspired” would be hyperbolic praise, there are some kinda nice ideas, at least on paper, but in reality they’re half-baked, at best, thrown in without any care or ounce of wit to them, surprising no one, since it’s abudantly clear even the makers of the film didn’t care to actually commit to the idea in any way that could make it fun.
Slop in a can, as expected, though this one has the decency to not bother with a 90 minutes runtime, barely scraping by a 80 minutes one, with credits, but yeah, ultimately, this IS worse than Popeye The Slayer Man, but that just means – for the sake of clarity – that i would have given that one a 4/10… instead of a 3/10. Even that feels a bit generous, with the sequel bait ending it has.
I mean, it’s disheartening enough there are more than one of these, even worse when 2 out of 3 are basically the same movie, despite being unrelated and by different production companies.
Heck, honestly you could just swap the killer and you could fairly easily edited this into the first Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey, since it’s shot either in the same location or pretty close, if it ain’t it sure looks like the same place, and still plays out nearly identical, down to the jacuzzi kills, and somehow they have both basically the same last minute twists/revelations…
Disgustipating indeed.
See you for the review of Shivers Me Timbers, i guess.
Wise Cafe (International) 