So curious, in fact, I watched these two back to back! Was I crazy to do that? Of course! But I had a warm cheeseburger and a pack of fresh onion rings that evening, so why not pair those with a couple of dumb movies?
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Popeye The Slayer Man (2025)
Rating: ***
Starring: Jason Robert Stephens, Sarah Nicklin, Angela Relucio
Blow me down. I actually like this one!
University student Dexter is doing a video documentary about a local town legend known as the "Sailor Man", who apparently haunts the abandoned and soon-to-be demolished Anchor Bay spinach cannery. He's joined by his bestfriend Lisa, her boyfriend Seth, their friend Katie, and a mysterious newcomer named Olivia who's deeply interested about the urban legend. The gang plans on filming around the factory later that night for quality shots, as well as do a bit of junior investigation around what exactly led to the place shutting down two decades ago. While all of this is happening, Katie's abusive boyfriend and his cronies are convinced she's cheating, so they start stalking the place to confront her.
Rating: ***
Starring: Jason Robert Stephens, Sarah Nicklin, Angela Relucio
Blow me down. I actually like this one!
University student Dexter is doing a video documentary about a local town legend known as the "Sailor Man", who apparently haunts the abandoned and soon-to-be demolished Anchor Bay spinach cannery. He's joined by his bestfriend Lisa, her boyfriend Seth, their friend Katie, and a mysterious newcomer named Olivia who's deeply interested about the urban legend. The gang plans on filming around the factory later that night for quality shots, as well as do a bit of junior investigation around what exactly led to the place shutting down two decades ago. While all of this is happening, Katie's abusive boyfriend and his cronies are convinced she's cheating, so they start stalking the place to confront her.
Unbeknownst to all of these hapless souls, the Sailor Man is real; with his deformed face and equally misshapen, overly muscular arms, he stomps around the factory to crush some heads and tear off a few limbs. Particularly of those who dare enter his territory...
Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) is what it is, a cheesed-up slasher with a ridiculous premise, one that actually brought some good material to poke fun at; while the characters are your trope-types ranging from the nerdy protagonist and his cool girl love interest, to the lovey-dovey couple and despicable douchebags that are just in it for the kill count, they're set around a story that's basic yet workably outrageous, centering on bad spinach cover-ups and a mutated man-monster with distinctive brutality. It walks a fine line between being a satire of the Popeye franchise with its name drops and visual Easter eggs (I guess that guy will have to pay another food joint Tuesday for a cheeseburger today), and a murder-focused B-grade bodycounter that generously delivers splashy kills and chunky gore, the resulting product being this odd yet entertaining ham of a movie that can get predictable with its direction, but makes up for it with a few laughs and loads of the red stuff. Loads.
At times, the low budget does show whenever we get a good look at our killer Popeye up-close, the rubbery texture of the practical effects done for his face and tumorous arms visibly obvious. Due to this, it's sometimes hard to feel scared for our characters whenever the Sailor Man is out getting them, though we do have some expressive lightning here and there that definitely gave him an intimidating presence, as silly as he looks with his caricature face, bulbous arms and his strangely prim sailor uniform. (Like, he's been hiding in that dusty spinach factory for years, how the heck is that uniform not worn out?) Plus, he has lore. The movie actually took the time to build a silly lore behind this monster, one involving unsanitary canned vegetables, whistleblowers and a long lost swee'pea that, somehow, makes him sympathetic, even! I have to give the movie points for that!
To simply put it, Popeye The Slayer Man (2025) is a movie not meant for serious eyes, but for those who love a bad slasher! Cheesy to the core, too silly to ignore, pop this Popeye in with hot popcorn and anchors away!
Bodycount:
1 male disemboweled
1 male had his head crushed open, brain spilled out
1 female killed offscreen
1 male had his head stomped
1 female had her scalp torn off, crushed in a hydraulic press
1 male had his eyes thumbed, head twisted
1 male had his neck crushed with an anchor, decapitated
1 male impaled by dropped steel rods
1 female falls unto steel rods, impaled
1 male beaten to death with his own torn arm
1 male had his head crushed
Total: 11
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Starring: Emily Mogilner, Connor Powles, Danielle Ronald
From ITN Studios, who produced the infamous Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey franchise, comes this darkly tale of a deformed boy who drowned in a lake, now haunting the woods as a supernatural undead hulk, hellbent on murdering he comes across.
Yeah. Hadn't heard of that before. Totally original. (If I had a nickle...)
Popeye's Revenge (2025) starts with an animated narration about a boy named Johnny (Nicknamed "Popeye"), who was born with a cartoonish chin, even more cartoonish forearms, and immense strength. Because of his odd appearance, he's constantly bullied at school to the point he eventually snaps one day, strangling another kid dead. Horrified by this, Johnny's parents hide away him in a basement until this whole thing blows over, his only companion a mysterious pen pal who passes him notes through a secret door. It isn't long before the angry mob find out where the boy is hidden and they torch down the house, killing Johnny's family and him barely escaping the blaze, only to seemingly drown in a nearby lake. Now, it is said that Johnny's spirit lives within the lake's fog and whenever it rolls in, it means nothing more than the arrival of a vengeful burnt brute. (Dressed as a sailor)
Cut to the present and we learn that Johnny's old home was rebuilt mysteriously over the years, and a young adult Tara has inherited it after her gramma passed away. Hoping to turn it into a haunted attraction to help her folks with their money problems, she invites her friends over to get the place cleaned up, unaware that the foggy presence of "Popeye" and a mysterious accomplice has set their eyes on hunting and ending them the moment they arrive.
As you can tell, Popeye's Revenge (2025) takes a different stab on ole' Popeye The Sailor Man, one that's barely Popeye at all. There's little to no reference to the cartoon source material and, instead, simply have its killer dress up as a half-burnt sailor (in a lake) and beef up his arms a bit. In fact, take all the Popeye stuff away and just make Johnny a random vengeful revenant cursed with deformity, you'd still have the same picture show! Sadly, the story it chooses to tell is barely showcasing anything new, with the killer's origins, for one, a hodge-podge of Friday The 13th's Jason Voorhees, A Nightmare on Elm Street's Fred Krueger and even a bit of the undead ghosts killers from John Carpenter's The Fog (1980). The plot dearly tries to make something unique out of this monstrosity, but its supposed supernatural angle is handled so poorly, it's practically nonexistent and pointless, leaving us with nothing more than another killer-in-the-backwoods dead teenager movie littered with boring and unlikable youngsters.
If there's anything to praise here, it would be the fact that Popeye's Revenge (2025) has some decent camera work here and there, its sizeable kills are never dry of blood (Though some of the props used are obviously Halloween decors, just look how stiff that freshly torn spine is!), and its "Popeye slasher" looks intimidating given that you ignore the silly matter that he's wearing a cartoon sailor's uniform in the middle of the damn woods for some reason. (In fact, why was he wearing a sailor's uniform when he was still alive?) It has that faint whiff of cheese, sure, but it doesn't really feel like it's openly approaching its silliness that much, focusing more on straight shlock that partially works.
In the end, uninspired plotting and clumsy execution is the undoing of Popeye's Revenge (2025), and no amount of splatter and slaughter can save itself from being a tired effort. That's all I can stands, an' I can stands no more!
Bodycount:
1 boy strangled until his eyes popped off (flashback)
1 male and 1 female burned to death (flashback)
1 boy caught on fire, drowned in a lake (flashback)
1 female hacked with an anchor, head stomped
1 female punched through the chest
1 male had his head crushed
1 male garroted to death
1 female had her throat crushed with an anchor, drowned in a jacuzzi
1 male gets an anchor to the groin, spine and head torn off
1 male shoved eye-first to a broken plank
1 female shredded through with a riding lawnmower
1 female strangled with a length of chain until her eyes popped off
1 female caught in an exploding car
1 male knifed to death
1 female set on fire
1 female had her neck broken
Total: 17