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Popeye the Slayer Man (2025) - 3/10
I thought that this might be fun, but it ended up being mostly boring. It's a generic slasher about a freak living in an abandoned factory and picking off college students. It relies heavily on tropes, such as the kids breaking in to film a documentary and learning personal details about the killer while they're in there. Despite the dark and quiet setting, there isn't much suspense, unless you count the three times that characters say "Is that pipe smoke?" when Popeye is nearby. I wondered how three different people born this century would even know what pipe smoke smells like. The acting isn't any better than the writing. I got the feeling that some of the actors were paid next to nothing. The Popeye mask looked too much like a mask (exaggerated and lacking expression) to take seriously. Maybe they deliberately made it cartoonish (get it?), but it's another thing that hurt the suspense. The kills are mostly unimaginative or lame. Two characters end up killing themselves, which was dumb. Only one wasn't boring, and that was Popeye
ripping off a guy's arm and beating him to death with it. Finally, the "ending" lacks resolution.
Popeye isn't defeated, but, rather, just lets the last few characters get away. Lame.
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Popeye's Revenge (2025) 4/10
Yes, there's another Popeye horror film that was released recently. This one actually came out first. It opens with an animation that tells the story of a freakishly strong kid who killed one of his bullies by squeezing his head until his eyes popped out. I wasn't expecting such a creative and hilarious explanation for how Popeye got his name, but there we go. Thirty years later, a bunch of young people get the idea to renovate that kid's old abandoned house and turn it into a tourist attraction, which doesn't make any more sense than filming a documentary, but it's different. A bigger difference is the cast. They're noticeably better actors, as well as a lot better looking (having attractive actors really helps keep my interest, apparently). Oh, and they're all British. While being a British production made sense for
Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, a British Popeye adaptation felt a little strange. Despite being British now, Popeye is a little more recognizable. He wears his classic white sailor suit with blue trim and no mask this time. They actually cast someone who sort of looks like Popeye, which is good, but also sort of bad, because a goofy-looking killer (compared to, say, Jason) hurts the horror vibe a little. The kills are maybe a little more creative in this one, though a little implausible. A riding lawnmower features heavily. The ending borrows from
A Nightmare on Elm Street and
Friday the 13th, but at least it has an ending. I found this movie much easier to watch and even better in several ways than
Popeye the Slayer Man, but still not something that I'd watch again.
