Horror is a brilliant, often under-appreciated genre. Despite routine profitability and the centrality of a good scare to the human experience, horror is frequently overlooked for major awards like the Oscars (ahem, justice for Toni Collette), and mainstream sources tumble over themselves to call new top-shelf entries anything other than horror (aka the “elevated horror” and “Supernatural thriller” debate). In part, that’s because cinematic horror has always been expansive enough to include masterpieces like the original Jaws, The Thing, or any take on Nosferatu, as much as it embraces exploitation cinema and campy, dollar-store blood-fests. The new wave of public domain horror, from Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey to Screamboat fits well into this latter “cheap, bloody, and cheap” horror trajectory. Popeye’s Revenge, the latest public domain terror from Blood and Honey producer ITN Studios, pivots our favorite spinach-eating sailor into a supernatural killer with vague motives and an even vaguer M.O. Directed by William Stead, it’s an oddly cobbled-together hodgepodge of ideas and little real inspiration that could have graduated to fun schlock with a little more love.
What is ‘Popeye’s Revenge’ About?

Popeye’s Revenge begins with the birth of a loved but atypical boy, sporting massive forearms, disproportionate strength, and a cartoonish chin. Bullied by his cruel peers as he grows into adolescence, one day he snaps and kills a fellow child. His loving parents hide him in the basement, with his only friend a mysterious companion shoving kind notes from under a secretive basement door. The angry townsfolk start a mob, burning down the house, with the boy barely escaping only to seemingly drown in the local lake as an eerie fog rolls in. Cut to a set of young adults who visit Popeye’s mysteriously rebuilt house, with Tara (Emily Mogilner) hoping to turn it into a haunted house attraction after it falls into her mother’s ownership. Popeye (played by Steven Murphy) and Olive Oyl (Kelly Rian Sanson) have other plans.
‘Popeye’s Revenge’ Is A Pastiche of Other Films

ITN Studios

More than anything, Popeye’s Revenge feels like a duct-taped collection of ideas directly lifted from other horror films. Our massive forearmed, sailor-costume-wearing friend is a bullied kid (like Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th) burnt by a rampaging mob over a kid he killed (lifted from Freddy Krueger’s origins in A Nightmare on Elm Street) before he seemingly drowns (back to Friday), and his spirit emerges for vengeance when the fog rolls in (like John Carpenter’s The Fog). Horror history runs thick with new entries and franchises that “borrow” from trope codifiers. Still, such obvious amalgamating combined with superficial use of Popeye’s noted attributes reads a little too much like a cheap cash grab rather than a low-budget love letter to the genre.
Popeye is dressed like a sailor, sure, but the opening animation reveals he was dressed like that as a child. Was it costume day? Why did it grow with his supernatural reincarnation? Where did the massive anchor come from? The elements that make the source material distinct are cast aside for an underdeveloped Frankenplot of backstory elements that don’t really congeal.
The film is surprisingly slow-paced despite there being a bundle of unlikable youngsters to sacrifice on the “horror plot” altar, but the movie has some amusing moments once the killing starts. That said, many moments and elements could have worked better with a little more care and a second of further thought. In one kill, Popeye massacres a woman (while being uncomfortably handsy), and chocolate syrup “blood” is squeezed from his stage right eye level, instead of where her body is below him.

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The film is also full of half-thought ideas that really could have worked. When Popeye comes for Nick (Bruno Cryan), his appearance is hilariously presaged by a spinach can thrown through the window like a grenade. Nick interacts with but does not eat it, and proceeds to still turn the tables on Popeye despite the latter being strong enough to upend a vehicle with ease (a wild inconsistency). It doesn’t make sense, and if you’re introducing spinach (finally!), why not use it? Would it be hilarious for Nick to, say, become possessed by a can of spectral spinach? Yes, but instead, it’s downgraded to a mere prop.
There’s a subtle difference between shoddy conception and execution, and lazy conception and execution. Tommy Wiseau’s The Room notoriously doesn’t work, but there really seems to be an intent to make an excellent film. There’s love in it, making it far more enjoyable than it should be, as opposed to films that are terrible because of studio or filmmaker apathy, like how Madame Web has elements that work but are undone because it’s clearly designed as a prequel to the Spider-Women film Sony actually wanted to make. All this isn’t to say that no one’s trying to turn Popeye’s Revenge into something memorable. As Tara, Emily Mogilner may not have the best material but she’s certainly putting in a noteworthy performance and the same goes for Bruno Cryan and Kelly Rian Sanson as Olive Oyl). That said, it would be a far better film if some of its elements were better thought out or utilized, or if it seemed like the filmmakers intended to make a Popeye horror film at all with kills, and a backstory that relate to the character.
No Amount Of Spinach Can Save ‘Popeye’s Revenge’

ITN Studios

Mining public domain stories has been a staple element of Hollywood history even before Hollywood feature fare like the 1924 Douglas Fairbanks-starrer The Thief of Bagdad, the 1936 George Cukor classic Romeo and Juliet, or when Walt Disney first wove classic animated features out of fairy tales in films like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. These pictures at least seem intended to adapt their source material. Popeye’s Revenge, however, eschews any connectivity to its namesake in favor of a paint-by-numbers pastiche of other films that will leave you wondering “Why aren’t I watching those?” Glacial pacing, uninspired direction and kills, dialogue that doesn’t feel real, and wildly uneven performances behind characters that aren’t compelling drag it down further. Individual moments have sparks of good ideas in them, and particular performers make admirable efforts to offer something from the material. It’s just a shame the same effort wasn’t put into the rest of it.

Popeye’s Revenge

‘Popeye’s Revenge’ is more of a Frankenplot of other horror films than it is anything related to Popeye, plagued by a variety of misfires.

Director

William Stead

Writers

Harry Boxley, E.C. Segar

Producers

Nathan Todaro

Cast

Pros & Cons

Specific performers, notably Emily Mogilner, clearly try to deliver good performances with the material they’re given.

Beyond the fact that it’s only tangentally related to Popeye, there are a woeful number of confusing or under-developed elements.
The performances are inconsistent almost across the board, and the sound mix makes certain lines difficult to understand.
The technical elements, including cinematography, editing, and sound design, all need serious work.