Let’s hear it for Popeye the Slayer Man, a title so brilliant and obvious you might wonder why it’s never been used before. The reason is quite simple: Popeye fell out of copyright in 2025 and so the intellectual property became easy pickings. Hot on the case, two movies have already appeared this year (I’m writing this in March 2025 so there could yet be more). Popeye’s Revenge got there first, in February, followed by this. Both are slasher horrors. What’s going on there then?
I’ll admit that I watched this partly out of badness, prompted by my brother, who asked me if I’d seen it and then warned me not to “go there”. But go there I did. I came, I saw, I snickered. Offal does that sometimes.
The entire movie can be summed up in the pre-credits sequence – a young woman is chased into an abandoned spinach factory by a pair of hoodlums who have soon been killed in amusingly splattersome ways by a massive steroidal Sailor Man. “You’re a monster,” screams the woman. “I yam what I yam,” he replies. Cue title music and an eye roll.
The name Popeye is never used in this movie. Apart from that reference in the title, he is referred to throughout as the Sailor Man, so maybe there are still copyright hurdles to jump over. Either way, as you’ll have guessed, this Sailor Man is not your benign, chuckling Popeye of yore, though he dresses the same, smokes a corn-cob pipe and has massive forearms and a chin that could double up as a shovel. Behind the prosthetics, Jason Robert Stephens is clearly more beef than leaf vegetable.
The fun of watching this movie, which sticks close to the slasher/horror template, is working out who’s going to die first, then next, and who’s going to survive. The survivors look obvious from the start – surely it’ll be nerdy Dexter (Sean Michael Conway), a young, would-be documentarian hoping to Blair Witch his way to fame by making a film about local urban legend the Sailor Man. And Olivia (Elena Juliano), the young woman he fancies.
As to the victims: Lisa (Marie-Louise Boisnier), the mouthy libidinous one who might as well have a target pinned to her. Seth (Jeff Thomas), the hot guy so horribly in love with himself that no bookie would take a bet on his chances of survival. Katie (Mabel Thomas), a sweet, hard-working barkeep who’s just a touch too much the victim, maybe? Outside this circle but floating about like airy snacks: Katie’s vile, aggressive boyfriend Joey (Steven McCormack), and his two wingmen, Jesse (Clayton Turner) and Terry (Paul Konye). And on remote circles in this universe, the guy who owns the old processing plant (Richard Lounello) where it all takes place and the realtor (Angela Relucio) who is on the point of selling it for him.
Dexter, Olivia, Lisa, Seth and Katie – five main characters in total. Who don’t arrive in a Mystery Machine but are essentially Scooby-Doo and the other four in what is basically an episode of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon with added gore. There’s even a reference to it, even though it’s an idea not followed through to its logical conclusion. Sailor Man isn’t the factory owner in disguise, railing against “meddlesome kids” as he’s being taken away by the police.
A connection is made between post-industrial America and toxic masculinity – literally in the Sailor Man’s case (he’s been eating radioactive spinach), more metaphorically with the other guys, so there is some subtext to grab hold of. Which is handy because the production values aren’t always the best, the acting has moments of flatness and the writing occasionally gets itself into a tangle. Scenes where Dexter tries to move his relationship with Olivia out of the friend zone (which it isn’t even in) and onto something more intimate while a murderous creature is on the rampage don’t just fall flat, they fall flat while farting.
But there are some good random deaths that you won’t see coming, it wears its kitschness on its sleeve and there’s a strong “let’s do the show right here” sense that everyone involved is committed. No green vegetables were harmed in the making of this film – watch it in that spirit and you’ll probably enjoy it.
Popeye the Slayer Man – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
