2025 Shiver Me Timbers

• Directed by: Paul Stephen Mann
• Written by: Paul Stephen Mann, E.C. Segar
• Stars: Amy Mackie, Miamh Parrington, Brendan Nelson, Ross Dillon
• Run Time: 1 Hour, 13 Minutes
• Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0RaLB9VBrA

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

It’s 1986 and Haley’s Comet has brought meteors with it, one of which turns Popeye into a big killer. A group of friends camping, along with a few other folks, have a terrible night because of it. We didn’t think it was very funny or particularly scary. It tries, but neither of us thought it was very good.

Spoilery Synopsis

In April 1986, a girl finds a severed hand, which leads to a whole crime scene. Credits roll.

We heard about the return of Halley’s Comet after 76 years. Earlier that day, Olive Oyl and her family are going on a trip and almost run over a weird-looking man with a pipe. “Well blow me down,” he says. He’s weird and talks about the meteor shower tonight.

Castor Oyl, his girlfriend, and sister arrive at the campground, and Olive immediately catches a couple of punks beating up a homeless man who is ranting about “killer meteors” and “the comet is evil!”

Castor talks to his friend about how smart Olive is; she’s been admitted to MIT but doesn’t seem too interested in that. There’s a lot of boring talk between the two. Some more of Castor’s friends show up, and they brought the drugs.

We cut to the old man with the pipe fishing on the water as the meteors start to pass overhead. A tiny one lands right in his pipe, and he just goes on smoking; it’s full of radiation. The old man falls over and starts to mutate.

Popeye has gotten a lot bigger and meaner. He punches a punk in the face and his head explodes.

Over at the campfire, Stevie tells a story from another life, which turns out to be a scare prank. The surviving punk shows up raving about a giant sailor but they laugh him off. Trent and Lizzie retire to their tent. Stevie goes off to the outhouse to take a dump as Popeye approaches, now using the punk’s legbone as his new pipe. He crushes Stevie’s head and then literally poops down his neck.

The campers talk about movies. “Critters” has just come out, and they’re talking about a potential sequel to “The Terminator” and “Video Nasties.” While Trent and Lizzie have sex in their tent– with Popeye bloodily joining in.

Olive and Monique go for a walk and watch the meteors. They soon find one on the ground. Monique gets shot through the head by an evil meteorite. Meanwhile Castor and his girlfriend find what’s left of Stevie. The surviving trio finds Popeye sitting by their campfire. One of them has to go for the car keys in their camp, so Olive creeps on hands and knees hoping Popeye doesn’t notice. It’s suspenseful as she gets into a tent and tries not to make noise. He hears, and yanks her out, but Castor distracts him. Then the chase is on.

The girls run to the car, but they find it in flames from an apparent meteor strike. They remember hearing about an abandoned factory nearby and run toward that. Castor is there, but so is Popeye, and soon, she’s the only one left alive. Popeye drops Castor into a canister of glowing radioactive ooze.

Olive makes it to the factory, where she runs into a man with a wheelchair and shotgun. The old man decides it’s time to share an old war story. He goes outside and Popeye gets him.

Out of nowhere, the other punk from earlier reappears, grabs the meteorite from Popeye’s pipe, and beats him with it. He doesn’t live long, but it gives Olive time to grab the meteorite from the ground and run off.

Unfortunately, it’s really hot and melts her hand completely off. That’s OK, because the crazy old man had built the largest buzz-saw in history and it’s got a handy arm-plug for her to use. She comes out of the barn and buzzes Popeye into a juicy mess. Still, Popeye puts up a big fight before dying.

Olive and Castor’s girlfriend survive their order. Soon, the police are there examining everything.

A few weeks later, the whole story is on the radio that a cleaned-up Olive is listening to while she works on a prosthetic. We hear that Popeye’s body has gone missing and there are more murders just like his up in New York. We see that Olive is preparing for a rematch with her new turbo hand…

Brian’s Commentary

The film couldn’t quite decide which scenes were happening during the day and which were at night. Sometimes, they alternated between the two in the same scene.

This is the lowest-budget and clearly the worst of the three “Popeye” movies that came out this year. “Popeye’s Revenge” and “Popeye The Slayer Man” were both better, although “better” might be a marginally relative term.

It’s listed as a horror comedy, but it’s really not very funny at all; it’s just kinda lame throughout. Watch it if you feel you must, but it’s not great.

Kevin’s Commentary

Haley’s Comet means meteors too in this universe, and who knew that a meteor shower literally meant meteors showering down to the ground?

I yam disappointed by this effort. Like Brian says, it was the weakest of the Popeye trifecta that have recently been spewed from the bowels of public domain. I’m going to go with almost painfully bad on this one.