Studio:   Gravitas Ventures
Director: Paul Stephen Mann
Writer:   Paul Stephen Mann
Producer: Keith Montgomery, Alastair Statham, Paul Stephen Mann
Stars:    Amy Mackie, Niamh Parrington, Brendan Nelson, Ross Dillon, Leona Roberts, Joel McDade, Yu Heng Li, Anthony Greer

Review Score:

Summary:

Mutated by a meteorite, a murderous sailor terrorizes a group of comet-watching campers.

Synopsis:

Castor Oyl, his sister Olive, and his girlfriend Cylinda drive to a remote beach to watch a meteor storm during the passing of Halley’s Comet in 1986. Along the way, the trio has an uncomfortable encounter with a cranky old sailor named Popeye.

At their campsite, Castor, Olive, and Cylinda meet up with Castor’s friend Trent and Trent’s girlfriend Lizzy. Their stoner friends Stevie and Monique join the group later.

While walking on the beach, Castor, Olive, and Trent stop two punks, Spike and Skits, from beating up a homeless man named George. After the two punks flee, George warns the friends that the oncoming comet is evil and they should leave immediately.

While fishing out on the water, space dust from a meteor passing overhead lands in Popeye’s pipe. Inhaling the substance causes Popeye to mutate into a brutish monster.

Upon subsequently encountering Spike and Skits, Popeye punches the head off one of the punks. The other punk runs screaming. Desperate for help, the punk tries warning the campers about a “giant sailor,” but his strange claim isn’t taken seriously.

Stevie goes off alone to smoke weed while using an outhouse. Popeye violently tears off Stevie’s head and then defecates into his corpse’s throat.

Popeye next kills Trent and Lizzy while they have sex in a tent. A small meteor rock shoots through Monique’s head and kills her while she takes a walk with Olive.

After finding Stevie’s dead body, Castor and Cylinda regroup with Olive, who tells the couple about Monique’s shocking death. Upon discovering that Popeye took over their campsite, Castor, Olive, and Cylinda flee in separate directions. Olive and Cylinda find their car disabled by a crashed meteorite.

Popeye catches up to Castor. Popeye picks up Castor by his throat and dunks him in a barrel of toxic waste that gruesomely melts Castor’s body.

Olive makes her way to a nearby building where she meets wheelchair-bound survivalist Lt. Lang. After hearing some of Olive’s story, Lt. Lang shows her a massive buzzsaw contraption nicknamed “Bernice” that he claims can defend them.

Popeye arrives at the building and beats Lt. Lang to death. Popeye then attacks Olive, but the punk who survived earlier interrupts the assault. Popeye stomps in the punk’s head.

Olive accidentally burns off her entire hand by trying to retrieve molten meteorite dust that the punk pulled out of Popeye’s pipe. Remembering “Bernice,” Olive rigs her arm with Lt. Lang’s buzzsaw contraption as her new appendage. Olive uses the saw to carve up Popeye in order to save Cylinda from his final attack.

Detectives Zanaletto, Holmes, and Montgomery investigate the bloody crime scene the next day. A few weeks water, as news and rumors regarding the gruesome murders spreads, Olive outfits her arm with a weaponized mechanical hand similar to Ash Williams.

Review:

It’s 2025. Whether you got a late start on production or are merely the victim of unfortunate timing, you’re the third public domain Popeye horror movie to release now that “Popeye’s Revenge” (review here) and “Popeye the Slayer Man” (review here) are already out in the wild. Needing a unique claim to fame that might entice people to watch your take, what are you going to do to differentiate yourself from the other two films?

If you’re “Shiver Me Timbers,” you stand out by being even more poorly made than those previous movies, which is really saying something considering “Popeye’s Revenge” and “Popeye the Slayer Man” lowered the bar so far, it reappeared on the other side of the Earth. “Shiver Me Timbers” makes another dubious mark by being the movie that has the least to do with Popeye, which is also really saying something considering neither of the other films had much to do with E.C. Segar’s cartoon creation either.

Like “Popeye’s Revenge” and “Popeye the Slayer Man” before it, “Shiver Me Timbers” is another slapdash slasher where the madman murdering nondescript nobodies is supposedly some twisted interpretation of Popeye. Unlike “Popeye’s Revenge” and “Popeye the Slayer Man,” the latter of which at least included some lore about toxic spinach and showcased a killer with massive forearms, “Shiver Me Timbers” features nearly no Popeye references at all. Random siblings bear the names Castor and Olive Oyl, though they have no familial connection to the equally random old sailor who accidentally smokes space dust from a passing meteor and transforms into a mutated monster. As far as mining source material goes, that’s not enough of a pickax swing to chip a single grain of gravel.

Even for a Poor Man’s project as haphazardly tossed together as “Shiver Me Timbers,” surprisingly, there are two good things to say about it. The movie starts with this text disclaimer: “The following film is based on real people, real events, and real murders. The story depicts actual murders that occurred and is intended to provide a realistic portrayal of these incidents.” Okay. That’s an amusing enough play on a familiar legal disclaimer to earn a silent snicker.

The second, and final, good thing about “Shiver Me Timbers?” It only lasts around 65 minutes once the credits are cut out. When you’re desperate to find a silver lining after having your time wasted, that’s a brief enough runtime to make you glad you only lost an hour you’ll never get back, not one and a half or two.

Those 65 minutes are filled with all kinds of no-budget nonsense. The requisite scene of amateur actors pretending to be teenagers partying around a campfire consists of three uninterrupted minutes of a fully clothed woman wiggling her hips to obnoxious music, someone slugging beer from a bottle, and a couple of stoners banging their heads to a totally different beat than what’s played on the soundtrack. This entirely wordless sequence is broken up by the old sailor puffing a pipe full of magic meteorite powder that morphs him into “Monster Popeye.” Then it’s back to the campsite for another minute and a half featuring the friends writhing around the fire and giggling at their hands as they get high.

The main reason why “Shiver Me Timbers” lands further under the floor than “Popeye’s Revenge” and “Popeye the Slayer Man” is that it rarely seems like any real effort is involved. Performers, evidently appearing in front of a camera for the first time in their lives, perfunctorily mutter inconsequential lines that never form an actual plot. Popeye is inconsistently rendered as both a real person and as a CGI face whose computer-created pipe wobbles like it’s made out of rubber. The only time “Shiver Me Timbers” appears self-aware about how shabby it looks is when its eyesore FX do something intentionally comical like having a crushed head wink at the camera.

Have you ever wanted to see Popeye pull off a man’s head in an outhouse, then pull his pants down, sit on that man’s decapitated body, and plop wet turds down the corpse’s throat like he’s a human toilet? Of course not. No one has. And if that’s the level of sophistication being worked with here, it’s no wonder “Shiver Me Timbers” can’t even compete against two other underwhelming efforts that were already bad to begin with.

Review Score: 10