Yes, Popeye the Slayer Man is what you think it is. Based on the now public domain cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor man gets his long-awaited horror makeover with this irresistibly silly splatterfest. The script, finely crafted from a team of five scribes including Cuyle Carvin, John Doolan, Jeff Miller, Robert Michael Ryan, E.C. Segar takes the basic notes of the character; Sailor, Spinach-eater, bulbous forearms, and a penchant for physical violence to craft a new tale that allows for plenty of pursuits in dark passages, Easter eggs, and gore.

The plot kicks off with Lex (Richard Lounello). He is a fast talking business man with an abandoned spinach canning factory that has been sitting, collecting spinach dust, for 20 years. The small town outside is teeming with rumors of the ghost of an old sailor that haunts his factory. Eager to dump the property in favor of waterfront condos, Lex is pushing hard to sell. With news that the haunted factory may be torn down at any time, film student Dexter (Sean Michael Conway) leads a crew of his friends including Olivia (Elena Juliano), Katie (Mabel Thomas), Lisa (Marie-Louise Boisnier), and Seth Jeff Thomas into the factory late one night to shoot a documentary about the ghost and to solve the mystery surrounding the ill-fated facility. And let’s be clear, Big Spinach has secrets to be found.

It’s hokey, it’s goofy, but darn-it, he is what he is. Co-screenwriter Robert Michael Ryan steps up to the plate to direct and handles things with tongue firmly in cheek. While the humor isn’t as clever as it could be, it is as broad. Wielding the nuance of a sledgehammer, the jokes and set pieces move along at a comfortable pace. As the filmmakers snoop the spinach mill, they do all the things. They bicker, they have romantic entanglements, they split up to search for clues, their even pursued by other baddies who descend on the factory for one reason or another. Bottom line though, they have to worry about Popeye.

Lumbering around in the dark, The Sailor Man (Jason Robert Stephens) is preceded by the faint smell of pipe smoke. He seems to make it a habit of stepping into a singular overhead light before commencing with the mayhem. I gotta give it to him, Popeye knows his lighting. The look of this Popeye is another impressive note. Raiden Gorby‘s prosthetics design for the salty sea man mimics the cartoonish shapes of the cartoons and comics while the costume design follows suite. He’s weird looking, for sure. But then again he’s never been a looker.

Budget constraints are evident when it comes to the gore. While there are some very impressive set pieces, with one victim having their hair ripped from their scalp through a door seam, we are cheated the ghoulish joys of seeing someone crushed in a compactor, with only a puddle of blood under the machine as a payoff.

The burgeoning public domain horror sub-genre is certainly offering a new life to mostly forgotten icons. Winnie the Pooh, Steamboat Willie, and now Popeye, all of them have their campy charms. Popeye the Slayer Man is just fun. This is ludicrous dockside lunacy with a plot as improbable as its characters. A fun seaside diversion that comes and goes as easy as the tide.