I have to admit that I harbored zero expectations to this movie, as I sat down to watch it. Yeah, I've watch two other horror movies with Popeye and they been pretty terrible. But I still opted to watch "Shiver Me Timbers" on account of it being a movie that I hadn't already seen.
But this movie was God awful. Writer and director Paul Stephen Mann managed to maul E. C. Segar's work to a bloody pulp. And not in a good way. Nay, this was horrible in oh so many ways. Sure, the script was pretty straightforward for a slasher movie, but the attempts at incorporating comedy just made it into an even bigger mess than it already was. So yeah, you're not in for anything grand here.
Of course I was not familiar with a single actor or actress that starred in this travesty of a movie. Sure, some of the acting performances were actually fair.
The special effects in the movie were exactly that; special. Most of them actually had me laughing at how utterly ridiculous it was. And the fact that Popeye looks like some kind of mutated meatloaf and Colonel Guile from the fairly laughable 1994 "Street Fighter" movie just didn't work out in the least bit. Sure, some of the gore effects were actually passable and fair enough.
Writer and director Paul Stephen Mann doesn't seem to know how beheadings work, as there are two of them in the movie; and one has the guy still screaming after the head is chopped off, and the other has a girl's eyes going left and right after her head is chopped off.
"Shiver Me Timbers" is seriously the worst of movies based on the Popeye character so far.
I wouldn't even recommend this movie to newcomers of the slasher horror genre. Nay, "Shiver Me Timbers" was just hands down a terrible movie. Do yourself a huge favor and skip this one. Don't waste 73 minutes on watching this dumpster fire. Some of us literally suffered through this garbage, so you don't have to; you're quite welcome.
If you're looking for a quick way to end a friendship, recommend "Shiver Me Timbers" to a friend and watch the friendship melt away like a guy put into a barrel of acid that just happens to be around (which actually also happens in this movie).
My rating of writer and director Paul Stephen Mann's abysmal 2025 movie "Shiver Me Timbers" lands on a very generous one out of ten stars.
