When the copyright for Winnie the Pooh expired it gave film makers the opportunity to make a horror version of the film which made a tidy profit and since then it has opened the flood gates. So we have had a Winnie the Pooh Blood & Honey sequel, several murderous Mickey Mouse’s, Peter Pan, Bambi, Pinocchio in fact there’s seems to be little if any children’s favourites that doesn’t seemed to have been plundered for a horror makeover and joining that ever lengthening list is Popeye. We’ve already had two incarnations with Popeye’s Revenge and Popeye the Slayer Man and third out of the blocks is Shiver Me Timbers.
That the film begins with a full frame claim that the film is based on real people and events has about as much credence as Meghan Markle claiming to be a royal, a podcaster, a business woman or in fact anything except an internationally reviled race baiting, fruit spread selling, talent vacuum. Set in 1986 the film starts off well enough with flash photos of a gruesome crime scene before it rewinds back to a trio of students driving out to meet friends for a weekend camping to watch an imminent meteor shower. It’s on this trip that they almost run down an elderly Popeye (who is never called that in the film) before they meet up with their friends all of whom are obviously marked for death. There’s an interminable scene as one of the girls dances seductively round the campfire for her boyfriend in a manner that suggests she needs the toilet whilst two other pals get mashed on magic mushrooms and the others chat in such a vacuous manner that they may well have been lobotomized …….or be Meghan Markle. For many of the actors it appears that this has been their first role in a film uttering each line with all the nuance of someone who has just learnt English but doesn’t understand it.
There’s a neat visual gag with an asteroid that is responsible for turning the ailing Popeye from irritable old man into a murderous maniac who goes on a killing spree taking out each of the cast in various gruesome ways that gives the effects department a chance to show off their skills and several of the kills are inventive – one gets his head explosively punched off whilst another’s demise in an outside toilet is unsavoury.
Mercifully Shiver Me Timbers is barely over an hour long ( wait for the end credits which are nicely done) culminating in a nod to ‘Evil Dead 2’ but the film itself has the most tenuous connection to the sailor man himself with only the characters pipe and a throwaway line, ‘I am what I am’ giving a hint as to him being Popeye. But this is low budget horror that makes it ideal fodder for the midnight movie circuit
related feature: Amber Doig-Thorne takes us behind the scenes of, ‘Winnie The Pooh : Blood and Honey’
related feature : Mickey Mouse in The Mouse Trap – director Jamie Bailey & star Simon Phillips takes us BTS
Here’s the Shiver Me Timbers trailer…..
Shiver Me Timbers on digital from 2nd June 2025 (Reel 2 Reel Films)
