Private Eye Popeye

Popeye is a private eye. That's the story. He gets a call from a screaming Olive Oyl. He follows the call to her gun fire in her home. She hires him to guard a precious gem which gets promptly stolen by the butler. He pursues the thieve all over the world.

The story is very simple. They don't rise up to a Scooby-Doo mystery. It's all very simple and random. I'm not sure if I like the color changing moves. I can't figure out their meaning. It seems like Popeye is solving something during the color change. All in all, this is fine. It's a different Popeye which happens sometimes during this era.

Popeye is, as you might guess, a private eye in this one. He;s called upon to guard Olive Oyl's precious emerald. The butler promptly steals it and Popeye pursues him around the world.

It's a variation on the classic Tex Avery cartoon DUMB HOUNDED, in which Droopy pursues the escaped wolf around the western hemisphere. The gags are pretty much the same, although Popeye (and the Bluto-voiced thief) make it as far as Switzerland and the Near East). Yes, yes, there is a spinach sequence when Popeye is at the end of his strength, which allows him to recover enough to fulfill his quest.

I suppose it's all right for Famous Studios to steal it, since Avery himself remade it as NORTHWEST HOUNDED POLICE.

Private Eye Popeye (1954)

** (out of 4)

Popeye is working as a private eye when he gets a call from Olive Oyl who wants him to protect a priceless jewel. Not long after the bad guy steals the jewel so Popeye must chase him across the world in order to get it back.

PRIVATE EYE POPEYE is a rather routine entry in the series and in the end it's really not a highlight. The film gets a little creative at the very end when Popeye punches the bad guy from one location to the next but everything leading up to this is rather routine and boring. There's no question that a lot more laughs were needed as there just aren't enough to keep the film moving at a nice pace.

A sort of Sherlock Holmes, a precious gem, the bad guy runing across the world and, sure, Olive Oy. The travel itself as main attraction.

Dressed like Sherlock Holmes, Popeye gets a phone which contains only a loud scream. "Garsh, I better trace that call," he says. With a magnifying glass, Popeye walks on the telephone lines across town to a big mansion. Once inside, he's greeted by a woman (Olive Oyl, who he doesn't know in this episode) who is crouched behind a big safe and shooting bullets from a machine gun at him. When she finds out he's the private detective she called, she calms down and tells him she has a job for him. She opens the safe, then a piggy bank and shows him a precious green jewel. "Guard this with your life," she says. Seconds later, a hand comes out of the wall, grabs her and the jewel.

Popeye soon discover "the buckler did it!" However, the crook escapes and Popeye goes after him in some very wild scenes on the ground, in the air, and eventually to France, Switzerland, an unnamed Arab country, to the Philippine Islands to the Hawaii Islands (these guys get around fast!) and finally.....to Alcatraz Island.

Even though in color, this had a '30s type feel to it with the story and some of the reactions. In all, it was so-so: fun, but just mildly amusing.