Shiver Me Timbers

This film knows exactly knows what it wants to be - a sincere homage to the low-budget horror movies of the '80s - and director, Paul Stephen Mann, has assembled a crew and cast more than capable of helping him achieve this vision.

With references to the video nasties of Raimi, Craven throughout and gore aplenty, the film follows in the tradition of 'good time' horror films, made on a shoestring by fans and for fans. This could be something made by Troma, minus the unnecessary nudity and misogyny.

Mostly practical effects, augmented by some decent CG (especially for the money - the Jurassic World films still can't get anywhere close to what the original film did with a couple puppeteers in veloceraptor leggings), this akin to something made by a young Peter Jackson. Filmed in Scotland in September, mostly during the night, I'm surprised none of the actors died of hypothermia from the no-doubt freezing blood they are frequently drenched in.

The actors all around nail their assignment and the crew are clearly top of their game, particularly the make up and practical effects, recreating both a believable nostalgia for the 80s as well as the numerous injuries and bloody deaths incurred almost every character.

I suppose the question might be, why would people so talented make a 'Popeye' film and not something more 'original'? Particularly when many of the negative reviews seem fixated on this, focussing on what they misunderstand to be flaws in the film (rather than deliberate referential codes) to reinforce an opinion formed before they even saw it.

The answer would be, well, why not? This is clearly the film that Mann wanted to make and the cast and crew have achieved this 100%. Any review that takes the premise of 'why can't this thing be a different thing?' doesn't hold any weight, and perhaps said reviewers would benefit from rewatching the end of Ratatouille. It is always easier to complain from a distance; creating something is hard and making a film is among the hardest. So well done to all involved.

So, if you're looking for knowingly cheesy and bloody (haha) good riff on 80s shlock classics, check this out. It is considerably better than many of the films that followed in the wake of Grindhouse and, at just over an hour, it even excises much of the tedious first acts of too many of the films it homages, so you can get straight to the good stuff. Get the beers in and watch with friends.

Man, I'm lowkey torn on whether I loved or hated this movie. I caught myself laughing a bunch of times, and there were a few lines that really stuck with me. It's totally off the rails, but I think that's on purpose, and yeah, there's blood everywhere. But it's not really scary at all. Feels like they're throwing shoutouts to Evil Dead and those old-school, cult horror flicks I used to grab from the rental store back in the day. Oli's character was dope tho, had me rollin'. The deaths? Wild and OTT as hell. It's chaotic, but in a good way. I'll probably run it back, feel like I missed some deep cuts.

Shiver Me Timbers is yet another classic character slasher/horror movie, also one of several recent Popeye Horrors and this one is scraping the bottom of the barrel along the lines of the Mark Polonia shark movies.

There is almost no plot or story and there are loads of filler scenes to waste time. When you consider the movie only runs 73 minutes then that's not good. Acting is subpar across the board, editing is awful, music is too loud compared to dialogue, all the characters are annoying stereotypes, special effects are CGI heavy and very poor, lastly attempts at humour fall completely flat.

I wasn't expecting much but I hoped it would be a so bad it's funny b movie but it didn't work for me at all. Popeye The Slayer Man is far better.

Man, is this one a stinker. But I think it is supposed to be intentionally bad in a money laundering scheme by a nefarious criminal organization that loathes us.

It's Uwe Boll bad. It's bow-chicka-wow-wow level of acting. One of the cops clearly just come from a circuit party with his earrings and yellow pseudo-Aviators.

Bernice was okay. But the rest of this trash fire of a movie is just all wrong and not in a remotely so-bad-it's-good-and-comes-back-around-to-bad-and-settles-on-watchable way.

It also fails at capturing the mid-80s.

It's a quick cash grab on expired copyright. Although it really fails to even emphasize the Popeye thing.

Do not pay to see this.

Shiver Me Timbers is the third (and hopefully last) Popeye horror film I have seen this year, after Popeye's Revenge and Popeye The Slayer Man. This one isn't the worst (That would be Popeye's Revenge), but it's close. Shiver Me Timbers' heart is in the right place, I suppose, with a suitably ridiculous plot and a decent amount of OTT violence, but the execution is extremely weak: the direction is basic, the script is terrible, the acting is amateurish, and there is an over-reliance on bad digital special effects. Even Popeye is CGI at times.

Set in 1986, the dumb plot sees a group of friends camping out so that they can witness Halley's Comet and the accompanying meteor shower. In the film's cleverest moment (make that the ONLY clever moment), a meteor is seen plummeting to Earth, but instead of causing a cataclysmic impact, the flaming rock is revealed to be minuscule, landing in an elderly sailor's pipe. The tiny rock causes the sailor to mutate, the man becoming a murderous, muscular maniac who goes on a killing spree, targeting the teenagers.

With a bigger budget and a lot more talent involved, this could have been very entertaining, but with incredibly unlikeable characters, a pathetic Popeye (he doesn't even have the character's massive forearms), an annoying use of horror movie quotes and references, and a finalé that is laughably bad, the film fails on almost every level. On paper, the ending must've sounded awesome, with final girl Olive (Amy Mackie) arming herself with a massive meteor-powered rotary saw to battle Popeye, but the reality is an ineptly handled mess, with some truly awful CGI.

2.5/10, rounded down to 2 for the lame Evil Dead inspired final scene. Not groovy.