FLOPEYE

POPEYE (1980)
dir: Robert Altman

FLOPEYE
MAD #225, September 1981
w: Stan Hart
a: Mort Drucker

The cast of this movie consists of Nana Oyl (Robeta Maxwell), Cole Oyl (McIntyre Dixon), Olive Oyl (Shelly Duvall), Wimpy (Paul Dooley), Geezil (Richard Libertini), Bluto (Paul L. Smith), Castor Oyl (Donavan Scott), Popeye (Robin Williams), and the tax collector (Donald Moffatt).

Popeye the sailor has come to the town of Sweet Haven to look for his father. The first person he sees is the town tax collector . The whole town is unfriendly but he finds a room at the Oyls' boarding house. Olive Oyl is in the middle of dressing for her engagement to Bluto but shows Popeye his room.

At the local eatery, Popeye is talking to Wimpy, one of the only people friendly to him, when some townies try to pick a fight with him, and he opens up a can of whupass on them. Olive is getting ready for the engagement party at her home upstairs but gets cold feet and leaves. She runs in to Popeye, who's walking around town because he wasn't invited to the party.

When Popeye and Olive Oyl aren't looking, a stranger in the shadows switches one of her bags, and inside is the baby Sweepea (Wesley Ivan Hunt), which they decide to raise together platonically. Returning to the party, Bluto sees then and becomes angry. Bluto ran the town on behalf of the Commodore, which protected the Oyls from unneccessary taxes, but now that his engagement to Olive is off, their belongings are all repossessed.

Castor Oyl tries to save the family by in a prizefight, but gets knocked out in the first round. Popeye comes in and shows his fighting skills and beats the champion. Later, in a bit of flirty banter at the Oyl house (not shown here), Popeye and Olive suggest Sweepea is psychic. Wimpy overhears this, takes it seriously, and brings him to a horse race without their permission. At the racetrack, Bluto is eavesdropping on what's going on, and plans to kidnap Sweepea to use his perceived ESP to find a buried treasure. With the aid of Wimpy, Bluto kidnaps Sweepea and brings him to The Commodore he works for (Ray Walston), who it turns out is Popeye's father. Olive is eavesdropping on it all, runs to tell Popeye what she saw, Popeye is overjoyed to find out about his father, but Bluto goes out on his own to find the treasure, and kidnaps Olive so she's the damsel in distress.

The Commodore doesn't believe he's Popeye's real father because Popeye hates spinach. He finally catches up to Bluto and destroys his ship. Popeye finally eats his spinach. it makes him strong and he beats everybody up and saves them all.

Here was the cover for the South American edition of MAD.

When I was a kid, some older kid said this was a song about his penis. Now I realize it was.

The issue before, Don Martin did a bunch of cartoons about Popeye. They could probably apply to the strip, but were obviously printed to cash in on the movie.

POOPEYE
Cracked #179, August 1981
a: John Severin

They also cut out the scene with the horse race.

Even though the movie was a flop and nobody remembers it, this song was used in Punch Drunk Love.

PEEPEYE
Crazy #77, August 1981
w: Paul Kupperberg
a: Bob Camp

National Lampoon had this in the margins of its contents page in October 1979.

Years later the abandoned set for this movie in Malta was made into an amusement park. I don't know aout you but I'm going there.