This article is about the theatrical short. For the television episodes, see Popeye/The Adventures of Popeye.
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Adventures of Popeye is Popeye's twenty-seventh theatrical short from Fleischer Studios, and was released on October 25, 1935.
Plot[]
The short begins with live-action footage of a small boy buying a Popeye book at a downtown newsstand. He pays the owner his five cents and starts flipping through, as he walks down the street. Soon, a larger boy starts to bully him and calls the smaller one a sissy. The two kids start to fight and the smaller boy is knocked to the ground, while his book lands in a vegetable stand. When the boy then starts to cry, his book comes to life with Popeye saying he will tell him what to do when things go bad. Popeye jumps out of the cover and opens the book to the first page.
In the first chapter of the book, he shows a clip of his adventures from the animated short I Eats My Spinach, where he fights a couple of bulls in the rodeo. Popeye wrestles one bull to the ground until it surrenders and raises a white flag. As the next one charges at him, he punches it so hard he turns it into steaks, sausages and other choice cuts to set up a meat stand. When Popeye finishes this clip, he jumps out of the book and turns the page to the next story.
The second chapter shows a segment from the Popeye the Sailor theatrical short, in which he rescues Olive. Bluto runs off with Olive under his arm as Popeye chases after him. Bluto crosses a rope bridge and cuts the ropes at the other end using a bird with a large beak like a pair of scissors. Popeye runs back to his side of the cliff before the bridge falls then picks up a piece of rope. He uses it to lasso the other side pulling it towards him so he can walk across and continue the chase. Popeye catches up with Bluto after the latter has tied Olive to a train track. Bluto pounds Popeye into the ground, so the sailor eats his spinach. Bluto uproots a tree to smash him, but the hero punches his enemy and the tree so hard that they fall back to the ground to form a coffin in which Bluto can rest in peace. Popeye rushes to Olive, but cannot free her before the train arrives. He instead stops it dead in its tracks, causing it to fall to pieces with one punch. Popeye jumps out of the book again to flip to another page.
The next story is a excerpt from the short Wild Elephinks, in which Popeye fights wild animals in the jungle. Popeye crowns one lion senseless with one blow, but is constricted by a snake before he could land a punch. Popeye smothers the reptile with a puff of smoke from his pipe, but the snake leaves Popeye in need of some spinach to recover from the attack. Next, an elephant charges Popeye, so he takes it by the trunk and throws it so hard it sinks the small island where it lands. Then, all the other animals attack at once but the sailor turns each of them into a fur coat with one punch. Popeye leaps off the page to show one last short.
The last one is a piece from Axe Me Another, where he fights with Bluto in a log flow. Bluto knocks Popeye off his log so he eats his spinach as he sinks to the bottom of the river. With one blow, Popeye sends Bluto flying downstream. Bluto returns to smash Popeye with a giant log, but thanks to another mighty blow the log splinters into pieces and forms a highchair to trap Bluto like a big crying baby. Popeye exits the book for the last time, closes it and jumps back into the cover as he tells the little boy to eat his spinach. The boy does just that and consumes a large can of the vegetable. His muscles grow just like his hero Popeye's, and he races over to the bully. He starts punching him again and again, with the final blow sending him flying through a house's third-floor window.
Trivia[]
- In this theatrical short, the little boy purchases a book with a cover that resembles that of a book released in 1931 by Sonnet Publishing. The book was titled Thimble Theatre Starring Popeye. It was the first in a series of two, and contained reprints of Segar's Thimble Theatre daily strips from between December 16, 1930 and March 17, 1931. The price was twenty-five cents and it had 46 pages.
- This is the first Popeye cartoon which reuses footage from earlier shorts.
Gallery[]
External links[]
- Adventures of Popeye at the Internet Movie Database