Thursday, April 24, 2014

Longshoreman Medium

Our next Popeye toon is called Ghosks is the Bunk, and our favourite cartoon threesome put the band back together, so to speak.  Olive's reading ghost stories to Popeye and Bluto, and they sit there, half-bored, half-attentive.  Like me, they like the scary parts, but not all that boring setting-the-scene crap that we all skip over on the second reading/viewing and beyond.
Anyway, Bluto's back... but he sounds a little different.  A little goofy, if you will!  Copyright infrigement aside, I miss Gus Wickie, and even Jackson Beck to an extent.  And it's not long before Bluto's up to his old alpha-male ways, messing with Popeye's mind.  In this instant case, the notion is bourne (at this exact moment) when Popeye emerges from under the couch, saying "Ya don't thinks I was scared, does ya?  I knows there ain't no such things as ghosts and things!"
Bluto yawns and pretends to go to bed... and sets off on his greatest prank yet.  I hate to spurl it, but it's an important part of my job.  Needles to say, as part of Bluto's prank, Olive and Popeye end up going to an abandoned hotel looking for someone in trouble.  Alas, Bluto didn't think it completely through, unlike J. J. Abrams or M. Night Shyamalan, and he ends up enjoying a good laugh at the other two's expense... almost to the brink of tears, Bluto is!
The tables get turned on Bluto, especially when Popeye runs across that old cartoon stand-by... yup, a can of invisible paint.  Only in cartoons.  In The Invisible Mouse, it was invisible ink.  As Dave Letterman might quip, whoever actually invents invisible paint will make "a million damn dollars."  And so, Popeye sneaks up on Bluto while wearing the invisible paint, but Bluto's able to wring Popeye's invisible neck.  Time for spinach!  And for the first and possibly last time, an invisible reign of fists rains down upon Bluto.  It's a one-man Fist Tornado, and Bluto hits the road.  We have another staple of cartoons, and that is a giant hole in the wall where you can see a long and winding road into the distance, and boy, do we see Bluto run down that.  Popeye pours a can of paint remover upon himself, and then on his invisible arm, and he's visible again.  But what about invisible Olive?  Well, she got painted invisible too!  Hard to say if she contributed to the revenge against Bluto or not, but Popeye did forget she was invisible, spoiler alert.  Time for another ending where she beats up Popeye, and then it's their turn to run off into the distance as we watch through the hole in the wall.  To be fair, she did take a swipe at Popeye.  This is something you do not do, even in jest.
So even though there's no extras associated with it on the DVD... I must be in a good mood or something.  Four stars.

Good double bill with: ...what else?  Shiver Me Timbers!!

****
-so sayeth The Movie Hooligan

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