The trend of cartoon characters becoming serial killers keeps on truckin!
“Shiver me timbers!”
More like “shiver me limbers” as stills for the upcoming 2025 live action horror movie “Popeye the Slayer Man” go viral, showing the muscle-bulging former day-saving good guy in a white shirt bloodstained by his victims.
This Popeye makes the bullying Bluto look like Bambi; here, he’s a sadistic serial killer who hunts and butchers a group of teenagers as they sneak into a spinach-canning factory. It’s just one in a triptych of horror movies slated to be released in 2025 using Popeye’s likeness for abhorrent evil.
He’s strong-to-the-finish…ing off his victims all right!
And he’s not alone. The November 2024 Socionomist cover story “Social Mood Drives Horror to New Frights: O, Mickey, Where Art Thou?” (written by yours truly!)explored not only the soaring popularity of horror movies in general since 2000 – but specifically, the prolific reimagination of beloved Disney and cartoon characters as murdering psychopaths:
The 2024 slasher “The Mouse Trap” leads the gore fest, by featuring a deranged serial killer who stalks and dismembers teen visitors to Disneyland after dark, whilst donning a Mickey Mouse face mask.
Steamboat Willie morphing into “Screamboat Killie” is just the tip of the iceberg. UK based film studio The Twisted Childhood Universe formed in 2023 for the sole purpose of demonizing cherished cartoon characters in such adaptations as “Pinocchio Unstrung” (2025) and “Pinocchio: Unleashed” (2025), “Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare” (2024), “Bambi: The Reckoning” (2025), “Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey I” (2023), “II” (2024) and in 2025, “III,” and “Poohniverse: Monsters Assemble” (2025) which includes a cast of murderous versions of iconic figures such as Tinkerbell, Tigger, Piglet, the Mad Hatter and Sleeping Beauty.
The micro-budget British slasher that went viral last year for its childhood-bludgeoning premise, became one of the most talked about films of 2023 and would earn $5.2 million in the global box office after costing under $100,000 to make.
The central fiend in this trend is negative social mood, which “coincides positively with the originality and popularity of horror movies.” The October 2010 Socionomist first showed this chart of the inflation-adjusted Dow alongside major Disney and horror movies productions over the last century and wrote:
When the trend is up, the movies tend to have different types of themes. They tend to feature black-and-white heroes and villains. There’s a lot of lighter fare available. When the trend is down, such as in the 1970s, you have a lot of negative themes, and heroes’ morality becomes less clear.
The sustained erosion in social mood (reflected in this chart of World Equities Priced in Real Money) since the 2000 peak accommodates just such a boom in horror:
Ultimately, the page (or script) on horror’s renaissance will turn when negative social mood yells “Cut!” Until then, what’s next on our gorefest movie list? “Bugs Bunny: Hareraiser,” “Attack of the Killer Chipmunks” or “Animaniacs Attack!”? We won’t be surprised by any of it.
Enter: “Popeye the Slayer Man,” trading leafy green veggies for a lethal goring anchor.
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