SHORT FEATURE: POPEYE & THE PIRATES

My latest review for Aleteia is up. It’s been awhile since Tom Hanks has had a chance to give a really good performance (sorry, Dan Brown movies just don’t cut it), but odds are that Captain Phillips (the last 15 minutes in particular) will net him another Oscar nod. Not bad for a guy whose first role was in the Halloween knock-off, He Knows You’re Alone.

Now, unless you’ve completely missed every commercial for Captain Phillips, then you know the movie is based on a true incident involving a merchant ship that comes under assault by Somali pirates. From what’s depicted onscreen I’d have to say it was a pretty harrowing situation, but Phillips and his crew dealt with it well all things considered. Still, I couldn’t help but think, you know who really knows how to handle pirates? Popeye, that’s who…

So, what was with that mysterious edit around 4:38? Just what the heck was Popeye whipping out of that dress that someone really didn’t want us to see? I mean, what could possibly be worse than Popeye in a dress to begin with? According to Fred M. Grandinetti’s book, Popeye: An Illustrated Cultural History, nobody knows and probably nobody ever will. The edit was made for the short’s first run in television syndication way back when and no unedited version seems to exist. I guess we’ll just have to use our imaginations. Which, you know, will probably result in a far worse mental image than whatever the

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