Last Updated on April 1, 2025 by Angel Melanson
With over 100 credits to her name, there's a good chance astute indie horror fans have seen Sarah Nicklin in something, probably many things. The viral sensation Nun of That, the Ted Bundy-inspired The Black Mass, and the heavy metal-infused The Retaliators are just a handful of the notable films she's appeared in. Soon, we'll see her in not one, not two, but (at least!) three genre flicks. In particular, Popeye The Slayer Man, the trailer for which made waves even in the mainstream press.
Sarah stopped in to talk about Popeye and her other upcoming movies, as well as her long history with FANGORIA. We also got some exclusive photos from her time with the spinach-loving madman, along with the first five minutes of the movie. So enjoy those, read the interview, and check out Popeye, The Slayer Man in theaters March 21st!
First off: welcome back to FANGORIA! You've been part of the family going back to Splatter Disco!
Oh God yeah, that came out in 200…7? Oh my God I feel old! It was my very first time appearing in FANGORIA, it was very exciting! And funnily, it was the issue with The Mist on the cover, and Sean [Decker; Sarah's now husband] actually wrote that article!
And then you worked your way up to presenting at the Chainsaw Awards last year! How did that happen?
That's a good example of being in the right place at the right time. They were shooting the awards over at Wolfpack Studios, which was right down the street. Michael Varrati was directing, and Michael and I go all the way back to my East Coast days. He wrote a script I worked on with Richard Griffin, who was the director of Splatter Disco! Michael and I became friends through Richard, and when I moved out here, we continued to work together.
Michael moved into directing and put me in some of his films and in the wrap-around segment of an episode of The Boulet Brothers' Dragula. When he was directing the Chainsaw Awards, they had a presenter cancel due to Covid, and he was like “Sarah, I trust you, can you present? I need to get you approved but if they approve you can you come in and do it?” I said, “Of course I can come in and do it! I'd love to!” So it worked out really well.
Let's talk about Popeye The Slayer Man. When you were a kid, did you ever watch a Popeye cartoon and think, “Someday… he's going to try to kill me.”
[laughs] No! I never imagined that.
Never got that idea from watching the cartoons?
No, no… [laughs] To be honest, I don't think I ever even really watched a Popeye cartoon. I mean, I know what it is, of course, but I'm not sure if I've actually seen the real cartoon.
You're reuniting with some old colleagues here, too.
Yes! I was friends with the whole production team before doing the film. Cuyle Carvin is one of the producers, and we met playing boyfriend and girlfriend in a horror movie out in the woods in Connecticut [Victimized (2014)] a long time ago. We were texting, catching up, and he said he was going to be doing another film with Robert and Jeff in upstate New York in the spring, and I was like “Oh coincidentally, I'll *also* be in New England working on a different film at the same time!”
He said “Really….? If you're going to be in the area, there are still a couple of roles that we're casting if you're interested.” And I was like “Hell yeah why not? That sounds like fun, let's do it, it's been a while since we got to work together!”
He asked Robert and Jeff what they thought about casting me, who I've also known for probably at least 10 years at this point, and they were on board. The scheduling worked out; I spent about two weeks on the other movie, Round the Decay, in New Hampshire, then I spent a week visiting with my family because they still live there. Then I went over to New York and did Popeye! It was very convenient. I was just doing it to have some fun with my friends, I never expected it to blow up as much as it has.
IMDb tells us your character's name is Adrienne, and they never lie to us, so what can you tell us about Adrienne?
[laughs] No lies here, that is really my character name and I'm essentially the opening kill scene. Like Drew Barrymore in Scream, to introduce you to the stakes of what's going on. My character is a drug addict, and I'm running away from some thugs that I've stolen from. I decide it's a good idea to hide in this abandoned spinach canning factory, because that seems like a good idea! Not creepy at all! [laughs]
Once I get in there, this is the place that Popeye is haunting, and he wreaks mayhem on those who are entering his domain! I've done a lot of horror films over the years, but I'm usually the final girl or the sweet one where everyone feels bad when I get killed. I'd never actually done the opening kill sequence before.
It was more pressure than I thought, I really wanted to get it right. With so many streaming options, that's the thing that will either keep people watching the movie or make them turn it off within the first five minutes and watch something else. Doing something I had never done before, along with playing a drug addict, which is a character type I'm never cast as, and getting to work with my friends made this whole thing a really fun experience.
If you tell someone the idea – “a Popeye horror movie” – it sounds fairly silly, but the trailer gives off legitimate horror movie vibes. Is that accurate to the film's tone? Or does the movie actually kind of split the difference between funny and scary?
I think it's a little bit of both, at least going off the script I had. Things always change from script to filming and then filming to editing. There are definitely some of those fun moments, like references to the Popeye character, and you can see that in the trailer with the “I yam what I yam” line.
Even that came off as more of a Freddy one-liner than a movie that's just over the top and goofy.
Yeah, it's not over-the-top goofy. It does have some of those fun, campy moments that everyone wants and expects. But it also has a good amount of gore, and all of the effects are practical. There's also a twist to the Popeye character that makes him sort of reminiscent of the tragic classic Universal monsters from back in the day. I don't want to give away too many spoilers. A little teaser!
Well that's the point, tease away! It's not out yet! You've been busy; you had something come out last month: Jace Anderson's The Long Game. A noir!
A film noir! Something different! I had done a movie with Jace's husband Adam called Spaghetti [author's note: both of these movies also have PHENOMENAL looking end credits, no bias] about four months before, so I did that movie, and it was great, and they were happy with my work. When The Long Game came around and Jace needed to fill some of the roles, she just emailed me to see if I was available and could do it.
I had no idea that Kathleen Turner and Jackie Earle Haley, who are incredible actors I grew up watching, would be in it. That was insane and the best surprise! You'll notice a theme here of people in the horror community wanting to work with people they know and helping each other out!
With so many of these movies involving folks you've worked with before, do you think that kind of familiarity is essential with these independent productions that don't have the luxury of 70-day shooting schedules? I would imagine having that shorthand helps you all immensely with getting things done quicker.
Yeah, I think so. Especially with indie productions, the budget and the schedule are so tight. There's no room for divas, or problems on set, or bad moods, or not being prepared. On bigger productions, they have more of a luxury with time. With these indie films, who you are as a person is just as important as your acting ability. What you bring as a human on set: knowing your lines, being professional and kind, getting along with everyone, being someone they can trust and rely on to deliver is going to make an impact on how that day goes, and sometimes, if the movie even gets finished. On these movies, every minute counts! That's really important.
Let's talk a little about Garden of Eden, which is also coming out soon?
It's coming out in late March I think. I don't know the exact date but it's very brutal, very gory – all practical effects! I love that indie films are still keeping practical effects alive! It's a horror movie with a kind of religious social message bent to it. It looks at how oftentimes religion can be used for evil and how it can be very hypocritical. It's meant to make people think about religions and beliefs and how some follow them blindly, essentially.
That sounds up our alley! Are you a villain in it? Or a victim?
I'm… it's an interesting character, a little bit of both in some ways. There was a lot for me to do with that role, and so much in the writing that Joe [Knetter] put into it for me to work with. I really enjoyed diving into that character. It's so much of an emotional arc. I'm a mother whose child has been killed by a drunk driver, so she's going through all of that horrible grief and loss and guilt. I am given the opportunity to get revenge on the person that killed my child, so do you take that opportunity?
What do you do with that? Do you let the anger and vengeance consume you and follow down this path of darkness? Or do you stay true to your beliefs and your faith and not follow that? It was a very duplicitous role with a lot of inner conflict because I got to deal with a little bit of everything with that character. I hope people like it. I tried really hard with that one and I'm proud of my work in it.
What about Pretty Boy?
Pretty Boy! Finally! We shot that in 2020 during Covid. It was the second project I shot after the lockdowns, and we had a socially distanced set. It's the sequel to a film called Blind, about an actress who goes blind and is stalked by a superfan. It had gotten some good attention, and they decided to make a sequel. When it was done, I think there were some back-end disagreements, which is why it's taken so long.
At least that's my understanding of it, just being an actor and not being on the production side. It's an '80s throwback, and I play the archetype stoner character who also speaks in sign language. Originally, the character wasn't written as deaf, but I had been learning sign language in class for a few years and really wanted to use it in a film. Since the first film, Blind, had been exploring the idea of disabilities with the actress losing her sight, I asked Marcel [Walz] and Joe [Knetter] if I could use sign language for my character in the film, and they liked the idea.
We'll be seeing a lot of you over the next couple of months! We like that!
It's going to be a good first half of the year! Almost every month, there's another film that's getting released. Which seems like a lot, but it's just kind of the indie way. Everything seems to happen all at once. People always seem to think I'm really busy when I don't feel like that's true at all. Like I said, Pretty Boy we shot five years ago, and it's just coming out now.
Is there another one you're about to go shoot that you can tell us about?
I always hate this question [laughs]. I hate talking about things before they're official… But I do have a werewolf cult movie I'm attached to that I'm really excited for. It doesn't have an official start date yet, so I don't want to jinx it. It's one of those things… it's so hard to get movies off the ground, so you never know.
I've been cast in so many projects that have never happened. And so many happen on such short notice; it's like, “You're cast, you start filming in three days!“ so you never really know what's coming around the corner. We'll see! But I do have a short film that is for sure happening. It's a gory Dungeons & Dragons horror comedy. I'm a big geek, I play Magic: The Gathering and stuff, so that'll be super fun. I don't get to do comedy as much as I would like, so that'll be cool.
Let's bring it back to Popeye before we go. We've seen a lot of these characters becoming public domain and filmmakers get to do anything they want with them. It's just a smart idea to take Popeye or Steamboat Willie or whoever and put them in a horror movie. If you could do your horror version of some non-horror property, which one would you want to do?
Oh man that's a really good question! I kind of would like to see a horror version of Tom and Jerry? [laughs] Just because there's already so much violence in those, I feel like you could really just go absolutely bananas crazy with that. And they never really die [from all the pain they inflict on each other], so what's the story behind that? Are they demons? That could be really fun!
Yeah, like they're supposed to be killing you and everybody else, but they keep trying to kill each other instead.
Exactly. It's a perfect matchup because no one can win or lose! That's always the rule when two franchises fight each other; it has to be even.
The audience wins, that's all that matters.
Yeah! The audience is entertained. That's the goal!
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Want to learn more about the phenomenon of horror in the public domain? Watch this:
