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** (out of ****)
Superman! Batman! Ernest P. Worrell? The ne'er-do-well, lovable man-child is a defender of our American way of life. First he saved Christmas and now he is going to save Halloween in "Ernest Scared Stupid" (1991). Is there no end to what this man is capable of?
Ernest is a dim-witted jack of all trades and truly a master of none. In "Ernest Scared Stupid" he works in a small town's sanitation department and unwittingly unleashes an evil troll one of his ancestors helped capture 100 years ago. According to the legend, the troll, for some reason named Trantor, places a curse on the Worrell family, making each generation dumber and dumber, leading the town's scary old lady (Eartha Kitt) afraid Ernest may be the one dumb enough to let the troll, buried under an oak tree, free.
I don't know where or when I first saw Jim Varney and John Cherry's (the movie's director) Ernest creation but his slapstick hi-jinks and imbecilic nature delighted me as a child and touched my funny bone. I was eight years old when I saw the trailer for "Ernest Scared Stupid" and by gum, I knew right there and than someone was going to take me to a movie theater to see it!
As we grow older and become adults our taste (hopefully) becomes more sophisticated and mature. We outgrow the silliness of our childhood. As such I haven't seen "Ernest Scared Stupid" - or any Ernest movie - in the last 30 some odd years. However as I wrap up my annual October tribute to horror movies nostalgia kicked in and this comedy / horror kiddie movie popped into my mind.
Watching Ernest again I can kind of, sort of see what the appeal was to a child but I don't find the character to be endearing as an adult. Ernest has similar qualities to another famed man-child character, Pee-Wee Herman. I actually re-watched "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure" (1985) not too long ago and found that character's appeal has vanished for me too. Though, if my life depended upon it, I'd rather watch Pee-Wee again.
And while I may be down on Ernest and "Ernest Scared Stupid" I must confess something. At eight years old, "Ernest Scared Stupid" scared me! I couldn't have been the only child scared by this movie. So when I say as an adult the movie is poorly made and not at all scary, I must remind myself of my inner eight year old. This movie can indeed scare children!
For as juvenile as we may think Ernest is, in the world of comedy he actually does everything right and possesses your typical comedic persona traits - in his mind he is a foremost authority on any given subject. He can be brash, confident and cowardly. He is a dreamer and easy victim of any get rich quick scheme. If Varney was a little older it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility the character could have been in silent movies.
We see a lot of these traits on display in "Ernest Scared Stupid". When we first see Ernest he is taking great pride in his work and shows off his latest invention to his dog, Rimshot. Naturally everything goes haywire and Ernest finds himself tossed into the back of his garbage truck about to be crushed to death. Notice the pride, the confidence, the sense of genius (his invention) and how quickly it all disintegrates under his own stupidity. In comedy this is known as the superiority theory of comedy - I may not be a genius but I'm sure smarter than that guy.
To further hit on this idea of superiority, notice how all of the adults treat Ernest as if he is a child. The characters he has the most interaction with are children. But even they sometimes look at Ernest and laugh at him. Of nearly all of the adults, except "Old Lady" Hackmore (Kitt), only Ernest believes the children about the existence of a troll. And only the children are serious about helping Ernest capture the troll.
As I have written repeatedly, in order for a comedy / horror movie to work you must think of it as two movies in one. You have to take your horror portion of the story serious and create a plot that is truly scary and one you would find in a real horror movie. The comedy should arise naturally from the plot due to the situations the comedian is being placed in and their level of fear. In "Ernest Scared Stupid" they make a good attempt with the background story of burying the troll and the curse put on the Worrell family. The problem is the movie doesn't have any ambition. It wants to settle to be a kiddie picture when it could have been something like Abbott & Costello in "Hold That Ghost" (1941) or Bob Hope in "The Cat and the Canary" (1939). Why not make a really funny comedy / horror movie with Ernest? Maybe Ernest could have inherited a family estate, which turns out to be a haunted house. Why settle for this kiddie fare?
Scary scenes for this movie include the first time Ernest meets the troll in the children's tree house. It is a dark and stormy night. Ernest is all by himself, since the children have left him behind. Every noise, including the sound of the wind, strikes fear in Ernest's heart. The camera seems tilted. Everything in Ernest's world is now skewed. Objects start to move on their own. Suddenly, in the darkness and shadows, the outline of the troll's face appears. Ernest can't quite make it out but by now he is on the ground, trembling in a corner. In typical comedy / horror fashion Ernest shouts out "Boy, I sure hope you're from Keebler"! A reference to the famous cookie making elves that live in a tree. I must confess this line made me chuckle.
Another scary scene plays around with the idea of there's a monster under my bed as one of the children, Elizabeth (Shay Astar) is afraid the troll has followed her home. Sitting on her bed, she asks her mother if she'll check under the bed. The mother won't and becomes frustrated with her daughter's tales of troll, which are interrupting their plans to attend a Halloween party that night. After her mother leaves the room, Elizabeth slowly moves to the edge of the bed to look underneath. The anticipation builds until the reveal. It is a classic horror movie situation and it works.
I also suppose the very idea the troll only attacks children is scary - to children anyway. When the children are captured the troll turns them into wooden dolls and places them inside of a tree trunk. With each child collected the tree develops something that looks like troll eggs. Once enough children have been collected the troll eggs will hatch unleashing them on the town.
I wonder if the movie "Troll" (1986) and "Trolls 2" (1990) had any influence on the movie and making the villain a troll? The other trolls in the movie I thought resembled the clowns from "Killer Klowns From Outer Space" (1988). And speaking of clowns, I thought there were traces of "It" (1990). At the beginning of the movie, during the credits, several clips from older horror movies are being shown. It is edited in such a way as to suggest Ernest is reacting to the movie clips. It would have been nice if the movie paid homage to these other horror movies, which I thought the title sequence suggested.
Whatever lack of scary scenes or comedy the movie may suffer from, the acting may be a bigger problem. One of the first sequences - establishing the legend of the troll - has a little girl running away from the troll but the girl looks like she is going to laugh. When a couple believes their child has been turned into a wooden doll they aren't really heartbroken - exactly how bad was this kid! The best performances in the movie are given by Varney, mostly because his energy is infectious and Eartha Kitt, mostly for her delivery of the lines.
I'm really conflicted over this movie. As an adult I see a lot of faults with it but I know how I felt watching it as a child. If the core audience is children, they will get much more out of this movie than anyone else. As an adult I just don't really see the lasting appeal of the Ernest character. That said, "Ernest Scared Stupid" isn't necessarily the worst comedy / horror movie I have seen. Adults will want to watch this for nostalgia's sake. If you've never seen an Ernest movie before, I think you should leave it that way. KnowhutImean?
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