Movie Review – Ernest Scared Stupid

Ernest Scared Stupid (1991)
Written by John Cherry, Charlie Gale, and Coke Sams
Directed by John Cherry

Of all the Ernest films, this is the closest we got to perfect synergy between a big Hollywood production and the particular sense of humor John Cherry & his collaborators shared. Every Ernest film had made more money than the last, which led to this being the highest budget Touchstone had ever given the production team, $9.6 million. Ernest Scared Stupid made less than Goes to Jail – $14 million compared to $25 million. This was also the final film handled by Disney, fulfilling the original four-film deal that started with Ernest Goes to Camp. Scared Stupid would mark the end of an era for Jim Varney and lead to a very different type of Ernest movie for the rest of the 1990s.

Briarville, Missouri, is home to Ernest P. Worrell (Varney), a sanitation worker for the city. Unbeknownst to Ernest, his ancestor Enoch Worrell was responsible for sealing away a demonic troll named Trantor inside a large oak tree. The troll places a curse on the Worell line that with each successive generation, Enoch’s descendants will be dumber than the last. In the present day, Ernest helps out a group of kids building a treehouse on that same tree, unaware of what slumbers within. Old Lady Hackmore (Eartha Kitt) is a strange witch who lives in those same woods and tells Ernest the story of the troll. He reports it back to the kids, reciting the spell, which unleashes the monster on the unsuspecting townsfolk. It’s up to Ernest and friends to try and wrangle this monster before he does irreparable damage.

Of all the Ernest films, this is undoubtedly the scariest, making it for Halloween what Saves Christmas is for that titular holiday. The critical piece that makes it so frightening is the design of Trantor the Troll. Trantor was created by the Chiodo Brothers, the minds behind the animatronics and puppets in Killer Klowns from Outer Space, a film I have yet to watch despite hearing positive things about it being a great cult film. They were also responsible for another childhood horror, the Large Marge special effects in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. That one gave me nightmares for quite a while. So, I can quickly see how a little kid would be frightened by Scared Stupid.

However, it’s the type of horror that perfectly straddles that line between kid-friendly and genuinely horrific. The most visceral thing we get on screen is Trantor’s runny snot from his nose. There are some moments where the troll transforms children into wooden dolls that might elicit some authentic terror, but all the kids are safely restored to life by the end credits. This is a film that, without Ernest, might be too much for little kids, but his ridiculous clown behavior softens those edges. 

We get a scene with the most characters per minute I’ve ever seen from Varney, including some familiar faces plus newer ones. I had forgotten about Bunny, a female hairdresser character that Varney & Cherry used in the 1990s to stave off Ernest fatigue in their commercials. We also briefly glimpse Bubba, who I learned from reading the biography The Importance of Being Ernest, was a character Varney did for a series of hunting safety videos for kids made as a collaboration with a friend. Most of us only briefly glimpsed these other faces, and I wish Varney had been able to showcase those skills to a national audience more often.

Ernest Goes to Jail made the misstep (in my opinion) of giving Ernest a love interest. It wouldn’t be the only time, either. That just doesn’t work for me; I see Ernest as a more asexual character. Pee-Wee Herman was consistently given love interests, but they made that work by making them absurd. Ernest, like Pee-Wee, just doesn’t give off those vibes. Thankfully, Scared Stupid returns to Ernest as a nice guy who helps out kids. He does have a female character to play off of in Eartha Kitt’s Old Lady Hackmore. Kitt brings an entirely new energy to the films, and I found that she played off Varney quite well. 

Missing from this picture for the first time in the Ernest series is Gailard Sartain, aka Chuck of Chuck & Bobby. Sartain and series producer/director John Cherry had a falling out between films, and the actor opted not to return. The actor had taken part in the first three Ernest pictures plus the Hey Vern TV series. He’d had an excellent career as a character actor in other films – The Buddy Holly Story, The Outsiders, Fried Green Tomatoes, to name a few. I could easily see him wanting to get away from a role that was just a record on repeat. Bill Byrge (Bobby) is here, though, teamed with actor John Cadenhead as the Tulip Brothers, local hardware store owners. I don’t think these two have quite the chemistry Byrge had with Sartain, but they are still quite funny in the film.

A lot of love was put into this film’s production, and it comes across on screen. When you look at the production values of Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam in 1995, a few years later, you will see this. It’s very impressive. Varney gets to stretch his acting muscles a bit more than usual, but it’s still classic Ernest slapstick. Being dropped by Touchstone would hurt the rest of the franchise, as you can see in the decline in budget throughout the rest of the films. 

It’s clear that Disney was ready to move in a different direction around the time of Ernest Scared Stupid. The Disney Renaissance was in full swing by 1991, with The Little Mermaid and Beauty and The Beast being released to rave reviews. During the 1980s, Michael Eisner and Disney had taken many chances, but this new wave of animation brought them back to a more conservative approach. Touchstone would continue to produce films of Ernest’s caliber for the rest of the 1990s, but it seems that Varney’s style of comedy just wasn’t in line with Disney’s evolving tastes.