30 Days of Halloween- Day 2: Ernest Scared Stupid

If there is one name that people everywhere associate with Halloween it’s Ernest P. Worrell. Well, maybe not…but Ernest Scared Stupid is one film that can always get me in the spirit of the spirits. A Halloween movie perfectly crafted for children who want a little of the scare that comes with the season but are not yet ready for Michael Myers or Pumpkinhead.

The story goes that some years ago an evil troll, who was turning the town’s children into small wooden statues, was imprisoned in a tree by one of Ernest’s ancestor’s. The troll’s final words prior to being trapped are a prophecy that one day a Worrell will release him from the tree and he will continue his reign of evil. Fast forward to present day (well, present day 1991 anyway) and Ernest is the town’s garbage man and local kook who identifies more with kids and his dog Rimshot than the more adult members of the community.  After some bullies destroy a haunted house some of the kids were building Ernest sets out to help them find a good location for a treehouse. I’m going to go ahead and let you figure out which tree he picks and what happens next.

Why should you watch this movie? Well, for fun, for a lot of silly fun that’s why. Jim Varney’s Ernest is a classic icon of my generation’s pop culture and I think he’s at his best here. As a pioneer of the one guy playing a multitude of different characters, or in his case personalities, Varney contends with Eddie Murphy in this respect. The story and lore involved is actually really good, with the legendary Eartha Kitt playing a major role as the classic “Older scary person who ends up being a good guy/girl”. While most everything else in the film is pretty standard faire it’s done so in a way that eventually sets it apart from most movies made for its demographic at the time. Then there are Ernest’s mispronunciations….something I never noticed as a child but upon watching again for this article find to be really funny and honestly more adult than what even Spongebob Squarepants throws out. Most importantly the film seems to perfectly capture the ideal image of a town during Halloween in the early 90’s. Being born in 1982 the nostalgia factor of what I see when watching this flick is high…except of course, for the whole hanging out with the schizophrenic garbage man in the denim vest thing.