An Unrequested, Exhaustive and Ultimately Pointless Review of the Ernest P. Worrell Movies

More than you ever wanted to know about the Ernest films. As with everything internet, it is possible to find a community of Ernest P. Worrell fans out there, of which I don’t count myself a member. But you can imagine what heaps of fun they have.

A Quick Background on the Early History of the Ernest P. Worrell Character

The origin of Ernest P. Worrell can be found in television commercials. Starting in 1980, standup comedic and actor Jim Varney created Ernest for the advertising company Carden and Cherry, and was then used for various dairy product commercials. The commercials had a big impact, on kids especially, and other companies requested Carden and Cherry to use Ernest for their own advertisements. This created a conflict with exclusive rights that other local companies already had to use Ernest, and Carden and Cherry moved instead to put Ernest in movies and in a television show. That opens up more avenues for product placements and raised the profile of the character.

The director of every single Ernest film and TV episode is John R. Cherry III, who was also the executive Vice President of the Carden and Cherry advertising company. Deep inside, he probably just wanted to be a director all along. Actually, Cherry had a bigger hand in creating Ernest than Jim Varney. Varney was simply an up and coming actor from Kentucky and ready to take on any role. Cherry based him on a man who used to work for his father. Cherry would also appear in cameos in a couple of the Ernest films he directed. If you really want to dive into this, buy John Cherry’s autobiography Keeper of the Clown – My Life with Ernest (2013), and the Jim Varney biography The Importance of Being Ernest: The Life of Actor Jim Varney (2013).

The first movie starring Ernest P. Worrell is a little-known movie called Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1985). Most people familiar with Ernest are unaware of this movie’s existence, and that it is part of the Ernest Cinematic Universe. In it, Ernest transforms into an evil scientist with a hand growing out of his head. It introduces a couple of recurring characters too. Three years later, Ernest starred in a sketch comedy TV show called Hey Vern, It’s Ernest! (1988). It only ran for a single season, but has more Ernest than you could ever desire. The real first proper Ernest movie, however, is Ernest Goes To Camp (1987), and together with the Christmas and Halloween films the best known. After that, the series declined from plain bad to atrocious.

Ernest became part of cinema history through sheer persistence. I was able to find most of the Ernest films listed below, and will talk about them. 

• 1985 Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam
• 1987 Ernest Goes to Camp
• 1988 Ernest Saves Christmas
• 1990 Ernest Goes to Jail
• 1991 Ernest Scared Stupid
• 1993 Ernest Rides Again
• 1994 Ernest Goes to School
• 1995 Slam Dunk Ernest
• 1997 Ernest Goes to Africa
• 1998 Ernest in the Army

Dr. Otto and the Riddle of the Gloom Beam (1985)

The most bizarre thing I have ever seen, and a very different beast than the other Ernest films. You can find it for free on YouTube. It’s a proper B-movie that is just about good enough to still be entertaining. Ernest builds a machine that transforms people, then gets sucked into it himself and appears as evil Dr. Otto. He wears some kind of Power Rangers costume and is surrounded by evil hot biker chicks and a robot. From his evil lair he uses his Gloom Beam to destroy Cincinnati because it is the financial capital of southern Ohio! Background synthesiser music is constant. At yet… for some this could be a surreal cult classic, and some of the dialogue is quite inventive and funny. I am not joking. A dumb hero named Lance Sterling is sent to beat Dr. Otto and he is hilarious. For a directorial debut it is not that bad, but the production quality is very low.

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Ernest Goes to Camp (1987)

Poor Ernest is a camp fixer who dreams to be more. It’s a professionally produced movie compared to the Dr. Otto thing, no matter what else you might think about it. It’s about on the level of the Police Academy films. Ernest is a man who thinks he knows everything, while in fact he knows nothing. I don’t think I can survive another eight films of this. To be fair, the movie gets more interesting the closer we get to the end. An hour into the film the plot suddenly kicks into gear and we get an action-packed finale. You just have to twiddle your thumbs for an hour to get there.

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Ernest Saves Christmas (1988)

Compared to most movies, not good; compared to other Ernest movies, really solid. We’re on an upward trajectory here. The film has a far more elaborate plot than Ernest Goes to Camp. The inclusion of Santa as a separate character does wonders to temper the effect of Ernest himself on the film. Ernest is the weakest part of the film, actually. Does that mean that Ernest films have an upper limit of quality because Ernest himself will always pull it down like an anchor? That’s depressing.

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Ernest Goes to Jail (1990)

Ernest just got a whole lot stranger. The comedy is becoming so wacky. They’ve given him a Pee-wee Herman house here, and Ernest becomes a magnet every time he touches electricity. He’s switched with a criminal lookalike and ends up in jail where the guards wear strange pink uniforms. Ernest’s criminal alter ego shows us a whole new side of Jim Varney’s acting. This is also a solid Ernest film, not good, but watchable for some silly fun. In the grand finale, the wackiness goes too far when Ernest is given more strange powers.

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Ernest Scared Stupid (1991)

A Halloween film more directly aimed at children, and quite scary for that audience. And Ernest works much better as a character when he interacts with children, like in the Camp movie. When he plays against adults, he is just an idiot and hard to feel sympathy for, but around children he is part of the gang and his better nature comes to the fore. We even get an in-universe explanation for why he is so stupid.

So, the effects in this film are quite good, even iconic. Ernest and the kids build a tree house on top of the grave of a troll, which then wakes up. The troll looks great. There are one or two legitimately scary scenes for kids. I think that once again the bad reception that this movie got was Ernest being the weakest part of the film. After every well shot kids scene with tension and mystery comes an Ernest skit that drags it down. Still, this is the high water mark of the Ernest films, I think, with the best production design.

From here on out, it is all downhill.

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Ernest Rides Again (1993)

The “swashbuckling” Indiana Jones spoof. This film marks the end of Ernest’s theatrical releases and is truly awful. A huge drop in quality from Ernest Scared Stupid. Varney mumbles his way through skits that go on for far too long. Worst of all, it is boring. Besides Varney’s antics there is nothing of interest to the film, and so far it has always been the rest of the film that made an Ernest film watchable. Ernest is a wannabe archeologist and assists Dr. Abner Melon with a discovery of a giant cannon. Ernest sits on the cannon, which then starts rolling downhill and causes mayhem. That’s it. That’s the film.

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Ernest Goes to School (1994)

All Ernest films obey simple rules. The basic formula is that Ernest has a low-paying job, such as a handyman or a cleaner, and dreams of being marginally more than that, such as a camp counsellor or a bank teller. In the first scene he shows that he is absolutely unqualified for anything and makes a giant mess of things. In the end, his good nature will make things work out for the best. In this film, he is a school janitor, and dreams of being a football coach. However, he must go back to school to get his degree if he wants to keep his job. With use of illegal experiments by a German scientist, he powers up his brain and becomes super smart, but also arrogant. As you can see, this film is already more inspired than the previous one. It’s a harmless one, by the numbers.

Three more to go. You can do it.

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Slam Dunk Ernest (1995)

Ernest is a cleaner in a mall, but dreams of playing basketball with his five black colleagues. He is given magical sneakers by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and nobody questions why he can suddenly float with them. It is a very low-budget film, taking place in only a few locations for long stretches of time. It has basically the same plot as the previous movie, but with basketball instead of being smart. The magical shoes add some flavour to the film. They have their own personality. Hey, I’m grasping at straws here.

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This is a real marathon.

Ernest Goes to Africa (1997)

The first minutes already make clear that this is going to be very childish. And that it is, plus horribly directed and with some of the worst acting I’ve ever seen. Ernest’s Arab blackface impression would give most people a heart attack these days. All the Ernest jokes feel incredibly tired and formulaic by now, and Varney is turning into an old man who keeps repeating the jokes of his youth. The bad guys are unbelievably bland, some recurring characters are sorely missed.

Just one more to go. You can do this.

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Ernest in the Army (1998)

We made it: the final Ernest film. Ernest enlists because he wants to drive those big army rigs. He did not expect to be sent to the Middle East! Jim Varney was getting weaker while filming this and he would pass away two years later. The story…. it is not as bad as the Africa one, but it is like listening to somebody’s child telling you a story and you’re politely nodding along, but after more than 10 minutes you would really like to talk to an adult again. Unfortunately, the film is 1.5 hours long. 

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So, what have we learned from this? Don’t wake up trolls. Don’t jump while you’re on a ladder. Don’t trust magical shoes. Don’t touch a grill with your tongue. Don’t stick your upper body into a cannon. Do make a yo-yo out of stolen diamonds. Do get yourself electrocuted.