The audience at which ERNEST SCARED STUPID is aimed--pre-pubescents everywhere--is the age group most likely to be adversely affected by it.
Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney), a small-town garbage collector and resident moron, is always getting himself into one mess or another, and the day he decides to build a treehouse for the neighborhood children is no exception. Ernest accidentally unearths a 200-year-old troll, ugly as sin, and the
little monster has nothing but evil in mind. Ernest stupidly elbows his way through a variety of slapstick situations in his attempts to save the children and thwart the troll's goal of transforming five of them into wooden statues, thereby capturing their souls. Once that happens, the troll will
have the power to enslave every child in the world. Gaining the help of a witchlike old woman, Old Lady Hackmore (Eartha Kitt), Ernest is determined to stop the creature in its tracks before it wreaks havoc on the entire town. That Ernest and Old Lady Hackmore are eventually successful in their
quest is to be expected.
While some kids may get a kick out of ERNEST SCARED STUPID, most adults will wonder why this asinine film, directed by John Cherry from a screenplay by Charlie Gale and Coke Sams, was ever made. As silly as it is, comedian Jim Varney, star of innumerable TV commercials as well as the prior ERNEST
GOES TO CAMP, ERNEST SAVES CHRISTMAS and ERNEST GOES TO JAIL, displays genuine, if intermittent, talent. The one highlight occurs during a couple of brief montage sequences which feature Varney mimicking a variety of cartoonish characters. These few moments are actually funny, but prove to be the
only amusing moments in the film. And it's a shame Eartha Kitt is so utterly wasted. This talented dancer-singer-actress, who first created a sensation on Broadway in New Faces of 1952, deserves far better material--and treatment--than she receives here. Kitt's presence alone gives the film what
slight style and wit it has and she lends virtually the only convincing performance as a junk sculptor who dwells in an antebellum plantation mansion surrounded by spooky creations representing various manifestations of the occult. (Violence.) leave a comment
