As you all know from my last post, L-Boogie and I are participating in a Christmas Movie Marathon. We’re about a week in on this epic journey, and have already seen enough movies to make every Scrooge out there cry for his or her momma. It’s been grand.

One of the most interesting and unexpected discoveries we’ve made is how much your perspective on a movie can change over the years.  And as we’ve learned, this “rediscovery” is not always rainbows and butterflies.

What am I talking about? The sick, twisted, perverted film Ernest Saves Christmas, that’s what.

From what we both remembered about the 1988 flick, it was another happy-go-lucky movie starring the goofy, but loveable Ernest P. Worrell (Jim Varney). But re-watching it all these years later made us both notice a ton of sexual innuendos, intentional or not. 

During the course of helping Santa save the holiday, Ernest comes across a runaway teenage girl named “Harmony Starr,” (Noelle Parker) who becomes his side-kick. And this is basically where the perversion starts.

• It’s morning time at the Ernest household, and Harmony is asleep on the couch. The camera slooooowly pans the entire length of her body, beginning at her feet, up her bare legs, over her torso, and finally to her head, where you realize she’s asleep on a zebra-print couch (if this couch doesn’t scream cheap porno, I don’t know what does). Who exactly thought it was a good idea to have a 16-year-old girl spend the night at a 40-year-old man’s house??
       

   

• Ernest has cooked Harmony breakfast, so she saunters up to him and props her (bare) legs against the counter.  Then, as if the scene didn’t make parents squirm enough, Ernest squeezes his face together and makes kissing noises. Children would think he looked like a fish.  I think he looked like a va-jay-jay. You be the judge.



• In order to bust Santa out of jail (it’s a long story), Ernest dons and suit and tie and tells the prison he’s from the “Governor’s State Correctional Institutional Prison Fair Treatment Task Force.” Beside him, in a classic school-girl uniform is “The Governor’s niece, Mindy,” who’s writing a paper for school. As Ernest goes on and on about his surprise visit, Harmony twirls her pigtails, cocks her head to the side, bites her lip, and does her best to look like jail-bait. Ernest tells the prison guard that Mindy is the governor’s “pet-project” and makes eyes at the guard. Ernest even puts his head on her shoulder at one point, and Harmony cuddles back with him.   

These were just some of the awkward scenes, folks. Others I omitted involved talking ad nauseum about “Santa’s sack.” And yes, this was rated PG. Oh, 1988, you got away with so much.