Touchstone Plus-Or-Minus: Ernest Saves Christmas

As a TV pitchman, Ernest P. Worrell was an old hand at celebrating the holidays. Over the years, he’d recorded countless season’s greetings extolling the virtues of everything from natural gas to your local news, frequently using a chainsaw to carve the turkey. So it was practically inevitable that sooner or later Ernest would get his own Christmas movie.

A sequel to Ernest Goes To Camp was a foregone conclusion before the picture was even released. Disney went all in on Ernest, signing Jim Varney and Ernest’s creator, ad-man John R. Cherry III, to a four-picture deal. This was not a tremendous risk. The movies were modestly budgeted. Ernest Saves Christmas was given about twice as much money as its predecessor and still came in at well under $10 million. Worst case scenario, Touchstone could release them straight to video and probably still turn a profit. But with Ernest Goes To Camp raking in over $23 million, Varney still had a place on the big screen.