The 1989 film Weekend at Bernie’s doesn't get a lot of respect, with a lot of people dismissing it as low-brow nonsense... although, as years have gone by, it does seem to have gained more respect than it had back in the day. I think it's a comedy classic, and have loved that movie ever since I first watched it, as soon as it became available to rent on VHS from my local video stores.
Four years after the release of Weekend at Bernie’s, almost exactly to-the-day, we got the follow-up, appropriately titled Weekend at Bernie’s II. This one I’ve never been able to enjoy as much as I enjoy the first movie... but I do like it and find it to be a worthy, albeit lesser, sequel.
Weekend at Bernie’s did so well, screenwriter Robert Klane and producer Victor Drai quickly started planning a sequel. Drai, who said he “didn’t see a penny” from the success of the first movie, decided he was going to produce the follow-up independently. Within months of the first film’s release, Terry Kiser – who played the titular Bernie in the first movie – was called over to Drai’s house for a champagne celebration: the funding for Weekend at Bernie’s II had been secured. At that point, they didn’t even have the story yet. Kiser was asked where he would want to go and what he would want to do in a sequel. He answered, “I want to be someplace where it’s warm, where I don’t have to wear shoes and I can go in the water.” Because of that, the setting was chosen: Saint Thomas, one of the U.S. Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea.
Klane built the story around the location, and the sequel picks up immediately after the events of its predecessor. It would have to, wouldn’t it? Bernie died thirty minutes into the first movie. If too much time passed, he would have decomposed. That’s right, these movies are about a dead guy.
The first movie introduced us to the neurotic Richard Parker (Jonathan Silverman) and his wiseass friend Larry Wilson (Andrew McCarthy), who work for an insurance company and discovered that someone had stolen two million dollars from the company. When they reported this finding to their boss Bernie Lomax (Terry Kiser), he rewarded them by inviting them to spend the weekend at his beach house on Hampton Island.
Unfortunately for Richard and Larry, Bernie was the one who stole that two million dollars. He also had mob connections and asked a mob boss to have a hitman kill Richard and Larry at the beach house, making it look like a murder-suicide. Luckily for Richard and Larry, Bernie was sleeping with the mob boss’s girlfriend, so he ordered that Bernie be killed instead.
By the time Richard and Larry got to the beach house, Bernie had already been killed, his death staged to look like a drug overdose. When Bernie’s friends started flooding into the place, wanting to party, Larry got the idea that they should just roll with the idea that Bernie was still alive so they can enjoy the weekend. Richard objects at first... but then he realizes that the insurance company intern he has a crush on is also spending the weekend at the island. This weekend could be his chance to win her over, so he agreed to pretend that Bernie was alive and see it through. They didn’t have much chance to have fun, though, because they soon discovered the murder plot - and began to fear that the killer is still coming after them.
But, as the sequel begins, they’re putting that whole murder issue behind them. Expecting to receive a raise for discovering that Bernie had stolen money, Larry and Richard receive bad news when they go back to the work: they’ve been fired from the insurance company. Arthur Hummel from the company’s internal investigation department doesn’t believe that they weren’t in on the scheme with Bernie. And he wants to know where the money is.
Larry and Richard don’t know – but they get a clue when Larry claims Bernie’s personal effects from the morgue. Turns out, Bernie has a safety deposit box at a bank in Saint Thomas. They need to see what’s in that box, but there’s an obstacle: Bernie would have to appear at the bank in person and sign for it. At this point, that’s just a minor inconvenience for them. They’ll steal the body from the morgue, stuff it into a suitcase, take it to Saint Thomas, and walk Bernie’s corpse into the bank.
Of course, Bernie’s mob associates are also interested in locating the money, and they seek the help of a voodoo priestess on the island. She casts a spell on a pair of tourists, Henry and Charles, and sends them to New York to raise Bernie from the dead. As a mindless zombie, he will lead them to the money. They’re told they’ll need to follow the priestess’s orders precisely for the magic to work. The spell involves 117 candles, a potion containing goat urine, and a live chicken… And Henry and Charles are a pair of fools, so when they lose the chicken, they replace it with a pigeon. Because of this, Bernie does rise - but this member of the walking dead can only move when there’s music playing.
Henry and Charles lose the slightly re-animated corpse. Larry and Richard get it back and take Bernie to Saint Thomas to carry out their plans. Crazy shenanigans ensue, with the dancing Bernie finding an admirer in a conga line, getting caught on a parasail, getting bitten by a shark, walking underwater with headphones on… and getting shot through the head with a spear.
Weekend at Bernie’s director Ted Kotcheff was not fond of sequels. He had made First Blood, but skipped working on Rambo: First Blood Part 2, and he counted himself out of Weekend at Bernie’s II as well. He said he had run out of dead-guy jokes. So Klane decided to take the helm of this one, fifteen years after making his previous feature, the disco comedy Thank God It's Friday.
Terry Kiser was on board from the beginning, otherwise the movie wouldn’t have happened. Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman agreed to come back as Larry and Richard – but Catherine Mary Stewart was never asked to return as Gwen. Her character wasn’t included in the story. The actress was surprised and hurt when she heard that a sequel was being made without her... but it makes sense that Gwen isn’t involved. Larry and Richard leave New York for Saint Thomas pretty quickly, and their stolen body scheme doesn’t seem like something she would want to take part in.
Since Richard had a love interest in the first movie, Larry gets one this time. Although he doesn’t do a great job of getting his love interest to fall in love with him. Troy Beyer, who is a writer and director these days, plays Saint Thomas local Claudia – who, luckily, has some voodoo knowledge. Steve James of the American Ninja franchise and Creepshow 2’s Tom Wright play Henry and Charles. Barry Bostwick of The Rocky Horror Picture Show plays Hummel, a character who, like the hitman in the first movie, loses his mind when he sees the dead Bernie moving around.
Sequels can be a challenge in general, but it’s especially difficult to come up with a satisfying comedy sequel. In many cases, they’re just not able to recapture the magic. The jokes and the characters aren’t as amusing the second time around. That’s the case with Weekend at Bernie’s II, which doesn’t manage to be as funny as the first movie… but it still has its amusing moments.
McCarthy and Silverman were able to fall right back into the roles of Larry and Richard, and it’s still a lot of fun watching them bumble their way through the story, making highly questionable decisions for selfish reasons. Although, with Hummel looking to prove they’re criminals, they do have a better motivation this time.
What’s surprising is that Larry and Richard are overshadowed by Henry and Charles for the first third of the movie. The opening stretch is mainly focused on their mission to steal and revive Bernie’s corpse. This can be jarring, because we’re watching the movie to see Larry, Richard, and Bernie, and instead we get Henry and Charles for a while. I was really disappointed by that the first time I watched this movie when I was a kid, but I come to have more appreciation for Henry and Charles as the years have gone by and the number of viewings have added up. They have their fun moments. And eventually, the movie gets back around to being the Larry and Richard show.
The first movie really hit its stride after 30 minutes, and the same can be said for the sequel. Weekend at Bernie’s II hits its most entertaining stretch once Larry and Richard stuff Bernie into a suitcase and get him to Saint Thomas, around the 30 minute mark. From then on, we’re back to having fun in the sun with the core trio. There are plenty of great Larry and Richard interactions and the ridiculous moments with Bernie go even further over the top.
The voodoo element was an unexpected twist, but you can understand why Klane put it in there. You can only get so many laughs out of the sight of Bernie being manipulated like a puppet. Or tossed around like a dummy. The voodoo resurrection allows Terry Kiser to make us laugh in a whole new way. The man continues to show off excellent physical comedy skills. Bernie’s dance moves can be really funny to see, especially since his corpse still has that dopey smirk on its face. Kiser suggested the Saint Thomas setting because he thought it would be warm and relaxing. But when you see the extended sequence of Bernie dance-walking underwater, it looks like he actually made this shoot more difficult on himself. That couldn’t have been easy to film.
Weekend at Bernie’s II was not warmly received when it reached theatres in 1993. Critics had already been bewildered by the first movie. They really slammed this one, and moviegoers were underwhelmed, too. It was made for about the same budget as the first movie, around 15 to 17 million, but earned less than half of what the first movie made at the box office. It sputtered out at just 12.7 million. Thankfully, we were still in the glory days of home video in 1993, so it found greater success on VHS. That’s great news for Drai. Since this was an independent production, he made ten times more money on the sequel than he did from the first movie. Still, that wasn’t enough to get him to hurry a third movie into production.
The sequel has never gotten a re-evaluation that improved its reputation, but it did make its own mark on pop culture. As time went on, it earned nostalgia points. And it does provide a unique viewing experience, because there aren’t many comedies out there that star conga-dancing corpses. Because of that, in 2010, Weekend at Bernie’s II inspired a dance craze when the hip-hop group I-S-A, or Infinity So Awesome, recorded a track called “Moving Like Berney,” inspired by the film.
We’ll probably never see Bernie again – but two movies is already a great accomplishment for a dead guy. We’ve seen him get dropped, tossed, and dragged in a variety of ways. Through it all, he never lost his smirk. And if you go back and watch Weekend at Bernie’s and Weekend at Bernie’s II again these days, you might have a smirk stuck on your face the whole time, too.
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