Weekend at Bernie’s II (1993)
Weekend at Bernie’s II opens with an animated credits sequence so ugly it makes late-’80s syndicated cartoons from DIC and Nelvana look like Fantasia. Absolute garbage—though I’ll give it a tiny point for nailing Bernie’s eternal Terry Kiser smirk. Nobody else in human history could make that exact expression, and by God, he holds it for two whole movies. The man’s a corpse and a rock star.
The sequel does my favorite sequel trick: it picks up right where the original left off—or close enough. Larry and Richard, our two hapless heroes, are now back in New York City after their Hamptons misadventure, checking Bernie into the morgue because apparently no one else in the world can handle his post-mortem affairs.
Honestly, there’s an untold story here—a prestige prequel about Bernie Lomax’s lonely life as a misunderstood millionaire playboy, made with the full knowledge of how it ends. Imagine a dead-serious drama that charts his isolated existence, only for the credits to roll as he dies and Weekend at Bernie’s begins. Now that’s subversive filmmaking. I can practically hear the slow piano version of the Weeend at Bernie’s theme for the trailer.
Instead, we get… this. The “two guys and a dead body” premise is at least expanded in a way that works better than the first, which stretched its joke too far and too tastelessly to be truly funny. (Need a refresher? In the first film, a mob boss’s girlfriend sleeps with Bernie’s corpse—and enjoys it, lit cigarette and all. Yep.)
Here, the grossness is swapped for pure goofiness. Larry and Richard are hunting for the missing $2 million McGuffin from the first film—but so is everyone else. The company Bernie stole it from sends their inept head of security (Barry Bostwick, leaning into cartoonish), and a fresh batch of mobsters are after it too. The original crime boss, Louis Giambalvo—a hall-of-fame ’80s/’90s “that guy”—apparently took a hard pass on round two so we get new completely non-memorable mafia types.
In a plot leap for the ages, the mobsters hire a voodoo priestess to find the money, who sends two bumbling henchmen to reanimate Bernie. Naturally, they botch the ritual, and now Bernie’s corpse springs to life and dances toward the treasure whenever music plays.
This is the film’s comic engine, and it works about as well as it can. The first movie gave Terry Kiser very little to do; here, he gets to go for broke with pure physical comedy. Bernie’s “dead-man dance” is ridiculous and kind of delightful—not a belly-laugh, but a solid chuckle. And it had LEGS… somehow in the 2010’s, it went viral and became a sports highlight when people scored touchdowns or had walk-off homeruns.
The rest of the cast? Forget it. McCarthy’s Larry and Silverman’s Richard are still charisma-free zones—slapstick failures without charm, chemistry, or basic competence. For stretches, the movie seems to lose interest in them entirely, focusing instead on the not-funny-but-at-least-not-skeevy voodoo henchmen.
Catherine Mary Stewart, who brought much-needed warmth to the first film, is MIA. No explanation given. Her absence is felt—so much so that I’d rather just revisit The Last Starfighter or Night of the Comet than sit through the first Bernie’s again. And yes, I’m saying the original is worse than Part II.
There’s a limp, low-energy vibe to this sequel, which might come down to Robert Klane moving from writer on the first to director here. As a writer, Klane has legit comedy creds (National Lampoon’s European Vacation, The Man With One Red Shoe – for which I have a soft sopt in my heart). As a director? This and an Odd Couple reunion TV movie—both in 1993—and then… nothing. His career ended more conclusively than Bernie.
Also: the movie opens with McCarthy and Silverman leaving the morgue when a random passerby yells “I’m walkin’ here!” like a bargain-bin Ratso Rizzo. Completely pointless. Pretty sure that was Klane’s cameo.
The film did win a Stinkers Bad Movie Award for “Worst Sequel,” but honestly? It’s breezy, dumb, and too forgettable to really hate. Bernie takes a harpoon to the skull and nearly gets eaten by a shark while paragliding upside-down. That’s the level we’re operating at. Not truly funny, but not completely lifeless either—pun fully intended.
Bottom Five Islands
5. The Meteor Island – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
You think you’ve landed somewhere safe, then the ground starts closing in… because you’re actually inside the mouth of a space slug living in a hollow meteor. Irvin Kershner directed this one, with Peter Suschitzky shooting it like a legitimate sci-fi masterpiece instead of the galaxy’s weirdest National Geographic segment. Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill all sell the scene — even though they’re basically acting opposite a puppet in a sock. Empire made half a billion adjusted dollars worldwide, but if Zillow had intergalactic listings, this place would be “cozy fixer-upper — bring oxygen and blaster.”
4. The Lighthouse Island – The Lighthouse (2019)
Two lighthouse keepers, one barren rock off New England, and a slow-motion descent into insanity that involves drinking kerosene, screaming at seagulls, and farting your way into infamy. Robert Eggers directs, Jarin Blaschke shoots in a claustrophobic square aspect ratio, and Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson turn cabin fever into performance art. The production built a working lighthouse in Nova Scotia just for this movie — because apparently filming on an actual rock in the ocean while your actors yell about lobster wasn’t difficult enough.
3. Miller’s Planet – Interstellar (2014)
Christopher Nolan gives us the worst beach vacation in the galaxy: an ankle-deep ocean world orbiting so close to a black hole that one hour there equals seven years on Earth. So yes, you can wade for sixty minutes and miss your kids’ entire childhood. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema makes it all look stunning right up until the tidal wave the size of an office building comes for you. The visual effects team worked with physicist Kip Thorne to make the black hole scientifically accurate — so accurate, the render data got published in actual papers. Which is great, but it still doesn’t explain why Anne Hathaway thought this was the ideal picnic spot.
2. Summerisle – The Wicker Man (1973)
On paper, a quaint Scottish isle with maypoles, folk songs, and Christopher Lee in a cape sounds like a dream getaway. In practice, it’s a pagan death trap where the locals lure Edward Woodward into a giant wicker oven and set him on fire — all while singing cheerfully about the harvest. Directed by Robin Hardy and shot by Harry Waxman, the film was butchered on release and barely shown in the UK, but later became a cult horror classic. Christopher Lee loved it so much he worked for free and personally screened it at universities to keep it alive — which, in hindsight, is the sort of enthusiasm you should be suspicious of when visiting any island.
1. Battle Royale Island – Battle Royale (2000)
Forget trust falls and group projects — this is Kinji Fukasaku’s idea of a high school retreat: ship a class of kids to a remote island, slap bombs around their necks, and make them kill each other until one’s left standing. Cinematographer Katsumi Yanagishima (Hana-bi) keeps it gritty and gorgeous, especially during the lighthouse scene — which somehow manages to be both the safest-looking spot and the bloodiest. The movie was banned in several countries, adored by Quentin Tarantino, and probably responsible for more “how to survive” forum threads than The Walking Dead.