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Film: Weekend At Bernie's

A 1989 comedy film in which two corporate lackeys (Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman) get duplicitously invited by their scheming boss Bernie (Terry Kiser) to his fancy New York beach home for the weekend. Hilarity Ensues when Bernie is murdered (by someone else), and circumstances force the hapless duo to lug his corpse around, pretending he is still alive.

Unsurprisingly, the film's title was originally used as the name for the trope Of Corpse He's Alive.

A sequel was made in 1993, which is even more ridiculous than the first thanks to the addition of voodoo and dancing corpses.


Contains the following tropes:

  • Asshole Victim: Bernie himself. He was a Corrupt Corporate Executive who was planning on killing the protagonists for unknowingly discovering his scheme, but the mob he hired double-crossed him.
  • Beach Bury: Mister, can I bury you?
  • Black Comedy
  • Blatant Lies: "I didn't see anything! I was looking at my watch!" "I'm blind!"
  • The Cat Came Back
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: Vito when he finds out Bernie is sleeping with his girlfriend Tina
  • Corrupt Corporate Executive: The protagonists were unaware of it, but Bernie was the one behind the insurance fraud that was going on in their company.
  • Death As Comedy
  • Dogged Nice Guy: Silverman's character.
  • Dude, She's Like, in a Coma!: Guess. Squick!
  • Footsie Under the Table
  • Groin Attack: Bernie gets his revenge in the end.
    YOU KICKED ME YOU... [shoots corpse]
  • Hey, It's That Guy!: This isn't hitman Paulie's first time dealing with corpses that refuse to stay buried.
  • Ho Yay: Between Larry and Richard; it's noticed by Bernie. Also, a woman at Bernie's party acknowledges the ho yay in Sherlock Holmes, writing a book about him and Watson being 'secretly married'.
    • It's also invoked in the original "suicide note" written by Bernie's assassin. He was originally going to claim that Larry stole the money so he could have a sex change operation. And live with Richard as his lover.
  • I Love the Dead: Things turned really strange when one of Bernie's lovers came to argue with him, and ended up having sex with him. And she claimed it was the best they'd ever had. And he was dead.
    Larry: How do you like that? The guy gets laid more dead than I do alive.
  • Irishman And A Jew: While there is no indication from their Anglo-Saxon surnames "Wilson" and "Parker", the characters played by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman conform to some extent to these stereotypes- McCarthy's character is a confident, outgoing, booze-swilling and not-too-bright merrymaker (who takes to praying the "Hail Mary" under duress and is outright confirmed as Catholic in the sequel), whilst Silverman's character is neurotic and constantly aghast at the horrible things happening around him. McCarthy's character's aggressive pursuit of the fairer sex seems like it is in contradiction to the usual stereotype of the prudish Irishman, but the sequel reveals that his private life may be more in keeping with expectations.
  • The Mafia
  • Of Corpse He's Alive: The plot formerly known as Weekend at Bernie's.
  • Naughty Under the Table
  • Playing Against Type: Can you believe this was from the director of First Blood?
  • Rule of Funny: Certain facts about corpses are cheerfully ignored.
  • Xanatos Backfire/You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: This is exactly why Bernie winds up in the state he's in for most of the film; he tries to get the protagonists killed by the mob, but the mob winds up murdering him and making it look like a suicide.

The sequel contains:

  • A Man Is Not a Virgin: The subversion of this is Chekhov's Gun. A voodoo priest says he needs the blood of a virgin to cure Richard after a poisoning. Well, remember the quote in I Love the Dead for the first film?
    Larry: Just take the blood.
  • Animated Credits Opening: And a half-assed one at that. Not only is the animated of poor quality, but the animated studio didn't even bother to animate the crew's production titles! This creates for a really bad effect where the names are animated but the production titles are obviously added in.
  • Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Catherine Mary Stewart's character
  • The Dead Can Dance: But only when there's music playing. You see, they used the pigeon when they should have used the chicken...
  • Hollywood Voodoo: Cock-a-doodle-do.
  • Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain: The luckless Hummel gets arrested (three times!) and has something close to a nervous breakdown thanks to encounters with Bernie... all without the heroes being any the wiser.
  • Inspector Javert: Hummel.
  • Hey, It's That Guy! Hummel is played by the Mayor of New York... or Brad Majors if you prefer.
  • Our Zombies Are Different: Bernie ends up a Type V. Sort of. Those Two Bad Guys screwed up the ritual that was supposed to fully revive him, so now he can only move when music is playing.
  • Unknown Rival: Larry and Richard are unaware Hummel is tailing them until the very end of the movie, despite indirectly causing a lot of trouble for him. To a lesser extent they only become aware of the Big Bad two thirds of the way through the film and she was likewise had no idea about them.


The War of the RosesFilms of the 1980sThe Wizard

alternative title(s): Ptitlec2bovk1y; Weekend At Bernies; Weekend At Bernies II
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