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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. Better Than It Sounds.
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?
- Bigger Bad: Evidently, Bernie Lomax was connected to some even larger thing with organized crime, where the mob boss he talks to about having Larry and Richard whacked is powerful enough to have Bernie whacked (and Larry and Richard; the idea seemed sound) for the offenses of 1. having gotten sloppy, or "greedy" enough for it to come up at all and 2. macking on his girl. Early in the movie, Bernie is killed, the hit man basically becomes the main antagonist, and the mob boss is never mentioned again.
- Black Comedy
- Blatant Lies: "I didn't see anything! I was looking at my watch!" "I'm blind!"
- The Cat Came Back
- 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.
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YOU KICKED ME YOU... [shoots corpse] |
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- 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 Bernie's ex-wife 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.
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Larry: How do you like that? The guy gets laid more times dead than I do alive. |
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- The Mafia
- Of Corpse He's Alive: The plot formerly known as Weekend at Bernie's.
- Naughty Under the Table
- Refuge in Audacity
- 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?
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Larry: Just take the blood. |
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- 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.