The High Frame Rate of Ernest Scared Stupid

It's interesting. When I was young, I always thought the whole film was sped up slightly. I enjoy comedies that used the sped-up film technique, it's quite hilarious.

Weird what you notice as an adult that as a child just seems to make the film weirder. Believe it or not, it's usually intended to speed up the running time, just like having actors talk faster etc...

It wasn't shot at a high frame rate. It was shot at normal 24 fps. But what you're seeing in the daytime scenes and in some of the nighttime action scenes is a narrow shutter angle which produces a strobe effect like in Saving Private Ryan battle scenes. Cameras normally have a 180 degree shutter that rotates as the film passes through the gate - but when you close that shutter down to 145 degrees or less the image has less motion blur which creates an ultra sharp image or strobe effect. Many motion picture film cameras have adjustable shutters that can be closed down from 180 degrees down to just a 15 degree opening. The smaller the shutter opening, the sharper the image. Many movies use this effect for battle scenes. And many old black and white movies used the narrow shutter when shooting in bright sunlight to compensate for too much light entering the lens. Even most digital cameras today will automatically produce a narrow shutter angle strobe effect when you shoot in bright sunlight to compensate.