The powerhouse team of John Cherry and Jim Varney teamed up again for 1993’s Ernest Rides Again, even though Disney had decided to end the franchise with the previous Ernest Scared Stupid. Well, you can’t keep a good hillbilly down.

In this outing, Ernest P. Worrell works as a janitor in a university in the Deep South, where he befriends one of the history professors, Abner Mellon. Abner has some kooky ideas that marginalize him but Ernest has unwavering faith that his friend's assertions are real: namely, that the British Crown Jewels are hidden inside a long lost Revolutionary War cannon—called Goliath—and that the jewels exhibited in England are fakes. This outlandish theory is proven correct when Goliath is indeed unearthed, then subsequently stolen by Dr. Glencliff, a greedy collector of antiquities. Ernest steals Goliath back, kicking off a mad chase back to campus, with assorted thugs, Abner’s wife and Her Majesty’s Secret Service hot on his trail.

Without Disney’s deep pockets to drum up publicity, Ernest Rides Again performed poorly at the box office; in fact, all later Ernest movies would be straight-to-video releases.