Way back when the Lick Ness Monster was just a little hatchling, the summer of 1993 was a pretty eventful and formative one when it came to horror fandom. More than any other time period, that span was when my education took place at the oft-mentioned Greatest Video Store That Ever Existed. Me and my brother (RIP) took in tons of classic movies during that magical time when the Lex Express was in full effect. Hellraiser, Child's Play, Bram Stoker's Dracula...the list goes on and on.
However, another movie that we scoped out some long ago Friday night was a micro-budgeted film that made its budget back some ten times over at the box office, and was about to launch a never-ending stream of direct-to-video sequels. But we'll be getting to those in due time. That movie is, of course, Leprechaun, the movie that starred the guy from Willow as an evil wisecracking Irish demon searching for his long lost pot o' gold.
At the time, I thought that the movie kind of sucked, although I still enjoyed it just for the pure silliness and spectacle. After spending 150 minutes watching and dissecting it (that is how long it took - when I write these reviews, I occasionally have to pause in order to do my recapping/backbiting while the events are still fresh in my mind), I'm still of pretty much the same opinion. There are people in my everyday life who have called me an overgrown man-child, and this diagnosis of Leprechaun pretty much confirms it. Yes, the movie is pretty terrible, and I can't recommend it with any sort of good conscience, but there are some moments (and one scene in particular) that ALMOST make this worth putting up with 91 minutes of extremely cliched, extremely inane tedium.
Before we get the hell going with this recap already, I also need to expound on the performance of the guy behind the layers of makeup and false facial hair. As AFOREMENTIONED, Warwick Davis plays your title character, and while certain parts of this flick - including the Leprechaun's lines - made me want to punch the TV, I can't fault the effort of Mr. Davis. Here's something that you can take to the bank - when you see a dwarf in a movie, it's a pretty safe bet that he/she will be acting their ass off, as recently seen with Phil Fondacero in the HMM reviewed film Ghoulies II. Davis might very well be the most successful dwarf in film history, having played everything from an Ewok to Professor Flitwick in the massively popular Harry Potter films, which are so big in mainstream pop culture that I haven't seen a single one of them. Derp. Even more, he's actually a HUGE FAN of this character, and has stated in numerous interviews that he treated every film as a serious undertaking. As someone who has read "Crystal Lake Memories" and paid witness to countless actors making fun of my favorite movie series of all time, this sort of attitude is very refreshing indeed, so five gold stars for Warwick Davis.
What else? Leprechaun was released in January of 1993, and was actually the first movie that Trimark Pictures ever released. On a budget of $900,000, it wound up making more than $8 million in theaters and has since become something of a cult hit on video. Thus, while the flick is nineteen kinds of bad, it's easy to see why we have six of these movies taking up space in the horror section at Best Buy. I can respect any movie that makes a decent chunk of change from next to nothing of an initial investment, even if I don't necessarily like it.
Oh yeah, and Jennifer Aniston is in this flick.
With that, THE MOVIE!!
The movie opens in a sea of Irish brogueness that would make WWE's Sheamus red with envy. An old gent by the name of Daniel O'Grady (Shay Duffin) returns home from Ireland (after presumably burying his mother) to inform his wife that he captured an honest-to-jeebus LEPRECHAUN while away in the land of shamrocks, shenanigans, and House of Pain - and thus, the little guy had to give up his pot of gold, and they are now rich. Because, you know, that's something that one should just expect to be easily believed.
I'll give the movie this - it wastes absolutely NO time getting moving, even in comparison to other horror films with a micro small fries budget, to the point where we get our first kill within five minutes of this scene. Yep, it seems that the Leprechaun stowed away in O'Grady's briefcase, and being none too happy about giving up his precious pot o' gold immediately pushes O'Grady's wife down the stairs, breaking her neck in the process. In retaliation, O'Grady himself rushes his little green foe with a four leaf clover, which the impish demon recoils in horror from, before locking him in a trunk and immediately dying of a heart attack. So ends the beginning/exposition phase of the cinematic masterwork that is Leprechaun. The only other thing to mention at this point is that the Leprechaun makeup work by Gabriel Bartalos is actually quite impressive considering the budget - combined with Davis' earnest portrayal, he's no doubt a distinct and reasonably memorable character. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, but an endorsement nonetheless.
Since the majority of you enjoy my reviews being a bit more than just lengthy, bitchy recaps of long-forgotten horror movies from my youth, a few comments on Miss Aniston - surprise, surprise, I'm actually a fan. I know that her movies are, by and large, box office poison, but I'm a big admirer of her comedic timing and particularly the character of Rachel Green on Friends, where she survived as virtually the only main character who DIDN'T get Flandersized due to a one-dimensional portrayal. In this movie, she essentially plays a teenage version of Rachel - sassy-but-likable priss - and that's alright by me. Leprechaun may suck, but she's not a reason.
Time for the amazing plot to get rolling; yeah, Tory's dad has rented a farmhouse for the summer, and I'll give you one guess as to which house this is. If you answered "the O'Grady house, where a certain murderous Leprechaun is still stowed a away in a crate in the basement," you get a cookie. Within minutes, one of the painters working on the house - a simplish oaf portrayed by Francis Buxton himself Mark Horton - sets the Leprechaun free. Fortunately for Horton (who has a made-up name for his character, but I refuse to call him anything else), the Leprechaun's powers are still weak, leaving our official body count still solid at 2.
Before we delve further into the abyss, there's just a couple more characters that I need to introduce you to for clarification purposes. One of them is Nathan (Ken Olandt), the hunky leader of the painters who serves as Aniston's source of romantic tension for the film. Considering the godawful material that they're given and the fact that this story is never given closure, the two actors actually have decent chemistry together. Rounding out the cast is Robert Gorman as Nathan's little brother Alex, who contributes virtually nothing to the plot other than obligatory "kid in peril" moments that aren't suspenseful in the least bit. In essence, they could have replaced this kid with a cute furry dog and achieved the same effect.
Since the movie's running time needs to be elongated, none of the other characters believe Horton when he tells them about the murderous imp in the basement, and not soon after, a rainbow appears in the sky. Ever the opportunist, Horton (no longer scared about seeing a Leprechaun a mere five minutes after the event) finds the end of the rainbow along with two of the Leprechaun's 100 gold coins - one of which he somehow manages to swallow (don't ask). This leads to death scene #2 of the film, which occurs after he takes the other coin to a local pawn shop. I remember this death scene vidily from my childhood, and it was actually the scene shown on the Boogeymen DVD release, as Davis hams it up and bounces up and down on pawn shop merchant's bulbous gut with a pogo stick in order to recover his precious coin. All things considered, this is the movie's money scene.
Unfortunately, immediately following this, we are given a long, crappy, stupendously stupid segment involving a dumb cop stopping the Leprechaun as he speeds back toward the farmhouse (in a power wheel, no less) in search of the remaining 99 gold pieces. The less said about this death scene, the better. Upon making it back to the house, the Leprechaun goes to work cleaning every single shoe he finds. This is worth mentioning because, apparently, the guy was a shoemaker in his previous life, and has a Rain Man-like predisposition to cleaning every piece of footwear that he comes across. Methinks this is going to be important later.
All of our main characters (minus Dad, who conveniently was attacked by a cat earlier in the film and had to be taken to the hospital) make their way back to the house and find it disarray. The movie then gives us a few EXTREMELY annoying jump scare scenes, but this serves as the appetizer for what may be the most hilariously stupid sequence I've seen in any horror movie. Get ready.
OK, I'm jacked about this one. The core four group of characters hear a bell outside the farmhouse, which prompts dashing Nathan (who by this point has gotten Tory to warm up to his country-boy charms) to go out and investigate. Somehow, he misses the very poorly concealed bear trap in his walking path, which of course catches his leg in its grip before the Leprechaun reveals itself to him and begins attacking him. These screams cause the remaining three characters to run outside and check on their de facto leader. I'll fully admit that I expected the movie to pull the usual "hero tells other characters about the impossible thing he has just seen only for them not to believe" routine...but nope. Wasting no time, the Leprechaun sprints forward in front of everyone and bites Nathan in his leg wound. Alex (that would be cute puppy dog kid) picks up a nearby rock and nails his foe with a Hulk Hogan-like limp blow before Aniston begins socking the creature with the butt of a shotgun. Eventually, Nathan gains control of the weapon and blasts the creature with it. Inside the house, Horton runs for the phone, telling the redneck cops on the other end that "the leprechaun is attacking - send the marines, send the Navy!" Hilarity, I tells ya. The cherry on top? After being freed from the bear trap by the suddenly strong and resourceful Tory, Nathan shambles forward to the bush that the Leprechaun fell into after being shot and IMMEDIATELY empties every last round of ammunition into the shrubbery.
Everybody got that?
I love this sequence, not only for its start-and-stop editing and questionable material, but for the fact that it combines three tried-and-true tropes of horror films in a single 45-second string of events. Let's see what we got here:
(1) The quasi-leading man putting himself into harm's way by investigating the STRANGE NOISE outside.
(2) The potentially helpful police officers who laugh off a call for help. It's something I've seen in a lot of horror films; to cops, all victim characters are lying assholes.
(3) The "running out of ammo" bit, which Nathan gives us for no discernable reason. Hey, that little bastard fell into the bush - I'm blowing the hell out of it!
So ends the greatest movie scene...there ever was.
As an added bonus (/redundancy), Tory discovers that the phone line is dead, and the movie is able to enter its final trimester as the four idiots find themselves locked in a battle for life against the little beast searching for his lost bundle o' gold. This makes me quite thankful, as it makes explaining the inane plot being presented far more streamlined from this point forward.
We get yet another tried-and-true trope in the form of the painters' getaway vehicle not starting (and it's during this scene that I noticed that these guys have the greatest name for a business ever - "3 Guys that Paint"), followed by another uproarious scene as the Leprechaun overturns their vehicle with a tiny dune buggy. Not QUITE as riotous as the now-immortal bear trap sequence, but it's pretty damn special all the same. After being chased inside the house, the Leprechaun gets its hand cut off by a closing door, only for the severed limb to open the door by itself and crawl back to its master. Funny thing about this movie - they actually do a decent job of giving this diminuitive villain a decent slate of powers to make it seem relatively menacing. In addition to spontaneous hand regeneration, he also has the power to mimic voices, which has come in handy at a few points throughout the movie. I know I haven't recapped these points, but rest assured, they're there.
Since the crux of this movie is "murderous Leprechaun attempting to find his lost gold," it would help the proceedings swimmingly if...you know...said gold was actually FOUND. Tory finds it in a well outside the house and gives it to the now magically appearing Leprechaun, who is none too pleased to find that one of the coins is missing. Before our heroes can escape, the pissed-off and slightly reward-free Leprechaun teleports inside the house so our final faceoffs can commence.
Firstly, Horton realizes what the Leprechaun wants - the gold coin that he swallowed (which you would realize if you are an especially attentive and/or bored reader). Proving himself moderately useful, Horton then suggests going to visit Old Man O'Grady, now in a rest home after suffereing the heart attack in the movie's prologue, and they are able to reach Tory's jeep after tossing all of the house's shoes at the Leprechaun. In this respect, shoes to this character are somewhat akin to rice with vampires, in that it encompasses an OCD-like response that serves as the villain's achilles heel. Or I'm just looking way too deeply into it.
Well, admittedly, I'm growing somewhat restless wading in the endless muck that is Leprechaun, so let's speed this up, shall we? Do you really need me to tell you that the good guys win? Well, they do. After finding out from a near-dead O'Grady (the Leprechaun beat our heroes to the punch) that four-leaf clovers are Leprechaun kryptonite, they find one of the incredibly rare weeds and, after moderate intrigue, Alex shoots the clover into the Leprechaun's mouth with his slingshot. Smiles, laughs, shits and giggles all around. All of our main characters survive, although the film ends with a voiceover by Davis informing us that he is still searching for his gold, cursing both the Earth and yours truly with the promise of more nonaction.
Final judgment: This movie doesn't exactly unspool in a nice, efficient, well-written fashion, and it should be well-apparent reading the above scatterbrained recap (which is even more confusing than usual, I know). With the exception of Aniston, the hero characters are pretty much unbearable - although I did get a lot of milage out of screaming "Hey, it's Enrico Palazzo!" every time Horton appeared on the screen to no one in particular. The "scary" scenes aren't scary in the least. And the story, while occasionally inventive, is incredibly bland and uninteresting. All that aside...this movie does hold some nostalgic value for yours truly, both for the memory of watching it with my brother almost twenty years ago and for reminding me what horror movies were like in the days before seemingly every major release was a goddamn remake. And that incredibly awesome bear trap/beating/shootout scene ALONE raised the star rating by a full half-point.
Nonetheless, I'm not looking forward to the rest of this series in the least bit assuming the law of diminishing returns kicks in, because I'm told that this is actually (shudder) the BEST movie in the series. ** out of ****, and those ** are for ALL the wrong reasons.
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