You've read the last five, what's one more? It's "Leprechaun: Hood Bookend"!!

Fun fact for the day: this movie, the LAST (finally) film in the franchise to date, was originally supposed to be Leprechaun: Destination Spring Break.  The title may have been less stupid, but that was indeed the premise.  For God knows what reason, the producers reniged on this idea, and instead, we get this - Leprechaun: Let's Just Copy What We Did in the Last One. 

That's all the introduction I feel like this week. 

THE MOVIE!!

The film opens with a double prologue - and it's a doozy.  Firstly, we're treated to what's actually a pretty well-done animated short detailing the back story of Leprechauns and their fascination with gold.  Turns out that the little guys were once called by an Irish king to protect the treasures of the land.  Only one of them didn't return to the forest after these fictional wars were over, staying behind in our world to become twisted and evil over time.  So...wow, six movies in and we've finally got some semblance as to just what the hell Warwick Davis is supposed to be.

Prologue #2 is decidedly less interesting, as a old and very sweaty priest dukes is duking it out with the Leprechaun at a youth center's construction site.  I swear to you, this is what's happening.  In a darkly-lit scene that rivals anything in A v P: Requiem when it comes to incomprehensibility, the priest - who presumably has used to the Leprechaun's gold to fund a youth center - succeeds in banishing our pint-sized hero to the nether world with some clover-laced holy water, only to keel over immediately afterward due to a heart attack.  Leprechauns, heart failure, some guys just can't catch a break.

Unfortunately, this means that I've got to introduce you to our protagonists.  It's an exercise that I'm not looking forward to, but here we go.  Our leads Emily (Tangi Miller) and  Lisa (Sherrie Jackson).  Want some defining characteristics that make these two characters pop out a bit more than just first names?  Emily = nice, sweet, likable hairstylist trying to save up enough money to attend college.  Lisa = stuck-up, sassy, materialistic.  For what it's worth, Tangi Miller isn't bad in the movie; she's got a fair amount of charisma, and actually manages to elicit a few moments of sympathy throughout the film.  I said a few, don't get your hopes up. 

For secondary characters, we're blessed with Jamie (Page Kennedy), an idiotic stoner who gives us no less than ten "humorous" scenes that are anything but.  For an indication of the material that we're working with, an early scene shows him getting high and barking to his dog (bad pun, I know) that he can't have any weed.  His mom walks in, pissed expression on her face, and says "damn, boy -- you talkin' to the dog again?"  There's also Rory (Laz Alonso), a drug dealer who used to date Emily.  And it's just as Romeo-and-Juliet-esque as you'd think.  It should also be pointed out that the clothing label 57 Fake probably provided half of this movie's budget for the amount of times they are seen wearing shirts blaring their merits throughout the film's duration.

Well, if you know your Leprechaun history (and if you've read all of these reviews, you do, in addition to being a very patient soul), you know that every one of these movies has a lynchpin event where our idiots who aren't in peril put themselves in peril.  This happens when our four lead characters decide to have a picnic on the abandoned youth center site, where Emily promptly falls into a covered hole and finds the Leprechaun's gold.  It all happened so quickly and without intrigue, and I really wish I had some big epic story for you, but I don't. 

Anyway, the four friends split up their gold findings - amounting to roughly $250,000 a piece - and commence spending, awakening our pint-sized hero in the process.  We get our first kill out of this, as Warwick Davis enacts the obligatory "Leprechaun gets high" sequence before shoving a bong through a dude's stomach.  Let's see, we've already seen him get drunk in the second film and high in the previous "Hood" entery.  And all of these sequences dragged FOREVER.  I don't quite get why the makers of these films felt that little people getting all sorts of f**ked up equaled comedic gold, but you take what you're given, I guess.

Within short order, we enter full-on, tried-and-true "I want me gold!" murderous rampage mode.  In a move that somewhat surprised me, Lisa is one of the first ones to be killed off.  Surprising because (a) she was starting to warm up to Jamie's awful attempts to woo her, and (b) she looks utterly fantastic in booty shorts, which she parades around in during her murder scene. 

Emily and Rory go on the run from the Leprechaun now (Emily had encountered him earlier, barely escaping his wrath at the hair salon, and thinks that maybe - just maybe - their dead friend had something to do with the hideous-looking fiend who accosted her).  The bodies begin piling up from this point on, mostly of a bunch of completely irrelevant characters who had been vaguely introduced at some earlier point only to serve as murder fodder later.  One of them is Rory's floozy girlfriend, who stole a gold coin at a house party to turn it into a gold cap for her tooth.  Meaning that the Leprechaun rips her jaw off and begins walking around with a gold tooth of his own.  You know, Jon Lickness is one of the whitest white dudes you'll ever meet, and some of these stereotypes are making ME uncomfortable.  There's also Rory's drug-dealing rivals and a pair of idiot cops who had been hounding Jamie and Rory throughout the movie.

One thing that immediately stood out to me about this movie - remember how in four non-Hood films the Leprechaun actually had some pretty cool powers consisting of trickery, voice-changing and so forth that led to some gruesome and cringe-worthy death scenes (like a guy eating a lawnmower blade in Leprechaun 2?  In this movie, he's way more into duking it out with his bare fists, choking, gouging and so forth, as we get two scenes within close proximity to each other where he challenges various characters to a fistfight, gets beat up for a while, and eventually rips a body part off of his opponent.  I don't know, I guess I just liked the character who was a threat because of his supernatural powers better than a tiny guy who happens to be a good boxer.  Either that, or God, I'm a nerd.

For more nerd trivia, Sticky Fingaz is in this movie.  So don't say I didn't mention it.

Having nowhere else to turn after witnessing so much death and debauchery, Emily, Rory and Jamie head to the local fortune teller who has made a few appearances throughout the film so fascinating that I didn't even bother to mention them.  Armed with new knowledge about a Leprechaun's weakness, Rory makes some clover-infused bullets (and I've got to admit, that's actually a pretty clever plot idea) before the Leprechaun himself shows up and pops down the door.  Rory begins peppering him with bullets, and just as it appears that the movie is about to be over at the 72-minute mark, his Glock jams.  Brilliant plot device alert.

Begin ending sequence.  I know that I've used this phraseology before, but after six freakin' Leprechaun movies, sue me, I want to wrap this up quickly - do you really need me to spell out that the good guys win?  Jamie is incapacitated due to a wooden bat getting lodged in his knee, meaning that we are without his services for the remainder of the film.   We get our usual batch of false-finishes (including Rory giving the Leprechaun a very Leprechaun 1-style Rodney King beating in a scene that made me laugh for all the wrong reasons).  The endgame?  Rory fixes his gun, pops a cap in the Leprechaun's ass, and gets thrown off a roof into a puddle of wet cement.  And everyone lives happily ever after.  Although we do get a similar animated ending to what we got in Prologue #1, involving a hand coming up out of some concrete as the cliffhanger leading toward the sequel that never happened.

FINAL ANALYSIS:  I'm going to do my best to sum up my thoughts on this movie first: ugh, just ugh.  As the last movie in the first official Leprechaun series, Back 2 Tha Hood is the very definition of a Euthanasia treatment.  The franchise was clearly on life support by this point, both in budget and execution.  And, it sucked.  Ordinarily, I try to provide at least some empirical evidence of those blanket statements, but really, just read the above recap and that shoudl spell out all the reasons why that statement is correct.  1/2 * out of ****.

Now for some words on the series itself:  I'm done?  I'm really done?  Man, this was an endurance test of epic proportions.  The third film was the closest thing that we ever got to a GOOD movie in the entire series, and even that film made me occasionally want to gouge my own eyes out with pliars.  The Leprechaun films run the gamut of pretty much everything that a stuffy film major would deem to be "bad": bad screenplays, bad acting, bad stories.  However, as is the case with most micro-budgeted horror films, there is one catch - I always felt like the people who actually MADE these films had a ton of fun doing them.

Especially Warwick Davis.  I've mentioned it several times throughout these reviews, but the dude really did look like he was having the time of his life while making these films.  The way I understand it, he has said in more than a few interviews throughout the years just how much he loved the character that he got to play no less than six times.  It definitely showed on screen, as he put every bit of his 3'6" frame into a murderous, rhyming mythical Irish demon.  Fifteen stars for this guy, and a true class act all the way. 

Unfortunately, this means that I have to switch gears and talk about the future of this franchise.  You know, upon completing my reviews of the Ghoulies and Critters films, I said - with full confidence - that these things were effectively remake-proof, mainly because I don't believe there is a movie executive out there willing to shell out the money to acquire the franchise rights and trout out a remake to appease the three fans that each series had.  I also believed that this was true for this series - but apparently some geniuses out there believe that marketing to three people is a wise film business strategy.

Those geniuses, of course, would be WWE.

It goes without saying that I'm a huge wrestling fan.  I've dropped a few references to it in my reviews that hopefully a few astute souls have picked up on, and to make a long story short, while I bitch and moan about it a lot, much like horror films, I WANT this particular art form to succeed.  So here's some sobering facts for ya - WrestleMania XXVIII, their biggest pay-per-view event of the year, was a phenomenal success this year, having sold 1.3 million buys and putting 75,000 people in Sun Life Stadium.  Yet, if you looked at their stock price, you would never have even thought that the event took place. 

While the company continues to make money by the boatloads with their TV programming (no matter how inane and backwards it has become, but I won't get into that particular rant), they continue to sink millions into their film division, which cannot be considered anything other than a complete, utter, colossal failure.  They've released something like 18 films in the past seven years, and I believe a grand total of three have turned a profit.  It goes beyond value on a balance sheet, though - their movies completely, utterly suck, and while we've all been aware that Vince McMahon is an ancient, decrepit, borderline senile guy with his finger on the pulse of pop culture from 15 years ago, it still legit amazes me that he thinks that, at some point, he's going to make bajillions of dollars making horrible films about prisoners chaperoning field trips and John Cena rescuing random love interest #2.

The point of all this?  I'm anything but a fan of the Leprechaun series.  But I'm not in favor of remaking it - especially if it's from WWE, and especially since we no longer get Warwick Davis.  We get this guy.

I rest my case.

Leprechaun Series Locale #5: THE HOOD!

Okay, kids, we've come to this.  Up until this point, the Leprechaun series had gone...essentially every other direction it could have gone, really.  The countryside.  The big city.  Las vegas itself.  Outer frickin' space.  In a series where really little changes other than the locale, sooner or later, it had to reach this. 

Ahhh...Leprechaun: In The Hood.  Coming to video store shelves in early 2000, this particular entry in the [i]Leprechaun[/i] saga is a real mixed bag - some fans see it as a welcome change of pace for the franchise, others think it's just as crappy as the first four installments.  Me?  I'm not quite so sure.  The mood significantly different than anything I've seen from the series thus far, but as we've learned, different does not necessarily always mean better.  I'd have to say that this law is fully in effect here. 

Oh, and Ice-T is in the flick.

I've gone through a very weird pop culture fandom journey with Ice throughout my existence.  As a kid, I used to love the hell out of his song "Colors" to the point where my brother once got royally pissed off at me for keeping his "Cool Rap" compilation cassette tape (remember those?) too long.  Around my teenage years, I was a big fan of his film Surviving the Game which once got shown on MonsterVision for some reason or another (it wasn't really a horror film, so don't ask me).  And lately...I don't know, I won't change the channel if Special Victims Unit is on.  While I enjoy his rapping (although LL totally owned his ass in their early-'90s feud), watching him in this movie, it legit amazes me that he ever got the role on SVU.  Everyone else's milage may vary, but I don't find acting to be the guy's strong point.

THE MOVIE!!

The film opens with a truly epic confrontation.  Two jive soul bros (one of whom played by T, the other one a nonentity whose name I won't even bother to learn) are looking for lost gold.  In a captivating bit of continuity, the Leprechaun is trapped in a statue exactly like the one seen in Leprechaun 3 surrounded by his pot o' gold and bound - just like in said third film - by a necklace around its neck.  Before the first dissolve hits, random idiot is dead, Ice-T has managed to subdue the Leprechaun threat, and we've already had more afros than legally allowed in 34 states. 

Flash forward twenty years, which unfortunately means that we have to meet our protagonists for this particular go-round.  Our lead guy - Postmaster P.  Occupation - rapper with Positivity (hence the P).  He's played by Anthony Montgomery of Star Trek: Enterprise, and for what it's worth, the dude actually puts every bit of his somewhat suspect acting chops into the role of a rapper bucking the trend of gangsta.  His buddies, however, aren't as likable - there's impulsive Stray Bullet (Rashaan Nall) and idiot Butch (Red Grant).  See those one-word character descriptions?  That's pretty much all you need to know.

Moving right along, here's your basic setup - these guys are desperate to get played and make it, and in this movie's fictional universe, the best way to make it is through record producer Mack Daddy O'Nassus.  O'Nassus, is, of course, Ice-T himself, now twenty years older and relatively wiser.  He's also the possessor of the Leprechaun's magical flute, which has a sort of mind-altering power over anyone who hears it.  Long story short, they perform for T, he wants them to change their act, and they refuse.  Only since we need a better setup than that, Stray talks Postmaster and Butch into raiding Mack Daddy's pad (where the Leprechaun statue now resides, along with the flute) for loot, a process that results in Postmaster shooting O'Nassus dead and wandering off with both the necklace and the flute, awakening the Leprechaun in the process.

Want some unintentional hilarity that nobody could write?  This movie, with oodles of ghetto slanguage and "N" words aplenty, was written by a guy named Mark Jones.  Yeah.

I'm going to do my absolute damndest to streamline the remainder of this review, partly because I'm tired and partly because you're likely really, really bored.  Ice-T actually SURVIVED the shooting (his big gold Cross stopped the bullet), meaning that he's plenty pissed off at the wannabe rappers who raized his belongings.  After sharing a joint with the Leprechaun (seriously), the two declare a truce as they have a common enemy in the three schlubs who made off with their treasures.

So here's your film for the next thirty minutes or so:

(1) Ice-T marauding around, doiong his best to look menacing while getting revenge on our (*sigh*) heroes;
(2) Postmaster (who is struggling with guilt after reniging on his Positivity platform by using guns and stealing from Mack Daddy), Stray and Butch utilizing the mind-altering power of the flute in a few rap cadences while on the run from Mack Daddy;
(3) Warwick Davis, once again exceptionally watchable in this film despite the expectedly awful story, attempting to reclaim his flute. 

Of course, there's plenty of blips on the radar along the way.  More than a few people get offed by the Leprechaun, including not one but TWO pawn shop owners (one of whom played by the same guy who couldn't pronounce George Costanza's name in the Chinese restaurant) and a drag queen whom the protagonists briefly shack up with.  Don't ask.  Truth be told, they aren't very creative murders; certainly nothing along the lines of that legendary lawnmower blade scene from the second film.  Then again, few horror movie deaths are.  All things added up, the death toll this time is pretty pedestrian, so don't go in expecting any sort of bloodbath.  The best death is one of Mack Daddy's goons, who gets psychically shot by the Leprechaun, complete with Ice-T looking through the bullet hole.  

If you can't tell, this movie' second act consists of a whole heap o' tedium, so let's just warp ahead to the final trimester, shall we?  The Leprechaun and Mack Daddy track the trio to a church where they've holed up.  The brief partnership between the two bad guys ends here as Ice-T cuts a vicious Bobby Lashley-style promo on his diminuitive friend.  Mack Daddy himself manages to evade harm after the AFOREMENTIONED goon gets excavated.  Meanwhile, our heroes manage to trap the Leprechaun in a safe, but this only winds up REALLY pissing him off.  Leprechaun's response?  Simple - conjure up some Zombie Fly Girls!

Seriously, that's actually what he says.  These chicks become his loyal servants for the remainder of the film and, to be fair, they're pretty smokin' hot.  They have powers much like the Leprechaun does, and their eyes light up mystical green to signify their allegiance to the little dominator in buckled shoes.  Popping this movie in the ol' DVD player, the last thing I expected were three characters named Zombie Fly Girls, but there they are.  Pure genius.

Meanwhile, Postmaster, Stray and Butch are keeping their rap career going despite the mortal threat against their lives, and utilize the flute to impress a record executive into letting them into some kind of rap contest in LAS VEGAS, BABY (/Heath Slater).  Almost immediately after hearing this, the Leprechaun - Fly Girls in tow - shows up to reclaim his flute, forcing Stray to shoot himself in the process.  I ACTUALLY thought this movie was going to end on this admittedly down note, but nope - we've still got the mother of all finales to talk about.

Remember how I said in my last review how every film in this series has given me at least one thing that I'll never, ever forget?  Well, this movie is no different.  Butch buys a copy of "Leprechauns for Dummies" (seriously) and has concocted a truly masterful plan - get the little guy to smoke some four-leaf-clover-infused weed.  Four-leaf clovers, if you'll recall from the extensive lore of the Leprechaun series, are one of the many weaknesses that the screenwriters have dreamed up.  Butch has also discovered the hotel that the Leprechaun is staying at, and that he's basically a pimp now.  Amazingly enough, this is actually shown, as the Fly Girls bring him a new, um, employee to service him.  Yeah.  Leprechaun loves him some pussy.  The final cog in the plan - how to get close to the Leprechaun?

Why, of course - dress up like hookers and make their way up to the Leprechaun's room.  Now, I've never seen the movie White Chicks, nor do I have any plans on reversing that fact, but I do know this - the Wayans Brothers looked absolutely, positively nothing like human females in the commercials for that epic film.  And, well, Anthony Montgomery isn't much better.  Amazingly, despite this, it goes off practically without a hitch, as the Leprechaun smokes some of the clove-infused weed that the dragified Postmaster and Butch bring, putting him to sleep. 

They immediately grab the whistle and scamper off, only to be stopped by the returning Mack Daddy, who shoots Butch.  Red Grant gets the opportunity to show his Charlton Heston-style acting chops here with a death soliloquy that rivals anything in Shakespeare, dammit.  A tense standoff ensues in which Postmaster wrestles with his inner morals, brandishing a gun on Mack Daddy and debating whether or not to blow the sucker away...and he decides to go ahead and do it, thinking he has escaped with the flute and his ticket to rap superstardom. 

BUT THE TWIST IS (blatantly stealing from Troy Steele's awesome "Blogger Beware" website): The Leprechaun has recovered from his weed stupor, surprising Postmaster and reclaiming the flute.  He also manages to blow away a not-quite-dead-yet Mack Daddy (Jesus, how many lives does that guy have?) with another psychic bullet before entrancing Postmaster as another one of his slaves, leading to a legendary closing rap montage as Warwick Davis gets down with his bad self and unleashes "Lep in the Hood."  All things considered, Davis raps about as well as anybody I've heard in at least ten years.

FINAL ANALYSIS: Well, this one is...interesting.  I'd been looking forward to this movie in the series due to what I thought would be a dark and atmospheric "hood" tone.  That's not what I got, but what are you going to do when you're given a budget of approximately 75 cents in Mallow-Cup money.  I've got to hand it to Anthony Montgomery, who actually turns in a pretty good performance - it may not have come across in the review, but he's believable as a rapper who wants to take positivity to the charts (something that I'm firmly on the side of, for the record) wrestling with selling out and living the dirty lifestyle.  As usual, Davis looks like he's having even loads of fun.  I know I've said this numerous times, but you can really tell that he LOVES the character that he plays.  Everything else, though, is pretty much a wash.  None of the other characters are likable, the story is preposterous even by direct-to-DVD horror standards, and the scares are once again nonexistant.  Rinse, lather, repeat.  * out of ****.

So it's come to this: Leprechaun in Space. Get ready.

Normally, this is the part of the review where I give some sort of information on the film.  However, we're going to do something a bit different this time - some boring life and times of Jon Lickness storytime.  Hopefully no one wants to slit their wrists two minutes from now.

It's been three weeks since my last review, and in that time, I moved.  At 29 years old, I'm now the owner of an honest-to-christ HOUSE, and it's awesome.  I've got the horror collection on prominent display, I've got all 30+ Batman trade paperbacks firmly planted in my living room of all places, and I've got DISH Network and, by proxy, the ability to order wrestling pay-per-views from my living room instead of my goddamn laptop.  But that's not the most important thing.  That would be the fact that, for the first time in my life, I now have a place to put a brand-spanking new HDTV.  Which means that, after all of my bitching and moaning about Blu-Ray technology, I finally have something that can play it in the format that it's intended for.  And...it's awesome. 

I don't own any Blu-Ray discs yet, but I've been rewatching a lot of my long-neglected DVDs lately in glorious upconverted-to-1080i format.  It's really been an eye-opening experience.  Even better, summer dumbass blockbuster movie season is officially over - we've got Halloween Horror Season on the horizon, we've got The Possession opening in theaters today, we've got that new Clint Eastwood-Amy Adams baseball flick that looks all kinds of awesome.  In short, my love of movies has been rekindled.

So, with that, the first HMM review from the brand-new Lick Ness Monster HQ - Leprechaun 4: In Space.  I've heard a LOT about this movie - released in 1997, Filet-o-Fish budget - so let's just get right to it, shall we?

THE MOVIE!!

Welcome to an indeterminate date in THE FUTURE.  You know how Aliens had a group of badass space soldiers on an intergalactic search-and-destroy mission?  Well, this movie has the same thing.  Only they're much, much more annoying.  Their leader is Sergeant Hooker (Tim Colceri), a dude with a metal plate protruding from his skull who also uses the phrase "son of a bitch" more times than anyone I've ever known save for my high school gym teacher. 

Before I get going further, I should point out that I actually recognize a couple of people making up this film's Marine Corps.  The first is Debbe Dunning as the sluttish Costello, best known as Heidi from Home Improvement and the source of much, much private joy in the life of the adolescent Lick Ness Monster.  The other is Miguel A. Nunez Jr. as cool guy Marine "Sticks," , known to most as the star of the godawful comedy Juwanna Mann but best known to me as one of my favorite Friday the 13th victim characters of all time - little Reggie's older brother Demon.  Those damn enchiladas will kill ya.

That little bit of exposition out of the way, these guys are on their way to a planet called Ithacon in order to eliminate a creature causing problems for Earth's mining operations.  Three guesses as to just what creature we're talking about.

Yup, it's the Leprechaun, presumably making life miserable for the talked-about-yet-never-seen-because-the-budget-won't-allow-it mining company in order to pad his pot o' gold.  Or something.  In addition, he has also resumed his mating interest from Leprechaun 2, as he has somehow managed to kidnap an alien princess named Zarina (the insanely hot Rebekah Carlton) for the purpose of wooing her, murdering her father, and eventually marrying her to become King of the Universe.  Seriously, that's implied.  This time, it's not just for gold.  It's for THE WORLD.  Capitalization alert.

And...the Marines soon arrive.  I should mention that the main characters in our protagonist group are nice guy Sergeant "Books" Malloy (Brent Jasmer) and friendly medical officer Tina Reeves (the rather fetching blonde Jessica Collins, of Tru Calling relative fame).  Of the entire cast, they're the only ones who don't immediately stand out as future Leprechaun fodder, and the director does his damndest to convey some sort of romantic tension between them throughout the film.  Considering that Brent Jasmer doesn't even have a hyperlink on Wikipedia, this sweeping love story doesn't go too well.  I should also point out that Collins' character was sent for the mission at the last minute by Dr. Mittenhand (Guy Siner), a disembodied head who periodically appears on a video screen to give our characters various orders, all while talking like the most aggravating James Bond villain you've ever heard.

While Warwick Davis puts his best pimp on Zarina (he actually manages to win her over after promising her the fortune that her hapless father lost - her character really isn't portrayed sympathetically in the least bit, she's a spoiled brat and almost as power hungry as her pint-sized suitor).  And I'll say this for high-definition - it really makes the cardboard sets stand out.  With the power of 1080i pixelation, Ithacon looks like a honeycomb representation of a planet.  Or something. 

With very little intrigue, one of the greedier Marines happens upon a huge treasure trove of gold.  Or rather, a psychic representation of gold delivered by the Leprechaun.  This leads to our first kill (lightsaber to the shins - nice), followed by a gunfight that results in Zarina being shot and the Leprechaun being blown to bits by a grenade.  Allegedly. 

Alright, folks, we're about to enter Act Two.  I hope I'm not coming across too exasperated quite yet.

The Marines - and Dr. Reeves - take the body of Zarina back onto the ship under the orders of Mittenhand with the premise of "improving relations with her home planet."  Seems like a sound enough plan to me.  In celebration of their successful mission, the soldiers soon enough begin a big, rocking '80s movie style drunken blowout.  Hilarious in and of itself, but we also get the glory of Debbe Dunning dancing in a very sexy fashion.  +2 points for the movie, right there.  Dunning is able to seduce one of the Marines - named Kowalski - and leads him away from the party for some hot coitus, and it's here where we get a scene for the ages.

So, after the Leprechaun was blown up on Ithacon, Kowalski decided to urinate on his remains.  Apparently, this led to some sort of Leprechaun-y possession of his unit that manifests itself at the absolute worst time.  He and Dunning begin making out on some remote section of the ship, and the action starts to get heavier.  Before he can seal the deal, however, the almighty crotch demon AWAKENS, as a bulge appears and...Warwick Davis pops out of a man's penis.

You know, this series is quite terrible, but I'll give them this - every film has given me one sequence that I'll never, ever forget.  The first had Jennifer Aniston and Company beating down the Leprechaun Rodney King-style.  The second had the lawnmower blade kill.  The third had Warwick Davis interacting with an Elvis impersonator.  And now we've got perhaps the most wacky moment yet - a horror villain being reborn after being pissed on and emerging from the sexual organs of the offending character.  As far as horror movie villain regenerations, I'd say that this is the best of all time.  Sorry, flaming dog urine from Nightmare on Elm Street 4, there's a new champion.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  Dunning runs back to the rest of her team and kindly informs them that there is a murderous stowaway on their ship.  Through some means that I didn't quite catch - mainly because I was half-asleep by this point - they determine that the Leprechaun is located in the ship's waste disposal unit where another of the meatheads is killed off.  It isn't a very creative death - his hazmat suit taken off while in the waste disposal chamber, leading to some off-screen skeletonizing.  It seems to scare the other characters quite a bit, however, as they soon do their best Monty Python impression and decide that running away is the best course of action.

Back on the bridge, we get a Vince Russo-style swerve, as it turns out that Dr. Mittenhand reveals that he has been on board the ship the entire time.  Due to a computer experiment gone horribly awry...well, he looks like this.

Yep.  Having discovered that the blood of Princess Zarina's species has regenerative powers, he has plans on using her preserved carcass to repair his mutilated body, and while the Marines want to abort the mission, this guy makes it quite clear that retreat equals treason, and even offers them a cut of the mining profits if they stay and attempt to kill the intruder.

And there you have it, kids.  Our characters begin to split and pair off in search of the Leprechaun - who in turn is looking for his bride-to-be and ticket to ruling the galaxy.  This means that we get several more death scenes as Warwick DAvis makes short work of several more cast members.  He crushes a Marine under a metal structure, drops Debbe Dunning to her death, and cartoonishly flattens Dr. Mittenhand's lecherous assistant's face after convincing him that Tina has shown up at the door completely stripped of her clothes.  I should also point out that this guy attempted to grope the unconscious body of Princess Zarina only to be interrupted by Dr. Mittenhand before he could complete the fondling session.  So this is really a cheer-out-loud death.

Zarina awakens, and immediately orders her husband-to-be to destroy Dr. Mittenhand. He responds by injecting Mittenhand with a mixture of Zarina's regenerative blood along with spider and scorpion specimens.  In a movie full of sound plans, this is by far the best.

Okay, get ready for another Amazing Scene.  The remaining protagonists (for those keeping score, we're down to Books, Tina, Sticks and Sergeant Hooker) burst back onto the main bridge to find only Zarina.  The Leprechaun appears behind them and takes Hooker as a hostage.  This SHOULD have been the end of the scene, but it gets so much better.  Zarina unsnaps her bra and shows her funbags to the protagonists, then goes off on a long-winded soliloquy where she instructs them to "look upon these and despair."  At least that's kind of what I remember - there were boobies on my television screen.  After popping her top back together, she departs with the Leprechaun and the now captive Hooker, and we get perhaps the best movie line of all time, delivered by Tina: "Don't get too excited, boys.  On Dominia, a woman of royalty showing you her breasts is a death sentence."  Ladies and gentlemen, we have the best excuse for gratuitous nudity in motion picture history.

"Look at these.  You're DEAD!!"

The Sergeant Hooker death scene follows which, while not quite an Amazing Scene, is still pretty out there.  Dig this - the Leprechaun convinces Hooker that he is a drag queen and uses his magical powers of coercion to puppeteer him into duking it out with the rest of the crew before eventually getting his head cracked open.  And he's a CYBORG.  Aliens ripoff alert.  Thus concludes the screenwriter crack alert portion of Leprechaun 4: In Space.

Okay, where are we at now...so the Leprechaun and Zarina head to the cargo bay in search of his stolen gold (yep, this movie does feature the tried-and-true "looking for ME GOLD" story, albeit much less emphatically than the previous flicks).  While en route, our terrible twosome (dodges tomatoes) activate the ship's self-destruct mechanism and get into their first lover's quarrel, which prompts the Leprechaun to psychically convince Zarina that she has a huge collection of warts on her face before knocking her out with his trademark shelale.  Soon after, he finds his gold, but it has been shrunk by one of Dr. Mittenhand's inventions. 

Speaking of Dr. Mittenhand...he has managed to sneak back into the movie.  Actually, sneak may be the wrong word, since the injections suffered at the hand of the Leprechaun have turned him into a bizarre man-spider-scorpion-slime-gloppola monster contraption.  It's yet another one of those things that has to be seen to be believed in the Leprechaun series, but there it is - a man-spider-scorpion-slime-gloppola monster on my television.  And it just makes me that much happier.  What this means from here on out - we now have villain #3 in the form of this guy wandering around the bridge looking to exact revenge on his former subordinates.  All while screaming in the most slimy manner imaginable.

Well, we're now firmly stuck in "Movie Self-Destruct Mode" by this point.  You know what I mean.  Lots of flashing red lights and computer voices from this point out.  Unfortunately for yours truly, there's yet more fascination to recap.  Sticks makes his way to the escape shuttle (I think) and gets trapped by Mittenspider's webbing.  Meanwhile, back in the cargo bay, Books and Tina run into the Leprechaun, where Tina blows the Leprechaun up to several times his own size with Mittenhand's enlargement ray.  I'll say this...it's moderately amusing to see Warwick Davis stomp around on a set in forced perspective.

The Giant Leprechaun (just typing that makes me happy) begins stalking our heroes, who decide to split up (geez, what's with these people and splitting up?).  Books remains behind to duke it out with his giant foe while Tina heads through the air ducts to attempt to halt the auto-destruct.  While crawling through the ducks, a hilarious moment is presented as Mittenspider attacks and rips off her pants in a smooth, easy motion.  Seriously, you wouldn't think the guy was AIMING for seeing the woman's panties up close and personal...but there's his hand, acting as an extremely efficient hook.  The bonus?  The admittedly hot Jessica Collins running around in her underwear for the remainder of the movie.  Shits and giggles all around, I must say.

Alright, kids, we're almost there...THE GRAND FINALE.  A stunningly non-scary game of cat-and-mouse ensues between Books and Giant Leprechaun, wherein Books finds the now-hot-again Zarina and, for mysterious reason, carries her away to relative safety.  I've got to say, this doesn't make much sense, and really isn't satisfying.  This woman spent much of the movie being an unlikable bitch, assisted the main villain in killing some of the heroes...and now here's our chunkheaded main dude lifting her to salvation.  As bad as the movie is...this might have left a worse taste in my mouth than anything else.  And that's saying something.

Tina - who, if you need to be reminded, is running around in tiny panties - makes her way into the escape shuttle, finding Sticks in his webified state...and one pissed off spider/former boss behind her.  A brief struggle ensues, and Tina wins out, freezing Mittenspider with liquid nitrogen before giving him the Terminator 2 treatment, shattering him into a million pieces with a gunshot. 

And...that's pretty much it.  Books makes his way to the bridge, Tina manages to figure out the disarm password to halt the self-destruct, the Leprechaun is shot out of the ship's airlock and explodes, Books and Tina kiss and confirm their mutual attraction, and we get our semi-humorous ending, as the Giant Leprechaun Hand gives the camera the middle finger.  Very apt, considering the 93 minutes that preceded this.  Although I've got to say...I'm surprised that Miguel A. Nunez managed to survive this movie.  Demon rises!

FINAL ANALYSIS: If you're not expecting much, you won't be disappointed.  I wasn't expecting much from Leprechaun 4: In Space.  According to some folks on the good ol' interwebz, this is the worst movie in the entire series.  I wouldn't quite go THAT far - it's hard for me to imagine something worse than the incredibly mean-spirited second film.  Having said all that...yeah, this flick is pretty bad.  The characters are terrible and not very likable, the scares are nonexistant, and the acting...yeesh.  ESPECIALLY the guy who plays Books.  He's K-Stew levels of bad.  Having said that, the AFOREMENTIONED Amazing Scenes, somewhat different storyline and plethora of hot chicks that this movie parades out are all entertaining in their very different ways.  Not enough to recommend this flick on any level, but hey, it's better than, say, The Devil Inside.  * 1/2 out of ****.