The main things that I collect are DVD and Bluray box sets of various genre franchises or collections from a certain studio like Hammer or Cannon or even just those 4 movies for $5 DVDs at Wal-Mart. A lot of genuine classics from my favorite series from Alien to Star Trek to Nightmare on Elm Street and Universal Monsters are in my collection, but one of my newest probably doesn’t have as much prestige as some: I bought all 8 Leprechaun movies for less than 10 dollars.
It was mostly a nostalgia purchase, as we owned all of the first three on VHS growing up and I watched them all the time as a kid who loved slashers at too far young an age, and I remember renting Leprechaun 4 as soon as it came out from a tiny little rental store in an alcove of the Kroger we lived near. I know none of these films qualifies as anything approaching art, but I always found them fun, light hearted, creative in strange ways. So I decided to revisit the first one.
Nobody is gonna argue this movie is necessarily good, even me. The characters are all completely one note and not particularly likable and as shallow as a puddle and none of the actors, aside from the child, do much favors with their performances where even an early Jennifer Aniston role is pretty bad though clearly more charismatic naturally than anybody else here. Obviously all FX the budget went into the Leprechaun makeup cause most makeup work throughout the film basically amounts to smearing fake blood on somebody’s face or body and calling it an injury. Whenever they put the Leprechaun on something with wheels, which I am mostly super into in theory, they speed up the footage to make it look cartoony and like a Benny Hill sketch, it takes you out of this movie even if the whole thing is kind of like a cartoon. They are never really clear about the lore or the extent of the leprechaun’s powers aside of his love of shining shoes which they hammer home and really could have used some exposition. Their handling of a mentally challenged character is pretty regrettable all the way through, and their handling of Irish characters almost even more so.
However, I can find some stuff to like here too. Warwick Davis chews every bit of scenery and he seems to be having a truly wonderful time, and his makeup looks absolutely fantastic even as he gets progressively more injured throughout the film. He really makes up for how dull the rest of the cast is and while I criticized it yes, obviously I always want the leprechaun to be on wheeled vehicles of some sort whether an electric car or roller skates or wheelchair. There aren’t many kills here, but they do get creative with it some whether being pogo stick’d to death or a deadly game of magical hide and seek. The film looks low budget but not bad, there’s some moments of clever camera movements in chase scenes (even some dutch angles! Watch out!) and plenty of moody lighting and shabby atmosphere within the house where most of the action takes place. Unlike any of the sequels, they really build up to the full reveal of the monster, keeping him half in shadow for a large chunk of the film even after he’s freed from his crate prison.
Would I ever recommend this as good movie to somebody? No, it isn’t one. But as a very dumb but very fun film? Yes, even though my memory serves to tell me a lot of the sequels are far more dumb and thus far more fun like the one in Vegas and the one in Space. We should all have room in our hearts for films that make us happy by just being fundamentally silly ideas executed with total confidence in the product. That’s what the Leprechaun series means to me as I start to revisit it.
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