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Box Art Review #8
Leprechaun (1993)
Directed by Mark Jones
Starring Warwick Davis and Jennifer Aniston
Lemme start this by getting the oft-repeated ancillary
trivia out of the way: This movie stars the Ewok from Return of the Jedi, and
Rachel from Friends. Also Francis from Pee-wee’s big adventure, but no one ever
feels the need to bring that up.
The Movie
In the glamorous world of slasher movie icons, Leprechaun is
less famous than Freddie and Jason, and less prestigious than Pinhead and
Leatherface. I’d say he lands somewhere near Chucky and the Puppet Master
movies; it’s not really scary, it’s pretty fucking goofy, and it survives to
this day on gimmicks and novelty value. It’s pure camp. The dialogue in this
movie is unacceptably bad: “Listen bud, k, this is the 90s, women are treated
equal.” Is it just me, or were people in the 90s saying “This is the 90s” all
the time? Character motivations are just as bad. I mean, for fucks sake, Aniston
decides to hang around because of the good looking boy next door, even though
mere minutes before meeting him she was dying to leave. Her character in this
movie is so fucking dumb that she honestly thinks a dude would crawl under a car
and lay in the dirt just to stroke her leg playfully. No doubt a dude might
crawl under a car to look up some chick’s skirt or something, but if you felt
something rubbing against your leg from beneath a car wouldn’t your first guess
be that it was a cat? Clearly no one is watching this movie for the writing and
expert character development, which is good, because in many ways this shit is
as legendarily lame as Troll 2.
Let’s be real here, the only reason anyone’s watching
Leprechaun is because it’s about a fucking Leprechaun. Now, I’ve got a little
bit of Irish in me, but I don’t know jackshit about leprechaun lore. Even so, I
find it weird that this titular leprechaun eats bugs, has the ability to mimic
voices, and for some reason has a fear of four leaf clovers. I’m with the AVGN on this one; I’d think the leprechaun would be down with four leaf clovers, not
vulnerable to powers. And then there’s the part where the leprechaun’s riding
around on a tricycle. I can’t explain why, but this irked me for some reason;
it’s almost like they’re implying all little people ride around on tricycles or
something. I dunno, maybe it’s just me.
The leprechaun never quite reaches the inherit creepiness of
Chucky, but I will admit that being bounced on to death with a pogo stick seems
legitimately painful. Other than that, his killing methods are pretty tame. He
snaps a guy’s neck, and the guy who started the whole is killed off screen.
That’s it. The movie has three deaths, one of which was lame and completely
unnecessary, and another we don’t even get to see. Hell, he spends more time
shining shoes than killing people. Slasher villains like Jason, Leatherface,
and Michael Myers aren’t known for over the top and outlandish kill scenes, but
they have whole mythologies to make them interesting. All the leprechaun has
going for him is the fact that makeup is pretty effective.
Honestly, this movie is a real dud, I can’t recommend it. My
guess is that some of the later sequels are probably hilarious and maybe worth
checking out (In space? Back 2 tha Hood?), but don’t waste your time with this.
The Cover
As far as I can tell, they just recycled the poster art
here. To be fair, I can remember picking this movie and its sequels up off the
shelf at the video rental place multiple times. There’s something fascinating
about childish folklore being turned into menacing killers, hence the existence
of horror movies about Santa Clause, Uncle Sam, and Jack Frost. The cover does
a good job of selling the idea, but I think it does too good of a job. Looking
at this cover, your mind runs wild imagining all of the shenanigans this movie
must contain. Then you watch the movie and it’s nothing but disappointment. The
tagline, “Your luck just ran out,” is clever enough, but again, the movie never
delivers on that promise. The font is pretty bad too. The whole thing is just
really mediocre, much like the movie itself.
I’m sure this movie has its fans, and I’m still interested in
checking out the near infinite number of sequels just for camp value, but it’s
just not for me.
Movie 1/5
Cover 2/5
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