Leprechaun review.
We first met Warwick Davis’s Leprechaun 30 years ago today. The series would go everywhere from the hood to outer space before he would hand up the green hat. The original has a much smaller vision…though it’s no less ridiculous.
Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.
Leprechaun
Directed by Mark Jones
Written by Mark Jones
Starring Warwick Davis, Jennifer Aniston and Mark Holton
Leprechaun Review
I love 80’s movies. Not just 80’s horror…all 80’s movies. Even the bad 80’s movies are good. Well…they’re at least more fun and watchable than bad movies today…or at any point in history. It’s a strange phenomenon that likely comes from the end of regularly used practical effects and a Hollywood desire to rebel against the conservatism of America under Reagan. Movies in the 1980’s were bonkers. The best kind of bonkers. You may be asking yourself why this review of a movie released in 1993 opened with such a strange statement about movies from a decade earlier. It’s because Leprechaun doesn’t know what year it is. That is its greatest strength.
Let’s get this out of the way…Leprechaun is a ridiculous movie. From set-up to execution this is one silly ass 92 minutes. When you think of the Leprechaun franchise you are likely to think about his travels to space or the hood. Even if you’ve never seen one of these movies you probably are aware that it’s a series of over-the-top B-movies that infiltrated pop culture by sending its antagonist to locations that sounded fun on a VHS cover. That is 100 percent correct. The original movie, however, plays it much straighter. At least as straight as a movie about a murderous leprechaun searching for his stolen gold can be.
The other thing you may know about Leprechaun is that Jennifer Aniston starred in it a year before she became a pop culture phenomenon of her own in Friends. She plays the lead role, Tory. The script of Leprechaun doesn’t exactly lend itself to having a breakout performance…but she wouldn’t have to wait long for her moment.
Anniston may be the lead in Leprechaun, but Warwick Davis is the star. Davis feasts on the role of the titular leprechaun. Davis shines through his prosthetics and costuming with a delightfully unhinged character. He’d honestly be too good for the movie if his performance wasn’t so committed to fitting the weird feel it’s going for.
About that feel… When I talked about Leprechaun being a movie that doesn’t know what year it is…the feel is what I’m talking about. It’s easy to pinpoint the year that most horror movies were made. Some of that is because of the use of technology/effects. Some of that is because script concepts continuously build on each other. Aesthetically, story wise and every other way you can come up with…Leprechaun feels like a mid to late 80’s movie.
The movie that people generally use to depict 1993 is Jurassic Park. While a discussion about the leap in creature effects in that movie compared to Leprechaun would be hilarious…it’s also unfair. This was a 1-million-dollar movie not intended to be a cutting-edge blockbuster. Consider instead that 1993 saw the release of Jason Goes to Hell. The ninth installment of the Friday the 13th franchise has been derided for many reasons. One of the prominent ones? It doesn’t feel like the first 8 movies. The ones from the 1980s. Leprechaun feels a lot more like Fridays Part 6-8 than Jason Goes to Hell does.
The story of Leprechaun is a simple one. It’s no deeper than a child’s fairy tale. Don’t steal a Leprechaun’s pot of gold…and he can be defeated by a four-leaf clover for some reason. It doesn’t matter. At no time watching this movie will the plot suck you in. What will entertain you, if you let it, is how committed the movie is to play such a ridiculous premise as straight as it can. Post Scream the script would have been littered with winks and commentary about itself. Watching one of the last examples of a silly movie taking itself seriously is where the joy of Leprechaun comes from.
That said, it’s not a good movie. It’s a movie I highly recommend putting on and watching…but it’s not a good movie. For starters, way too many people survive in Leprechaun. I’m not sure how they all manage to do so given they prove to be unbelievably stupid throughout the story. It pulls the same gag over and over where one person sees or is injured by the leprechaun…only for the rest of the cast to arrive and dismiss it as a cat or something. These people knock out the leprechaun repeatedly and not only fail to get away…but never think to just nail his lifeless body back into a crate like the one that held him for decades. Just drag him into a box, people.
But complaining about logic holes in Leprechaun completely misses the point. The flaws are a feature not a bug. If this was a competent story concerned with a narrative that made sense…why would anyone want to watch it? Enjoy Leprechaun for what it is. An excellent Warwick Davis performance in a movie that arrived too early to be ruined by CGI or post-modern script decisions. It combines the best of the pre-Scream earnestness with the best of the late 80s nuttiness. It just happens to do it in a bad movie.
Scare Value
For decades Leprechaun was best known for two things. It’s the first of a series that goes completely off the rails…and it’s that bad movie Jennifer Aniston was in before Friends. What it should be known for is that it feels like a movie made in 1987 despite coming out in 1993. I mean that as a compliment. Maybe it’s nostalgia for that feel…maybe it’s Davis’s go for broke performance. Maybe it’s just that the movie must know how silly it is and still decides to play it straight. Whatever it is…Leprechaun is a good option to throw on tv and turn your brain off to. We can always use more of those.
Warwick Davis would return in Leprechaun 2
2.5/5
Leprechaun Links
Rent/Buy on VOD from Vudu
Rent/Buy on VOD from Amazon
Buy the 7-movie collection on Blu-Ray from Amazon
Leprechaun Trailer
If you enjoyed this review of Leprechaun, check out another classic movie review Tremors
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