There are times when I have good ideas and there are times I have great ideas. My most recent great idea was to watch all 6 movies in the horror/comedy franchise, Leprechaun, leading up to St. Patrick’s Day. I gathered some friends, we bought the DVDs and we did what had to be done.
Leprechaun came out in 1993 and stars Warwick Davis as the titular leprechaun. This movie was also the first feature film role of Jennifer Aniston. Yep, that Jennifer Aniston. The film starts with us finding out that a dude named Daniel O’Grady caught a leprechaun while on a trip to Ireland, and thereby getting his pot of gold. The leprechaun is inadvertently let loose by O’Grady’s wife and he proceeds to wreak a ton of havoc for such a wee man. O’Grady is able to trap the leprechaun in the basement, where he would remain for quite some time. 10 years later Tory Redding (Aniston) and her father J.D. rent the house for the summer, meeting Nathan, his little brother Alex and their dim-witted friend Ozzie (played by Mark Holton a.k.a. Francis from Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure). This movie is as ridiculous as you’d expect it to be. Some laughs were had, especially when the leprechaun is trying to look menacing while cleaning shoes. That part had us laughing pretty hard. Overall, Leprechaun was good but not great.
Leprechaun 2 was released in 1994 with Warwick Davis being the only returning cast member. This one is centered on the titular leprechaun hunting for a bride. On his 1,000th birthday he can choose any woman he wants to be his bride, but the girl has to sneeze 3 times without anyone saying “God bless you”. He tried in the year 994, but was thwarted by the girl’s father, William O’Day. 1,000 years later, in 1994, he’s trying to find himself another special lady. Since he’s a vengeful little dude, he picks a descendant of the guy that thwarted him 1,000 years earlier, Bridget Callum. This movie embraced the absurdity of a leprechaun running riot in modern times a bit more than the first installment, and we benefit from that. We get to see a leprechaun do all kinds of awesome things in this movie including, but not limited to, drive a tricked out go-kart. We laughed a lot harder at 2 than the first one, but that was to be expected. I do commend the leprechaun on his commitment to seek vengeance on the O’Day bloodline, because Bridget has what we like to call “crazy eyes”. This girl has some serious peepers on her. Leprechaun 2 was better than the first, and if you’re into absurd movies there’s a good chance you’ll dig this one.
Leprechaun 3 was released in 1995, and it was the first installment not to get a theatrical release. This one is a national treasure. They don’t even bother with a long explanation on why he’s doing what he’s doing. A guy brings a statue of a leprechaun sitting on a pot of gold with a medallion on it into a pawn shop, tells the owner not to touch the medallion, the owner removes the medallion, pockets a gold coin and the leprechaun bites him. That’s all the setup this movie gives you and it happens in 2 minutes. The best part? It takes place in Las Vegas. That’s right, kids. The leprechaun is let loose in Las Vegas! We knew the night would be a good one when my buddy Baker yelled, “He’s like a friggin’ monkey! He’s always biting ****!” Words can’t describe how much fun we had watching this one. The dialogue was hysterical, the situations were bizarre, the characters were AWESOME (especially Fazio The Great) and the limericks were so, so bad (in a good way). Leprechaun 3 absolutely blows the first two out of the water. My friend Andy summed it up best when he looked at me and said, “I take back every bad thing I said about watching this movie.”
That’s going to do it for this week. Come back next week for the second part of the Leprechaun marathon review.
Keep it creepy,
Mike
