LEPRECHAUN (1993)

A man steals a bag holding 100 gold coins from an evil 600-year-old leprechaun. The leprechaun murders the man’s wife and then whips the dude’s ass, but not before getting himself trapped in a large wooden crate in the man’s basement. Fast-forward 10 years and a new group of people (dad, adult daughter and three house painters) show up to repair the now vacant house. Sounds simple enough, but before you can say “singer man's has times sounding like yoda monster from starwars I sleep now”, these super geniuses have not only found the bag of gold and released the leprechaun, but one of them actually eats one of the gold pieces! How does that even happen? After hearing that one of the characters ate a piece of the leprechaun’s precious gold, the viewer would naturally expect for the leprechaun to violently cram his arm up the dude’s ass and rip out the gold, but nope. LEPRECHAUN might have been rated R back in ye olde 1993, but it’s more like a light-hearted PG nowadays.

Medium pace, zero gore, zero nudity, very little blood, wacky cartoony stuff like the leprechaun roller skating through a fence and leaving an outline of his body or him riding a skateboard while making funny faces, zero backstory on the leprechaun, cheesy acting that matches the goofy script, awesome early 1990’s fashions, interesting casting (at least for movie nerds), meh ending. Overall, LEPRECHAUN feels more like an ABC After School Special / Goosebumps comedy lovechild than an actual horror movie. But whatever, I still enjoyed it and smiled at the leprechaun’s silly shenanigans.

LEPRECHAUN would make an interesting double-feature with (the far superior) CRITTERS since the story and look of the movies are so similar. Was that intentional?

[Thoughts outside of the review: I haven't watched the other films in the series yet (at least in a review capacity), but I was daydreaming about a scenario where the leprechaun is trapped in a crate full of murder mystery novels.  Then when he is released years later, he's not only a murderous psychopath looking for his gold, but also the world's greatest detective!  He could even have a spunky assistant like Cordelia in Angel that would keep him somewhat in line.  I also think a LEPRECHAUN / WISHMASTER crossover has a lot of potential. And not them fighting against each other, but instead working together to obliterate teenagers.]

Part 2 - Leprechaun 2 (1994)
Part 3 - Leprechaun 3 (1995)
Part 4 - Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)
Part 5 - Leprechaun in the Hood (2000)
Part 6 - Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (2003)
Reboot - Leprechaun: Origins (2014)
Direct sequel to original film - Leprechaun Returns (2018)