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)

AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL (1972)

A scuzzy dude gets off a plane in Israel. He starts hitchhiking and is almost immediately picked up by a woman. They go back to her crib, where he bitches about the Vietnam War before they screw. After their off-screen fuck session, they go for a walk and randomly meet another hippy couple. Boring stuff happens. Finally, around the 49 minutes mark, our four heroes show up at a large lake. Not too far offshore is a small, barren-looking island with like two bushes on it. They paddle over to the uninviting island on an inflatable boat. (Did I mention that the island is surrounded by sharks?) Once on the island, they don’t bother to tie up the boat or even unload any of their meager supplies. No, instead they run around naked and declare out loud that the World is “a bad World. Bad. Bad.” and that they are going to turn this island into a paradise free of “machines and buttons”. When they wake up the next morning, they’re shocked to discover that the unsecured boat (and their supplies) drifted off. This sets off a series of events that culminates in everybody going completely insane and running around like bloodthirsty cavemen. Snarling and attacking each other until they collapse in a pre-THE HILLS HAVE EYES cuddle puddle of death.

I normally don’t like to give away so much of a movie's plot, but if I didn’t with AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL the entire review would just be: “Four losers get stuck on an island (due to their own stupidity) and nothing happens. The End. Skip it.” Mild nudity (that you don’t want to see), below average acting, shit script with a shit story, long patches of wasted time where nothing at all happens, one song that seemed to go on and on for way too long, lots of self-righteous babbling, okay camerawork, unsafe driving habits, a poor little goat who's safety I worried about.

I’ve done zero research, but, based off the film alone, it felt like the filmmakers themselves were anti-counterculture and talking shit about the hippy movement. Who knows, who cares. It doesn’t matter, it’s an ungroovy movie.  Which is sad because I'm a fan of counterculture cinema from this time period.

I’m sure that AN AMERICAN HIPPIE IN ISRAEL has fans and more power to them, but this sort of this isn't my bag, baby.  Hell, I’d be more interested in watching a documentary about the fans of AAHII than watching the actual movie ever again.