Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood

aka Leprechaun 6: Back 2 tha Hood

A group of friends find a chest full of gold underneath an abandoned construction site. What begins as a dream come true quickly turns into a nightmare after the group are targeted by an evil Leprechaun. For the first five minutes of Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood, I found myself thinking, "Wow, this movie looks pretty good. It might be the best looking film in the Leprechaun series." And then after a character got killed by the Leprechaun, the fakest pool of CGI blood you've ever seen emerged from the character's body. Which turned out to be pretty representative of the movie overall because any time I started to think, "Well, this isn't so bad," the movie would drop in some of the worst CGI imaginable. Back 2 tha Hood might not be as corny or horny as other entries in the series, but it's still a Leprechaun movie through and through.

Rating: 57%

 
(Image from IMDB)

Leprechaun in the Hood

aka Leprechaun 5: In the Hood

Mack Daddy and his associate Slug stumble upon the Leprechaun and his gold in a hidden room. 20 years later, with the help of the Leprechaun's magic flute, Mack Daddy has become a powerful and feared rap music mogul. But all hell breaks loose after a trio of aspiring rappers break into Mack Daddy's place and remove a magic amulet from around the Leprechaun's neck. To give credit where credit is due, Leprechaun in the Hood is better than Leprechaun 4: In Space. It was a pretty low bar to clear, but Leprechaun in the Hood managed to pull it off. It's still a bad movie littered with corny rhymes and tasteless jokes, so it hasn't strayed too far from the other entries in the series but, again, at least it's better than Leprechaun 4: In Space.

Rating: 56%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Leprechaun 4: In Space

You know how there's an alien in Alien? What if, instead of that alien being an alien, it was a leprechaun instead? That would be good, right? It turns out, not so much. The fourth entry in the continuity-averse Leprechaun series finds the titular Leprechaun running afoul of some space marines and a mad scientist, sometime in the vaguely defined future. There's no point in describing the plot in any greater detail but it needs to be said that for most of the movie the mad scientist character, Dr. Mittenhand (yup), looks like a cross between a Dalek and Captain Pike from "The Menagerie." Allow me to reiterate, Leprechaun 4 is not a good movie. It's just as horny and corny as all of the other Leprechaun movies, but it's dumber and even more tasteless than the films it follows. I did enjoy seeing the Leprechaun get into multiple gun fights though.

Rating: 52%

(Image from IMDB)

Fun Fact: Miguel A. Núñez Jr., who played Private Sticks, was also in Friday the 13th: A New Beginning and The Return of the Living Dead.

Leprechaun 3

Leprechaun 3 opens with a desperate man selling a Leprechaun statue to a pawn shop in Las Vegas. The seller warns the shop owner not to remove a magical medallion from around the Leprechaun's neck. So, naturally, within moments of the seller leaving the pawn shop, the owner removes the medallion, which revives the Leprechaun and kicks off a killing spree. Once again, there is no real continuity between Leprechaun 3 and its predecessors. In this installment, the Leprechaun's weakness is his own gold. Destroy the Leprechaun's gold and you destroy the Leprechaun himself. Leprechaun 3 is, not surprisingly, very cheap looking. There are really only three locations in the movie and all of the shots of the Las Vegas strip were apparently filmed without permits. Leprechaun 3 tries pretty hard to be funny at times, fairly unsuccessfully. Unless, of course, you're really into shitty limericks.

Rating: 57%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Leprechaun 2

Leprechaun 2 was the last of the Warwick Davis Leprechaun films to be released in theaters. Not surprising really, as it's a very cheap looking film. It seems ready-made for VHS. Watching the movie at any higher resolution doesn't do it any favors. There's also nothing connecting Leprechaun 2 to the original film, other than the fact that Warwick Davis is essentially playing the same character in both movies. The Leprechaun in Leprechaun 2 doesn't even have the same weakness as the Leprechaun in the original. In the first film, the Leprechaun could only be harmed by a four-leaf clover. In Leprechaun 2, the Leprechaun's only weakness is wrought iron. Even though it's pointless to expect a horror franchise to maintain its continuity over time, it's clear that the people behind Leprechaun 2 didn't make any effort to connect the film to its predecessor.

Rating: 53%

(Image from Wikipedia)

Leprechaun

Leprechaun is basically the poor man's Critters. It repeatedly rips off Gremlins, it's kinda corny and it looks cheap. That said, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn't good by any means, but it also wasn't terrible. Was it poorly written? Yes. Was it poorly lit? Very much so. Did the costumes fit the actors? Not always. And it also wouldn't have been weird if the movie had been bookended with appearances from the Crypt Keeper. But other than that, it was reasonably tolerable. And you can quote me on that. It's probably safe to assume that the franchise doesn't get any better from here.

Rating: 58%

(Image from IMDB)

The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold

Oh Rankin/Bass, God bless your nonsensical ways. There's a method to your madness that I will never understand and I'm perfectly alright with that. Everyone knows Rankin/Bass' perennial classic Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but few people have probably put in much time with the rest of their catalogue. Just beyond Rudolph and Frosty there's a whole pantheon of blind orphans, cossacks, psychedelic donkeys and (apparently) leprechauns. I would summarize the plot of The Leprechaun's Christmas Gold, but it would surely sound like the ravings of a syphilitic lunatic. I'll just say that it involves a shipwrecked cabin boy, some leprechauns and a gold hungry banshee. It's a whole heap of nonsense. It should be noted, though, that the stop motion animation in this special looks amazing, easily the best I've seen from Rankin/Bass so far.

Rating: Shoes%

(Image from MC 'Toon Reviews)