Where's my pot of gold?

LEPRECHAUN (1993)

Reviewed By Jerry Saravia

"Leprechaun" is a lethargic bore of an alleged horror movie. Alleged because there is no real horror in it at all. The idea of taking an Irish fairy and turning him into a slasher villain might appeal to those who like Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus as deranged killers, but not me.

Warwick Davis plays the leprechaun who wants his precious pot of gold, a bag of a hundred gold coins. At the beginning of the film, a man named O'Grady has stolen the leprechaun's gold from Ireland and has relocated to a house in North Dakota. Leprechaun finds him, curses him with a heart attack (though the old Irish coot doesn't die) yet the little fairy finds himself encased in a crate with a four-leaved clover on the lid that imprisons him for a decade. Flash forward one decade and a mentally-handicapped painter (played by Mark Holton, whom you might remember from "Teen Wolf") inadvertently pushes aside the clover, lets the leprechaun loose, and finds his bag of gold. All the action takes place in the dilapidated O'Grady house where a young woman (Jennifer Aniston) and her father move into the house that needs to be painted. Of course, Aniston finds herself attracted to one of the painters, and blah, blah, blah.

Davis does the best he can do with a one-dimensional cretin but the filmmakers opt to introduce the character so early on (as in the opening sequence) that there is no level of surprise. Plus, the script never makes it clear how you can kill a Leprechaun - bullets do no harm but a four-leaved clover aimed inside his mouth might, provided the clover has a green glow. The body count is low for a slasher pic of this kind, which is fine by me, but why not make the leprechaun solely mischievous, rather than a monster who can use a pogo stick as a weapon! The best scene is when the leprechaun careens down a main road in a toy race car with the police in tow, asking him to pull over. But the rest of the movie is full of automatons rather than actors and an annoying leprechaun who keeps screaming, "Where is my pot of gold?" And to think there are five sequels to this movie simply makes the mind spin around and wonder how many gold coins the filmmakers got away with. I say stick with "Troll 2."