Gads! The less said about this one, the better. Suffice to say, Leprechaun has been sitting completed on a shelf at Trimark studios for quite some time, and only now has some idiot decided to let it see the light of day. Bad move, pal. In a nutshell, diminutive Warwick Davis (Willow) is cast here as a killer, greed-addled leprechaun in search of his stolen pot o’ gold. Two teenagers in love, along with a little boy and his mentally handicapped friend, end up stockpiling horror movie clichés and invent new and uninteresting methods of bad acting in what is sure to make my ever-expanding list of truly lousy films. Maybe this sounded good the first time it was pitched, but I kind of think the higher-ups who gave a green light to this mess must have been out to a power lunch, or something. Bad sets, bad acting, bad direction, shadows of boom-mikes, inexplicable plot holes, generic effects, fake-looking gore, death by pogo stick (!?), off-kilter Irish brogues… I just can’t say enough about this, can I? My head hurts just trying to remember this complete and utter waste of perfectly good Kodak film stock. Stay away from this in droves, and if you’re ever in Hollywood and happen to run into director Mark Jones, laugh at him.
This article appears in January 15 • 1993 (Cover).