Thursday, March 20, 2014

Cinema Terrible: Leprechaun & Leprechaun 2

Aaaaand we're back with the shitty movies. I've reviewed a few cult classic B-movies in the past, and contributed briefly to a blog with the same name as this column, but seeing how that blog is now defunct, I'm going to be stealing the name to use over here. Yay stealing!

Up for review in the next couple days/ weeks/ non-commital amount of time are the green-is-the-new-red horror movies known as Leprechaun. There are six of these god damn movies, and I intend on watching every last one of them. Considering St. Patrick's day recently past us, this last weekend my friends and I took it upon ourselves to show our spirit and watch the first three of these flicks, aptly titled Leprechaun, Leprechaun 2, and Leprechaun 3. Hopefully in the next couple days we'll get around to watching the next three installments: Leprechaun 4: In Space, Leprechaun 5: In The Hood, and Leprechaun 6: Back 2 Tha Hood. I'll probably cover two movies per post, because I tried writing one post for the first three, and it got painfully long, so, yeah. Two movies per post, so now they're only painful.

Also, this post contains major SPOILERS, so if you for some reason in the universe care about the plots to these movies, then don't read ahead. I've also come to the conclusion that my movie reviews are just play-by-plays of the movie with the actual reviewy bits at the end, so keep that in mind. I was also pretty drunk when I watched these, so, y'know, keep that in mind too. The review is after the jump!




LEPRECHAUN

I'll be honest, I don't remember much of the original Leprechaun. It's easily the worst of the three I've seen, so I'll try to skip over it as fast as possible. I know Jennifer Aniston is in it, playing Rachel from Friends, and she's renting out/ visiting some cabin in the woods for a vacation with her dad. This cabin originally belonged to some Irishman who trapped the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) in a wooden box for 10 years, because apparently raw wood doesn't degrade or rot out or y'know, the Leprechaun never thought to try and gently kick the side of the box. The rest is a big blur of boring characters being boring characters, the Leprechaun looking for his missing gold, which some kid and his goofy mind-of-a-child adult find. Then some bullshit happens until holy shit the Leprechaun murders some dude with a pogo. No seriously guys, the Leprechaun gets on a pogo stick and uses it to crush some poor storeowner's fucking chest.



You thought I was joking. The Leprechaun murderates this dude with a god damned pogo stick. After this point, you can turn the movie off. That's the best part of this movie, and nothing else past this part matters. Despite watching it twice, I still have no clue what happens after this scene. And you know what? I don't care. I don't even remember what happens at the end. I can only assume the Leprechaun lives on because he still has 5 more movies to burn through.

So that we've gotten past the first, let's get to the good stuff: Leprechaun 2. I feel like the original movie was made to attempt to be a legitimate horror movie with some bits of schlocky comedy thrown in, but the sequels tell a different tale. Considering they all have completely different casts, directors, writers-- completely different everything (except Warwick Davis, kudos to him for taking up this role over and over again), I feel like the people who took up the Leprechaun name after the original saw what potential there was for outrageous cinematic shenanigans. Leprechaun 2 takes itself much less seriously, and totally knows exactly what kind of movie it's trying to be. It's raunchy, it's tons of fun, and it's definitely worth watching with a couple friends and a couple drinks.

Above: A couple friends.

LEPRECHAUN 2

Leprechaun 2 (also known as Leprechaun 2: Lawnmower Face Boobs and other Scenes, but more on that later), which has nothing related to the first except the titular villain takes place in Los Angeles, and follows two pieces of cardboard and one actual character: 90sDude, LoveInterest, and Morty. Fucking Morty. Morty is a scumbag and proud, trying to scam every dollar away from anyone he meets. Fortunately for 90sDude, he's Morty's friend/ employee and works by scamming tourists into buying tickets for their shitty L.A. tour service called Darkside Tours which Morty himself conducts. We learn that Morty is also a drunk and can't drive the tour hearse, so 90sDude has to take over, but he promised LoveInterest  to go go-karting with her tonight and if he doesn't then he'll lose her AND PROM IS TOMORROW! But, yeah, 90s and Love need to do the tour because Morty is a god damned dick and convinces 90s to drive around L.A. in a hearse full of strangers for hours instead of getting laid.

In the meantime, the Leprechaun is looking for a bride because 1000 years ago he cursed an Irishman's family or something, and conveniently, LoveInterest is a descendant of Irishman, even though she's 3rd generation American and has an accent that is both impossible to place, yet distinctly non-Irish. Now that the Leprechaun has his sights set on her ladyparts so that he can churn out little baby Leps, he needs to get rid of the competition. After the hearse-driving fiasco, LoveInterest breaks up with 90sDude and then promptly goes on a date with some schmuck who works at the go-kart track. Once their night winds down and Go-Kart brings LoveInterest back to her place, and she totally shuts him down because apparently she didn't break up with 90sDude. Whatever. It doesn't matter, because now comes the best part of the movie: the Lawnmower Face Boobs. We learn that Leprechauns are masters of illusions, and our little green fiend sees Go-Kart and promptly conjures up an image of LoveInterest in the house's garage that immediately calls for him and begins stripping because of the unwritten rule that all B-horror movies need to have at least one pair of tits in them. So because he's a dude, Go-Kart goes where the boobs are, and as he's going in to get some motorboat action...


LAWNMOWER FACE BOOBS. Lawnmower. Face. Boobs. Booyeah. Unfortunately, the above video is the censored version, where the uncut version has 100% more boobs, blood, and awesome. Rest easy tonight knowing that this is a scene that exists in a real movie in this material world.

Now with Go-Kart out of the way, the Leprechaun only has to deal with 90sDude, and fortunately for him, 90s just rolled up to the house to apologize with flowers for being an idiot and listening to Morty. Fucking Morty. The Leprechaun tries to make his respective moves on both our main non-characters, and in the scuffle we learn the Leprechaun's one weakness, iron! Wait, wasn't it four-leafed clovers in the first movie? Yes, yes it was. Don't ask questions. Once the dust clears from the scrap, 90s is left defeated, and the Leprechaun takes the girl! Gasp! Fortunately for us, the Leprechaun needs to have all of his gold in order to sex up his bride, because plot devices. As it turns out, our brave hero 90sDude has the last coin, and the Leprechaun is not happy.

Our protagonist seeks out Morty to help him defeat his clever foe, while the police are investigating him because they found his flowers and Go-Kart's dead body in LoveInterest's house. Which she is not in. Which to them means he's kidnapped the girl. Way to go, dude. 90sDude goes and finds Morty the only place he could be: a bar. Also, it's St. Patrick's Day. Apparently. Whatever. After informing Morty of the goings-on, Morty ups the creep factor of this movie tenfold be shoving 90sDude into a bathroom and telling him "you've gotta take a leak!".

The true face of terror.
In the bathroom 90s is given a chocolate coin by some creepy black midget who can't read his lines properly, and then finds out from Morty that the Leprechaun is in the bar. They find him, and after some shit-talking from both sides, Morty challenges the Leprechaun to a drinking contest. Morty orders some special drink called Red something-or-other Rum, which, wait for it... isn't alcoholic! To be fair, they did mention this drink in passing like 45 minutes earlier in the film, and I like how they brought it back and tied it into Morty's sneaky scumbagginess. So, naturally, 6 to 7 bottles of whiskey into this drinking game, Morty gets the Leprechaun so fucking plastered that he can't even use his magic properly, but can still beat him over the head with a bottle and escape. Way to go, Morty. You really helped the situation.

Morty and 90s break into the go-kart track because apparently the safe used there is made of wrought iron, so they want to use it to trap ol' green. They rig up a trap nice and good and get the Leprechaun in the safe where he can't escape or use his powers. Also, somehow, 90s is in a closet. Morty locks the closet. Morty... Morty? Hey, buddy, what're you doing? What're you... no... wait...

...Capturing a Leprechaun grants you three wishes. Morty, you're just... you're a fucking asshole.

Now kids, I've played enough D&D to know that whenever some hell demon grants you wishes, you just know that no matter what you wish for, something is going to get taken literally, or get twisted, and instead of oh, I don't know, getting a pot of gold, to have the pot of god materialize in your fucking stomach.


After Morty's death, 90s vows to hunt down the Leprechaun and to end his reign of terror and finally kill him. He valiently bursts out of the go-kart office to assail his little green foe, and promptly gets his ass handed to him by some cop, because remember, he's a wanted for the disappearance of a local girl, the face-murder of a go-kart cashier, and now, breaking and entering the go-kart office. But the Leprechaun won't let the officer steal his fun, so he runs the cop over with a custom go-kart covered in skulls and bones, because fuck, y'know what? I'm not giving this movie any more excuses. This is fucking Leprechaun 2. Things just happen, and you have to accept them for what they are.


Turns out though, that by leprechaun rules if you have a gold piece you're invincible to leprechaun attacks. When 90s confronts Lep in his cave to steal back his girlfriend, he gets thrown back and gets impaled on the iron rod he took with him, but because gold pieces save your from leprechaun attacks, they also apparently save you from impaling yourself in the heart! Hooray! Then, 90s promptly gets medieval on the Leprechaun's ass and javelins the iron bar back into the Leprechaun until he explodes. Theeeeee eeeennnd.

I enjoyed Leprechaun 2 way more than the first, if you couldn't tell based on the massive wall of text I churned out for it compared to the two paragraphs I wrote for the original. Leprechaun 2 was outrageous, yes, but it knew it was outrageous. It was written to be schlocky and dumb, but the people who made it were 100% behind it and totally loved what they were doing every step of the way. There's got to be a reason Warwick Davis came back (and continued to come back) to reprise the role of the titular demon. I mean, he's a big name actor. He's been in every Harry Potter movie, Star Wars Episode VI, and Ray, just to name a few of his big budget hollywood credits. While the male and female leads in it were both terrible actors, nobody purposely dialed in their performances. The props and sets looked great for a movie with a budget a third of The Room's, and I just know that if you ask the prop designers today what their favorite gigs were, they'd tell you that souping up a leprechaun's death-kart and making a double-lawnmower-blade trap that is supposed to be disguised as a pair or tits are probably at the top of their list.

If you ever get the chance to pick up Leprechaun 2 (I managed to pick up the first three in the series for under five bucks), do it. It's a hell of a fun movie to watch, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys B-movies and raunchy horror/ comedy. Up next will be a review of Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4: In Space, where our tiny green devil terrorizes a Las Vegas casino and extends his search for a bride out to the stars, respectively. Get excited!

That's all for now, folks! Happy belated St. Patrick's Day!

-DG

1 comment:

  1. Bwah hahahaha! I LOVE B movies and your reviews are hilarious. I myself haven't seen the Leprechaun series because, well, they looked so unbelievably shitty. Now that is confirmed and I must see them for myself... if for no other reason than hey, POGO STICK DEATH SCENE!

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