Not all trash sparkles. Leprechaun does, though, courtesy of rubber gore, sharp yellow teeth, and a little three-and-a-half-foot menace. He rhymes, he grins, and sometimes he even dances jigs before he kills. This is campy horror comedy with no sense of shame. Which might just be its best quality. Shame never did anyone any favors. Especially when it comes to movie night. Dingy, inane, and weirdly confident, it turns stupidity into pageantry. A slasher presented by a grubby little goblin obsessed with gold.
Warwick Davis plays the title terror with a wrinkled, prosthetic sneer and a bounce like a vaudeville imp. He lets out a demented cackle after he delivers his lines, which is often in riddles. Though—curiously—he doesn’t have an Irish accent. Shouldn’t he be sing-songy like the Lucky Charms guy? Were they going to make Davis pay for his own diction coach or something?
But anyway, this little dude is violent. He stabs. Bites. Gouges. He even pogo-sticks a victim to death at one point. Occasionally, he forgets to murder altogether, preferring to pause and shine shoes. Or polish one of his gold coins. His victims will always still be there, after all. Cleanliness and carnage, side by side.
The plot involves a cursed stash of coins that somehow finds its way to a peeling farmhouse in North Dakota. It takes a body count to start piling up before a handful of dopey bystanders starts to realize they’re cornered by a rhyming imp. This includes a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston, here in her screen debut.
Continuity comes and goes. The leprechaun can teleport across state lines to reclaim a single coin but can’t find it when it’s under a seat cushion. Sometimes he hunts his victims. Sometimes he pranks them. Sometimes he just stands there. Blinking. The logic is loose and the dialogue is practically begging to be heckled. Maybe that’s the appeal with this one. There’s a fine line between self-parody and unintentional hilarity that this movie completely ignores. Maybe the boundary between the two never mattered in the first place.
This is the kind of trash that knows it’s trash and then adds sprinkles on top for good measure. If you decide to watch this, be sure to keep your remote control handy. You’ll know within ten minutes if you’re in the mood for this, and you’ll want to turn it off as soon as you know.