St. Patrick’s Day is one of the few holidays everyone celebrates, and yet, lacks an official movie. We’ve argued in the past that Leprechaun: In The Hood is perhaps the ultimate St. Patrick’s Day movie, but I notice there’s no definitive ranking. So, in the interest of informing your film watching decisions, here are the Leprechaun movies, from best to worst.
1) Leprechaun (1993)
If you only know this movie by reputation, or by Jennifer Aniston being the final girl in it, you really need to see it. It was originally written as a straight horror movie, but Warwick Davis brought some comedic elements to it, which only makes the obvious drama even weirder. For example, about twenty minutes into the movie, it dawns on you the fat guy who follows a little kid around is not, in fact, a pedophile but is supposed to be mentally handicapped. This comes up when the little kid explains to him if they can find a pot of gold, they can afford an operation to make him smarter, which makes this kid either cruelest or the stupidest kid in horror movie history.
It is a masterpiece of unintentional horror comedy, only accentuated by the terrible attempts to make an intentional horror comedy. Truly, proof that inspiration and sometimes talent are unnecessary to be entertaining.
2) Leprechaun: In The Hood (2000)
You can sum up everything about this movie in just one clip:
By the way, Ice-T there is playing Mack Daddy O’Nassas. At this point, TriMark, the longtime distributor of cheesy horror that had actually launched thanks to the original movie, was imploding, the movie was going straight-to-video, and the MPAA was never seeing this. So the movie just kind of… goes insane. You’ve got the above scene. You have an extended drag joke where the Leprechaun demands a beej from a character named “Postmaster P.” You have “Zombie Fly Girls” rescued from the hypnotic power of the Leprechaun’s flute (GEDDIT?) by smoking a four-leaf clover-laced joint. Does it end with a rap number? Oh, does it ever:
That said, I rank Leprechaun: In The Hood below the original only because none of this stupidity is accidental, so there are moments where it feels just a bit forced. Although really, in terms of accidental comedy, they’re nearly interchangeable.
3) Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997)
TriMark decided to mash up two ever-reliable direct-to-video genres: The Aliens knockoff and the slasher movie. If that sounds incredibly stupid, oh, my friend, words cannot capture how stupid it is. This is a movie that starts with Warwick Davis exploding out of an erect penis, and let’s just stop for a moment and contemplate the breathtaking accidental symbolism in that image.
The best part is that why, precisely, the Leprechaun is running around on an alien planet is something they barely waste time trying to justify, let alone explain. The damsel of this movie has a lot of gold, he wants her gold, he’s still a tiny little pixie rapist (see Leprechaun 2, below), boom, plot solved. The problem is that this extends to most of the plot, and when the movie ends with a giant, dismembered fist flipping you off in space, it may accidentally sum up how this movie views its own audience.
4) Leprechaun 3 (1994)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5yDKqWX1Uo
By this point you’ve probably gathered that the Leprechaun movies were not bothered by anything resembling “continuity” or “consistency with actual Irish mythology.” Still, this movie deserves a special calling-out because a major plot point is “If you’re bitten by a leprechaun, you slowly turn into one.” Yes, there is a were-leprechaun in this movie.
There’s also this very weird plot device which boils down to the Leprechaun granting wishes that, of course, go horribly wrong. It’s like a rough draft of Wishmaster, except with more people being electrocuted by robots and substantially worse acting.
5) Leprechaun 2 (1994)
Pretty much every one of these movies has some ridiculous half-assed plot device that makes no sense whatsoever, but this one takes the cake: If you sneeze three times and nobody says “God bless you,” this movie wants you to believe, at least if you’re an attractive woman, this leaves you open to leprechaun rape. Okay, so you can be forced to be his “bride,” but we all know what’s actually going on here and it’s not like this franchise has any subtlety.
Honestly, the whole movie’s kind of uncomfortably sleazy, right down to some idiot being tricked by phantom boobs into motorboating a lawnmower. On the other hand, this also features an entire bar full of little people dressed like leprechauns, which deserves credit for chutzpah, if nothing else.
6) Leprechaun 2: Back To The Hood (2003)
Somebody, somewhere, decided to try and make Leprechaun: In The Hood an at least semi-serious horror movie. This was… poorly considered, and there’s a reason the franchise died here. At least until…
7) Leprechaun: Origins (2014)
It’s not that this is a bad movie, necessarily. It’s just predictable and conventional. The problem is really the movie, while certainly fun, is like watching somebody try to analyze what makes a joke funny. Zach Lipovsky is quite good at straight-faced mockery of horror tropes, but here he’s largely called on to make a straight horror movie, which seems a waste of his talent. Leave it to the WWE to make the most straight-laced, least-exciting Leprechaun movie. Maybe next time, guys, have Hornswoggle explode out of a penis.