The greatest danger with starting any horror franchise off the back of a recognisable, monstrous icon is that if you go to the well one too many times, your established horror hero runs the risk of becoming silly. From Freddy Krueger becoming the dream demon equivalent of a jokey, late night chat show host, to Pinhead fashioning new Cenobites out of a CD player, to Jason Voorhees’ inevitable trip to space, the more familiar we get with these titans of terror, the less serious we ultimately take them.
It’s a good thing, then, that the Leprechaun didn’t originally have a serious bone in his little green body as the horror/comedy stylings of his first venture saw the emerald asshole kill someone with a pogo stick and deliver B-grade puns of such corniness, even Freddy during his sixth installment would have fired his writers in disgust. However, objectively speaking, 1994’s Leprechaun 2 actually manages to play the humour fairly straight across the board meaning that quality wise, the Leprechaun technically struck gold – and we all know how much he likes gold…
After a prologue set in the 990s resets some of the Leprechaun’s past, we fund that over one thousand years ago, the horny little shit was in the process of taking a wife with the aid of an enslaved man who tried to steal that ever-present pot o’ gold. Like seemingly everything else connected to Leprechaun lore, the only way the creature can take the woman if his choice is via a typically convoluted string of rules which simply read that is the object of his affections sneezes three times and no one says “God bless you”, she us his for all eternity. However, when the Leprechaun’s slave discovers that the girl in question is his own daughter he thwarts the fiendish ritual only to pay the price.
Vowing to take another crack at it a thousand years later (that’s a long time to dwell on the shelf), the Leprechaun is inadvertently reborn in modern day Los Angeles on St. Patrick’s Day and after callously removing a tramp’s gold tooth to add to his stash, sets of on finding his next lady love. Enter Cody, a young man struggling to make ends meet by running a threadbare scare tour through LA with his con artist, alcoholic uncle, Morty. His dedication to his motley family member is being tested by the fact that it’s causing him to neglect his girlfriend, Bridget – but if he doesn’t find a way to balance his responsibilities, losing her to another guy will be the least of his problems.
That’s right, the woman the Leprechaun has chosen to be his unwilling bride is Bridget and after sprinting her away back to his magical, maze-like lair, Cody is left as the number one suspect for the irregular bodies the impish creature has left in his wake. Can Cody figure out how to get Bridget back while Uncle Monty has plans of his own for that ubiquitous pot o’ gold.
When it comes to something as deliberately ridiculous as Leprechaun 2, it does genuinely raise some questions about the standards I should rate it against. I mean, it’s a sequel that involves a killer Leprechaun killing people and trying to get laid – its hardly Koyaanisqatsi we’re talking about here, so judging it against genuine masterpieces like Citizen Kane or Some Like It Hot would be demonstrably unfair exercise in futility. Similarly, the tone has to be taken into consideration so throwing a film where Warwick Davis hypnotises a man to believe that the pair of breasts he’s about to thrust his face into is actually the whirring blades of an absurdly huge lawnmower against the likes of Hereditary or Candyman also seems a little mismatched. However, the simple fact is that while Leprechaun 2 may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, it also is objectively the best installment of the Leprechaun franchise as it kind of stands as the quintessential entry. Lacking the progressively loopy location changes of the gimmicky sequels (Las Vegas, space and “da hood” are all next on the imp’s travel plans) and the amusing presence of a pre-fame, pre-nose job Jennifer Aniston in the original, part 2 works surprisingly hard to deliver a straight forward Leprechaun movie that moves at a much faster clip than the first film while still nailing all the low hanging fruit that comes with such a distinct villain.
Impressively, director Rodman Flender (director of the criminally unheralded Idle Hands) manages to be blessed with the fact that everyone now knows what a killer Leprechaun movie looks like and is free to focus solely on what works. In many ways, it’s an ironed out, more directly follow up much in the vein of Child’s Play 2, Puppet Master 2 and Ghoulies 2 that reworks the kinks into a lean, mean goof machine. Obviously front and centre is Davis’ titular Leprechaun and his amusingly wonky attempt at an Irish accent and the film seems to have no problem having him dole out excruciating and endless rhymes involving his love of that fucking gold. However, the movie knows that it’s all he goes on about, and furthermore, it knows that you know too, so they make a joke of it that even the Leprechaun’s poetry hints at how single minded he is about his bling. Also, setting the film in a seen-it-all LA during St Patrick’s Day is actually kind of cute – cue unsubtle gags that sees the Leprechaun blend in with groups of other little people all dressed for the occasion and get absolutely twatted on booze and try to enforce sobriety at a coffee shop.
However, its nice that the film attempts something approaching an actual plot rather than just having the titular buckle wearer chase people around a farmhouse and while the plot is hardly what you’d call complex, the taking of a bride adds a bit more variety beyond the typical “gimme me gold” shenanigans. OK, so the humans are admittedly bland (think vanilla teens in love) and no one seems to notice that the Leprechaun is blatantly not your average little person despite having a face like an orange catcher’s mitt – however, we get some good scenery chewing from Sandy Baron as gravel voiced grifter Uncle Morty.
OK, so it’s not fucking art, but once again it’s obvious that Davis is having the time of his damn life, even if it mean that the price of his frenzied mugging and wince inducing puns (although I’ll conceade the “Kiss me, I’m Irish” line is genius) means he’s got to haphazardly totter on those big-ass heels. You throw this up against any normal movie and Leprechaun 2 will soon fade like a rainbow when the rain stops, and yet, when taken on its own rules, you can’t help but appreciate the effort that’s being put in to make the best damn Leprechaun in existence. Now, I don’t know if such a thing is possible (probably not, now I think about it), but the Lep’s second coming is probably the best you’re gonna get and that’s got to count for something, right?
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