While all good things apparently come to an end, suppose the same can be said for the likes of bad things too – however, where you’d put the Leprechaun movies on that scale is a matter of personal taste. While I would hardly describe the littlest, greenest, horror franchise on the block one of the all-time greats, you have to give Leprechaun actor Warwick Davis his flowers (or at least a clump of four-leaf clovers) for creating a villain that managed to endure a total of seven movies.
But while we wrestle with the fact that Davis played the Leprechaun the same amount of time Robert Englund played Freddy, 2003’s Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood would prove to be the final time the actor would pull on those shiny, buckled boots. Did a franchise that dragged the title character from Vegas to Space to the Hood justify its bizarre trajectory by giving the Lep a spirited send off?
I mean, why start now, right?
After a prologue that sees the Leprechaun battle a priest to the death in LA, we find that the well meaning holy man was intending to use some stolen gold to finance a youth centre that would hopefully bring positive change to the lives of inner-city youths. However, after banishing his diminutive foe to the depths of the earth with holy water laced with four leaved clovers, the priest succumbs to his wounds and a year later we find the surrounding area still rife with crime. However, after friends Emily Woodrow and Lisa Duncan have their fortunes read and are told they’re destined to come into contact with great wealth, the former falls through the weakened floor of the half-built youth centre to discover a chest full of gold coins.
Of course, we know where that supernatural moolah has come from and once Emily swipes it and shares it among her equally desperate friends, it ressurects the Leprechaun who, as always, comes complete with violent gold fever.
However, the problem is that the four friends have already spent a lot of the gold already. Emily and Lisa got themselves glow ups and a new car while enthusiastic stoner, Jamie, spent his share on an impressive collection of bongs and a garbage bag sized haul of weed. However, the last member of the quartet, drug dealer Rory, has bigger plans and hopes to get ex-girlfriend Emily back despite the fact that she disapproves of his lifestyle choices – but none of this will matter if they aren’t pulverised by a seething Leprechaun who wants that chest back at any cost.
Slaughtering his way through anyone in their vicinity, the Lep impales, dismembers and eradicates anyone standing between his green ass and his property, but while the friends fight valiantly to survive, how do you kill a magical creature rampaging his way through the hood?
To say that Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha Hood is something of a weird send off for Davis is to grossly underestimate just how fucking bizarre this franchise really is. Not even mentioning his trips to Vegas and space, the fact that this second trip to the hood isn’t even related to the last one despite having the subtitle “Back 2 Tha Hood” just shows how stubbonly inconsistent this series truly is. However, while the clutch of films up until now had understandably embraced a more broad vein of humour that mostly involved sticking a little person in ridiculous situations, Back 2 Tha Hood seems oddly unsure of how to proceed. It definitely isn’t about turn down the opportunity of featuring Davis in full, Leprechaun regalia once again getting blazed off his ass on weed, but at the same time there’s a sense that director Steven Ayromlooi wants to make the eponymous imp a darker and more sinister character.
For a start, the Leprechaun has a gritter new look that’s more gothic than Lucky Charms and he relies less on his weird rhymes and jangly hocus pocus, choosing instead to just dive on people like he’s playing in a dwarven form of the NFL. In fact, at numerous times, certain situations seem to suggest that Ayromlooi is desperately evoking Terminator 2 as his main source of influence as the LA setting and various Terminator centric sequences seem to be trying to conjure up memories of James Cameron’s timeless sequel. However, this leads to some of Back 2 Tha Hood’s major problems. For a start, while the sight of a Leprechaun getting into fist fights with just about every member of the cast is funny at first not only does it quickly become repetitive, but there are numerous times where our “terrifying” foe is actually out fought and is frequently knocked on his ass more times than you can count.
While matters are supposed to be humorous (how else do you explain Page Kennedy’s sub-Scary Movie performance as epic stoner, Jamie?), it’s tough to maintain the ridiculous creature as a major threat when he’s frequently laid out more times than a narcoleptic boxer. Similarly, the kills are way more grounded too – or should I say, way for grounded for a Leprechaun movie. Gone are sequences where magic makes someone’s ass and butt grow till they explode and the tone seems to want return to the more spiteful days when the Lep would happily murder someone by bouncing on them with a pogo stick. Hence we now witness or antagonist ripping of the leg from a kung-fu cop, or stabbing someone to death with their own bong, but while the change of tone is admirable (at least there’s no Leprechaun rap this time around), it soon becomes apparent that some franchises should just stick to being stupid.
However, before I wrap this up, I will say one thing. For all the seven Leprechaun flicks that had been made by this point, it’s truly bizarre that arguably the most creatively destitute one gives us without a doubt the vest origin for the character yet. Not only does it make complete sense in a movie where the bite-sized villain tear a leg clean off a man like a turkey leg, but it’s actually spiffily produced to boot. In fact, that animated prologue that spells out exactly why our antagonist lkves gold and is to twisted looks so polished it wouldn’t look out of place in a film with ten times the budget. Who would have thought that Leprechaun 7 would provide a definitive and highly cinematic explanation to one of horrordom’s goofiest foes?
Warwick Davis’ last hurrah as the character he’d been embodying for a decade is pretty much the mixed bag you’d expect it to be, with a slightly more mature take creating just as many problems as it solves. And yet, regardless of your opinions of Back 2 Tha Hood, it still feels kind of sad to give one final tip o’ the green hat to this version of the character. Thank you Warwick, your Leprechaun may have been in some wonky movies, but he still shamrocked our world.
Later, my ninja.
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