Space. It may be considered the final frontier, but for a surprising amount of horror icons, it’s also been something of a last resort. Such iconic slayers such as Jason Voorhees and Pinhead have found themselves leaving terra firmer and exploring the great beyond for no other reason than their franchise had seemingly become devoid of ideas.
This brings us to the fourth outing of the Leprechaun, whose last two ventures had seen him make to LA and Las Vegas respectively – but obviously that wasn’t varied enough for the powers that be who obviously thought the natural progression for a psychotic Irish imp was to stick his green ass in the year 2096 and have him fight space marines on a starship. Returning to helm this insanity from the Emerald Isle was part 3’s Brian Trenchard-Smith and obviously what little seriousness that once remained in one of horror’s most bizarre franchise has all but imploded in the vacuum of this space oddity.
The year is 2096 and for some reason, we find the Leprechaun alive and well and trying to court a busty alien princess, Zarina, in order to expand his wealth and plot to kill her father – something the selfish, extraterrestrial bombshell is more than happy to go along with. But while this mismatched couple plot against the universe and each other, a platoon of gung-ho space marines have landed on the remote moon in order to figure out who’s been disrupting the mining operations and eliminate them on sight. After a quick set to where the Leprechaun kills one of their number with a green lightsaber (natch), the buckle wearing blighter is soon blown to bits in the face of superior firepower, but after one of the grunts unwisely chooses to pee on the corpse, the essence of the Irish creature manages to rebirth himself in something of an alarming fashion.
Meanwhile, the marines have taken the unconscious Princess Zarina back to their craft and await further orders from the ship’s reclusive commander, Dr. Mittenhand, as they wait for their contract to expire. However, they soon discover that the revived Leprechaun is on the ship with them and intends to kill all on board unless his bride-to-be is returned – however, it’s revealed that Mittenhand literally isn’t the man he once was after a terrible accident and he flat out refuses to give up Zarina due to her DNA having regenerative properties.
Needless to say, we’ve got three previous films that’s shown us what happens when the Leprechaun doesn’t get his way, so the rapidly dwindling cadre of soldiers have to figure out how to take out the deadly dwarf before he slaughters them all in a variety of goofy ways. But as Mittenburg has a run-in with the Leprechaun that leaves him genetically altered and the imp himself gets blasted by an experimental growth ray, can The surviving marines save themselves before the ship’s self destruct sequence takes them all out.
I feel like I say this with every single Leprechaun sequel, but Leprechaun 4: In Space (shouldn’t that just be Leprechaun In Space?) is by far the craziest entry yet in a franchise that seems to be as unshakeable but as uneven as Warwick Davis’ continued attempts at an Irish brogue. Obviously, for a series that’s always been more comedy than horror, the goofy humour takes precedence over literally everything else, but even so it now feels like a Duck Dodgers cartoon probably has more grit and weight than this. Of course, when you factor in that this while thing is being helmed by cult Ozploitation figure, Brian Trenchard-Smith, a lot of it makes more sense as he’s just pushing things far further than he did in Leprechaun 3. However, while the movie gets a ton of mileage from having the Lep gleefully parody a bunch of other, sci-fi movies, the film still features a weirdly sluggish pace for a flick that’s supposed to be a screwball horror comedy.
Still, you can’t fault the filmmakers for trying and despite a strange lack of actual gore, the movie is obviously straining it’s meager budget to the limit by presenting a series of elaborate visual puns that seem to be the sole reason the film exists. Having Star Wars stalwart Davis finally wave a lightsaber around is undoubtedly cute, but the movie really rolls up its sleeves when it comes to aping Alien by having the Leprechaun rebirth himself by way of a pee transmitted venereal disease and then erupting from a man’s crotch like some sort of crotchburster. However, even while it’s a nicely fucked up scene, the lack of any blood whatsoever makes the moment nowhere near as spectacular as it could have been. However, I will go on record to say that whomever came up with the gag to zap the Lep with a growing ray to give us the glorious sight of a giant dwarf deserves some sort of honorary Oscar of some kind.
However, while most Leprechaun movies keep the humans mostly as the straight act compared to the anything-goes nature of the cackling villain, Leprechaun In Space gives us a bunch of crazy characters to help create total anarchy. Allo Allo’s Guy Sinner dusts off that old German accent to play Davros-style cyborg scientist Dr. Mittenhand, while one-time Baywatch guest Rebekah Cross portrays an alien princess who considers bearing her ample breasts at people a threat. But trying to drown them all out in an overblown performance of almost vaudevillian stature is Tim Colceri’s Master Sergeant “Metal Head” Hooker who not tries to out-Windsor Davis and R. Lee Emery when it comes to screaming military types, but somehow dials things up way past eleven when the Leprechaun forces him to don drag and try and seduce his comrades. As a result, you almost feel a little bad for the two leads who are lumbered with pretending that they’re acting in a halfway serious thriller while everyone else gets to make entertaining idiots of themselves, but what can I say – not everyone in a film can transform into a giant spider, have their head pancaked or have their dick explode.
Some will understandably embrace the chaos whole heartedly (the film amusingly doesnt even bother to explain why the Leprechaun is on a distant planet trying to put the moves on a pneumatic alien hottie a hundred years in the future), while others will no doubt recoil at the unrestrained idiocy despite the fact that they’re blatently watching a Leprechaun in space movie. However, while I fully appreciate the lengths Trenchard-Smith and Davis are going too to make this sequel the craziest of them all, all the dick jokes and jocular humour can’t quite overcome the awkward stiffness (steady now) of the tone.
Boasting outlandish, comedic body horror and sets that makes 70s era Doctor Who look like fucking Avatar, Leprechaun 4: In Space seems dead set on smartly shooting to be as dumb as it can be. But while cult admiration rightly beckoned as it boasted the most deranged setpieces of the series, for most of its runtime it’s just a semi-polished space turd.
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