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Tag Archives: Leprechaun
0041 – Leprechaun: Origins Review
Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (2003)
What’s Up, Ninjas?
Today is the day that hopefully kills the ongoing, and confusing, inside joke between Fabio and Ewic. This movie is kind of a sequel to the movie I reviewed yesterday, but they never mention that movie at all, acting as if it never happened. Just like the rest of humanity. The only thing today’s movie has in common with yesterday’s movie is its diminutive star and the setting. Let’s see how it went in my review of the sixth and final (so far) movie in the series, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood, written and directed by Steven Ayromlooi, and starring Warwick Davis, Tangi Miller, Laz Alonso, Page Kennedy, Sherrie Jackson, Donzaleigh Abernathy, Shiek Mahmud-Bey, Willie C. Carpenter, Keesha Sharp, and Sticky Fingaz.
Father Jacob (Willie C. Carpenter) does battle with a leprechaun (Warwick Davis) on a construction site for a youth center. Before dropping dead from his injuries, Father Jacob is able to banish the leprechaun using holy water laced with the leprechaun’s weakness: four-leaf clovers. The Leprechaun is dragged into the earth by demonic hands. A year later, Emily Woodrow (Tangi Miller) and her friend Lisa Duncan (Sherrie Jackson) go to get their fortune told by a psychic named Esmeralda (Donzaleigh Abernathy), who tells Emily that she will come across great wealth soon, but she must deny it because it will come with a great price and a terrible evil. So, of course, when she falls down a hole during a barbecue and finds a chest full of gold with her ex-boyfriend Rory Jackson (Laz Alonso), she ignores that sentiment completely. Emily splits the gold four ways between her, Lisa, Rory, and Jamie Davis (Page Kennedy), and they mostly go off and waste their money frivolously. But, much as in that prediction they ignored, the Leprechaun comes to retrieve his gold in the most violent way he can think of.
This movie is, much as the previous movie, crap. But, it’s actually slightly better crap. Leprechaun: in the Hood is fresh crap from a dog that ate something that didn’t agree with it and Back 2 tha Hood is a nice, healthy, fiber-filled crap that’s been out in the sun. It’s still gross, but it doesn’t stink anymore. Unless you pour water on it, then it stinks again. Wait, am I reviewing dog shit or Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood? SAME THING! Anyways, the story is still completely lackluster in this movie and is fairly typical horror movie fare. This bitch Emily is flat out told by someone she believes to have clairvoyant abilities that what is going to happen to her is going to happen and she chooses to ignore it. But then, later in the movie, she randomly becomes the expert on leprechauns when she instantly figures out exactly why the Leprechaun is after them. It certainly wasn’t from the Leprechaun that she got this information because he didn’t say a word to her on their first meeting, let alone mentioning the gold. She’s also set up as this nice girl that lives in the hood, but she wastes her money as frivolously as her drug-dealing ex-boyfriend. Emily and Lisa have this conversation about how sad it is that Father Jacob died and they never finished the youth center he was working on, but when they come into a rather large sum of money no one ever thinks to do anything for the community with it. Unless you consider buying garbage bags full of weed and throwing a party to be something for the community. That’s the problem with the hood, y’all. It’s every ninja for themselves. I guess you could consider the fact that Emily had no reason to share the money she found with anybody, but randomly decided to share it with her three friends, but I just consider that dumb. The solution to the movie was something I actually found fairly clever, but it didn’t pan out in the movie itself. They find out that the Leprechaun’s weakness is clovers so Rory smashes up a four-leaf clover and puts it into the hollow tips of his bullets, sealing them in with wax. Of course, they fuck that up by having him shoot the Leprechaun almost to death, but then stopping to do something else. The first time is out of his control because the gun jams, but the next time he stops to save Emily instead of finishing the Leprechaun off, letting him regain his strength. Which leads to the biggest problem I had with the movie: they find out and prove time and time again that the Leprechaun cannot be damaged by conventional means, but everyone in the goddamn movie still tries to get into fist fights with him. I understand with the group of the rival gang who did not have that information, but Emily and Rory had seen the Leprechaun get punched, kicked, stabbed, run over, thrown into a furnace, shot, and so many other things, but that would not stop these asshole from running up and punching him until they got their asses kicked again. I mean, it’s definitely on my bucket list to beat the shit out of a midget, but if he’s kicking my ass I’m out of there. That would be crippling to my self-esteem.
There were two things that made this movie better to me. The first was that it looked a lot better. Their effects looked a lot better and the camera didn’t look like it had to be cranked by hand. The other thing I enjoyed more was that, though they did try for some comedy on occasion and fail, they were not trying to make their movie a horror/comedy. It was much more of a horror movie, just with a few moments of attempted comedy (that also failed) in it. I feel like, if you want ridiculousness in your movie, the Leprechaun takes care of the ludicrousness. Going for all that failed humor is just trying too hard. This is not to say this movie wins as a horror movie, but it fails epically as a comedy. I did not miss the heavy rap subplot, but I did kind of miss the Leprechaun speaking in limerick form. It seemed like it suited his character, but they just didn’t have the energy for it in this movie. They still had enough energy to go for some slight racism, though. Nothing as overt as stabbing someone with their hair pick, but it was there. As a racist myself, I knew that it was only a matter of time before the gold-obsessed Leprechaun movies set in the hood did something with some gold toofises, but I don’t understand why it was a pretty girl that did it. I know – but don’t understand why – some black guys enjoy putting on gold grills, but I don’t see that many women doing it. It just makes you look like a pirate. But this girl did it and she got her jaw ripped off for it by the Leprechaun, so all is right with the world. There were a couple things with the look that bothered me. One thing happens right in the beginning of the movie, when a rainbow comes down to show the way to the Leprechaun’s lair. The problem was not with the rainbow, but with the fact that Father Jacob started trying to swing at the rainbow with a shovel. I understand that you know the Leprechaun will follow, but that is no excuse for trying to beat up light with a shovel. Also, I liked the look of the Leprechaun being dragged into the earth by the demonic hands, but I don’t like that you just played that same thing backwards when the Leprechaun was escaping to retrieve his gold. What were the demon hands doing as he left the ground? Giving him a boost? Another thing that pissed me off in the movie was the fact that the psychic lady they went to had mutant powers and fought the Leprechaun with magic. It’s not really that special for the Leprechaun to be magic if we live in a world surrounded by the stuff. He should be the only magical creature in the movie! Also, when the Leprechaun was thrown into the furnace was also a problem. Emily threw his gold in there, so the Leprechaun should’ve jumped in there on his own accord to try to retrieve his gold, sending a message about greed being bad, mmmkay? That is completely lost when he continues to fight with Emily because his greed is less important to him than killing this girl and she throws him into the furnace. It would’ve been the obvious way to go for him to jump in, but it also would’ve been better than the way you went.
The performances were … in this movie. None of them impressed, but at least most of them didn’t annoy either. Warwick Davis was still pretty good as the Leprechaun. I did wonder how he got so bad at handling his weed from the last movie to this one, but since they basically proceeded with this movie as if the last one never happened, I could forgive it. I felt like the writing still lost the character of the Leprechaun in this one. I already mentioned that he was no longer speaking in limerick, but this time he also seemed less concerned with his gold. In the previous movies (as best I can remember them) he only ever killed people in order to get his gold, and whenever his gold was present he was fixated on it. But he not only continues to try to kill Emily when he should’ve been running to get his gold, he killed people that had absolutely nothing to do with his gold. Like the innocent lady that was getting a massage from Emily at her job. Not only did he waste a lot of time giving her a massage first, but he killed her and she had no idea what was going on with this gold and the Leprechaun. Tangi Miller was only of note because she was, for some reason, the star of the movie, even though Sherrie Jackson was much better looking AND seemed to be a better actress. She was actually fairly decent when she got killed, but I couldn’t focus that much because it was such a bummer that she was dying and not Tangi. Laz Alonso didn’t impress me much, but I did get really fixated on which Wikipedia page the writers went to in order to figure out how many hollow point bullets Rory should shoot at a leprechaun where it would still be okay and how many before he was dead. They seemed really sure that 4 or 5 was near death, and 6 or 7 was all death. The only character I found really annoying was Page Kennedy as Jamie. He was basically the comic relief, and I just find those characters annoying when they’re not able to produce funniness. Also, Sticky Fingaz was in this. So there’s that.
Still not a good movie, but better than the movie that came before it, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood goes a lot heavier into the horror category, which it’s much closer to succeeding with than the comedy that failed so painfully in Leprechaun: in the Hood. It looks better and is less racist, but it still can only really survive on its camp and ability to be mocked. This isn’t a movie you particularly need to see. And hopefully this means that Fabio and Ewic will have to find a new in joke that only they find amusing. Fuckin’ assholes … Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood gets “You compromised all you believed in once you got the gold” out of “You so ghetto.”
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Leprechaun: In the Hood (2000)
Is There Pussy in Heaven, Post?
Today’s movie was not requested, but tomorrow’s movie was. And I felt that I was not able to review tomorrow’s movie for the people that requested it without watching today’s movie so that we could all follow the highly cerebral storyline. And yes, this is technically the 5th movie in this series, but I was not fixing to review the other 5 without them being requested. I started with this movie because it’s the movie that caused the character to wind up in the hood. I’m still completely in the dark about what started Fabio and Ewic recommending that I review the Back 2 tha Hood version of this movie series, but they did and they did a lot. Well they need only wait one more day for today’s movie is Leprechaun: In the Hood, written by Doug Hall, John Huffman, Mark Jones, Alan Reynolds, Rob Spera, and William Wells (‘cause all of them could fix it), directed by Rob Spera, and starring Warwick Davis, Ice-T, Anthony Montgomery, Rashaan Nall, and Red Grant.
A man named Mac Daddy O’Nassas (Ice-T), so called because Mac Daddy Owns Asses, finds a leprechaun statue surrounded by gold. As he starts collecting all of the gold – including a special golden flute – he removes a pendant from around the leprechaun statue’s neck, freeing the Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) from his stone tomb. He kills one of Mac Daddy’s friends with his hair pick (not my joke, don’t call me racist) before Mac Daddy accidentally – and miraculously – makes the Leprechaun stumble onto a seesaw, launching the necklace into the air and having it land around his head again, turning him back to a statue. 20 years later, we join aspiring rappers Postmaster P. Smith (Anthony Montgomery), Stray Bullet (Rashaan Nall), and Butch (Red Grant) as they unsuccessfully try to kick start their position in the rap game. They meet Mac Daddy – now a very popular rap artist – who listens to, and disses, their demo tape. In retaliation, they decide to break into Mac Daddy’s crib and start robbing him. Mac Daddy finds them and the Postmaster shoots him. They then steal the flute and the necklace from the leprechaun statue, setting him free once again. Now, with both Mac Daddy and the Leprechaun on their tails, the three decide to ignore that stuff for the most part and continue to focus on their rap career.
I hope, for your sake, that you didn’t go into this review thinking this movie would be good. Then it should be a big surprise for you that this movie is great … fodder for me to mock. This movie sucks so bad it’s offensive. And then it’s pretty offensive as well. I admit that I got off to the wrong start with this movie, going in expecting a shitty horror movie. I had no idea that it was their intention to make a comedy. Although, with this movie, I feel like they called it a comedy as an excuse so that they could say everything that sucked about their movie was intended as a joke. This is something that they’d need to point out because I’d need to be informed about what things in here they intended to be funny. I wouldn’t have been able to guess on my own. I guess it’s nice that, when they went for comedy in their horror movie, they at least had the decency to fail at it. Was the black guy with the giant afro getting stabbed by the Leprechaun with his afro pick a joke, or just racist? And if that wasn’t racist, how about Ice-T pulling a switch blade out of his afro? And, finding that was useless, how about when he pulled the baseball bat out of his afro? They sometimes tried to combine their comedy with the horror aspects of the movie, like when someone said something about blowing (I don’t remember if it was “blow me” or “blow away”) and the Leprechaun knocked a hole through his midsection. But what did this have to do with blowing? You could’ve at least tried to show that you know how shitty comedy works by having him fake blowing a kiss at him and that knocking the hole out. Or maybe you could’ve done that thing that parents do to babies where you blow on their belly to make them giggle. Of course, they could always do something awesome like have the Leprechaun summon his zombie Fly Girls. You might ask yourself, “I can see Fly Girls having something to do with ‘the hood’, but what do zombies have to do with Leprechauns?” to which I would respond, “Uh….LOOK OVER THERE!” At least these girls were completely ineffectual, so they captured the creature of woman correctly. The zombie Fly Girls only ever really served as eye candy, distracting a victim while the Leprechaun killed them, even though he was supposed to be trapped in a safe at the time and it was never explained how he escaped. A lot of the story is driven by this flute. You blow into it and everyone listening turns towards it and stares, dumbfounded. I imagine that I’d have the same reaction because I never really understood what it was doing. The four rappers are really interested in it because people apparently get into their shitty raps when it’s preceded with the flute, making this strangely important to them. After the Leprechaun has taken back the flute and killed one of the three starring rappers, the remaining two decide they’re going to risk life and limb to retrieve it. But why? First, you know it’s just going to make the Leprechaun start chasing you again, and he’s outsmarted you many times already and will happily kill you for it, so it seems like more of a hassle than you’d want. And second, wouldn’t you eventually start to resent your success because you’re just tricking people into liking your shitty music? It’s still shitty. I imagine I’d start hating my life because I was only famous through trickery, not talent. Of course, this whole situation leads to another problem: why did the Leprechaun let them live in the first place? I’ve seen a couple of the Leprechaun movies before, and I’ve never known the Leprechaun to let people live after he’s retrieved his gold from them. Perhaps he’s softened with age and is more of a fun loving creature by this point, but it’s obviously not working out for him. Killing just one of them to send a message to the other two only strengthened their resolve. Go back to killing, Leprechaun. It’s what you’re good at. Except when you’re choking someone and your thumb is on the same side of the victim’s neck as the rest of your fingers. I don’t think squeezing works that way.
Best I can tell, Rob Spera is a white guy, so of course his movie about the Leprechaun going to the hood is going to include lots of rap music. What else do “the blacks” have? …Is what I imagine he’d ask. Not me, though. I’m totally color blind, y’all! But I’m not color deaf, and the rappers in the movie can definitely leave rap alone. The game does not need them at all. My assumption is that the three rappers in this movie were friends or relatives of the producers or something and used that to try to get their rhymes onto film. It makes even less sense to me that shitty raps would be on display in this movie when two accomplished rappers (Ice-T and Coolio) took part in the movie. And, of course, you can assume going into this movie that you’ll have to endure the Leprechaun rapping. After all, he spends most of the movie speaking in limerick form anyway, so it’s not a far departure to have him rap. I was excited for more than one reason when the movie was coming to its conclusion, and mostly because I had not yet had to hear the Leprechaun rap, but then they catch us with a late hit, having the Leprechaun rap at the very end of the movie and underneath the credits.
Almost every single one of the performances sucked in this movie. I still like Warwick Davis, and I think he did as good a job as he could as the Leprechaun. The makeup did most of the work for him to make him somewhat intimidating, but he did his own thing too. The only thing I have to say about all three of the starring rappers (Anthony Montgomery, Rashaan Nall, and Red Grant) is that they sucked. 90% of their dialogue was just the N-word, and the rest of it was either crap from the writing or crap in the delivery. Mostly both. Ice-T surprised me most in this movie with how much he sucked. This guy does acting professionally now, right? His performance was way too obvious in this movie, reminiscent of non-professional actors from YouTube videos. I guess he’s gotten much better since this movie, but I’ve also never seen him on whichever of the 2,700 procedural cop shows that he’s on.
Leprechaun: In the Hood sucks. It fails as a horror movie and tries to pawn it’s crappiness off as humor, which it also fails at. The only thing I came remotely close to enjoying about this movie was Warwick Davis, who does a decent enough job as the Leprechaun, but he can’t really do much with writing this bad. You can, and should, not bother watching this movie. You could stream it on Netflix, but I wouldn’t really recommend you do so. But I’m not worried because tomorrow’s movie is Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood, which I can only assume is really awesome, based on how much Fabio and Ewic talk about it. See you then! Leprechaun: In the Hood gets “Death to he who sets a Leprechaun free” out of “The Leprechaun is the real O.G.”
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