One of the absolute best and most quotable, so-bad-it’s-good movies of the ‘90s, Leprechaun turns 30 years old. The fantastical horror movie brought Warwick Davis out of the Lucasfilm realm after Return of the Jedi and Willow, and into the spotlight as one of the horror genre’s most recognizable villains.
Granted, the Leprechaun movies may not stack up against other classic horror franchises, like A Nightmare on Elm Street or Halloween, but it’s safe to say, Davis and the character of the Leprechaun are just as synonymous as those movies and their big baddies.
In 1993’s Leprechaun, teenage girl Tory (played by Jennifer Aniston in her first major feature film role) and her father move from the big city to an old, abandoned farmhouse in the country. They’re joined by a trio of contract handymen; Nathan, his 10-year-old brother, Alex, and their friend, Ozzie, who’s played by Mark Holton (Francis from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure). Little does the group know, an evil jokester of a Leprechaun has been trapped in a box in the house’s basement for years, and after accidentally releasing him, he’ll stop at nothing to find his gold. Looks like the group’s luck just ran out!
Although it was both critically and publicly panned, Leprechaun still made a ridiculous profit at the theaters. Its $900,000 budget blew up into an eight-million-dollar success in worldwide returns, finally putting dollar signs in the eyes of Trimark Pictures’ executives, after horror financial failures like Warlock and Dolly Dearest, just a couple of years earlier. Leprechaun looked like it was going to be the horror franchise of the ‘90s… well, until the second one released, anyway.
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It was long thought that after Aniston made her big break on Friends, she wouldn’t even acknowledge that she was in the movie. Though, those rumors were debunked a few years ago when Aniston chatted with Howard Stern, not only acknowledging that she was in the film, but that it was an “amazing thing”, and that she had recently watched it with her boyfriend at the time, constantly cringing and walking out as she watched.
Warwick Davis was thankful for Aniston’s big break as well, because once Aniston became one of the world’s most popular TV stars just a little more than a year later, Leprechaun (and its many sequels) started seeing a surge in purchases and rentals, putting more notoriety on his name. The subsequent home-platform sales ballooned the movie’s profits up to $15 million, which made everyone happy.
Davis went on to star in the titular role in five more films in the franchise, finally hanging up the boots before Steven Kostanski released Leprechaun Returns in 2018. As the Leprechaun, Davis went to Las Vegas, space, the hood, and back to the hood in his sequels. That’s pretty impressive, considering many horror franchise baddies don’t make it far outside of their home towns. Take that, Michael Myers.
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Originally, Leprechaun was supposed to be a straight-up horror movie. At least, that was the vision from writer and director Mark Jones. Obviously, with Warwick Davis’ performance, and rhyming one-liners like, “This old Lep, he played one, he played pogo on his lung” before pogo-sticking someone to death, and “I got you in a bear trap, you look like a stupid sap”, I’m not sure what Jones was expecting with the finished result.
With that being said, we do get one of the most memorable send-off lines for a villain in all of horror with “F*ck you, Lucky Charms!”
Just two years later, Mark Jones tried his hand again at making a tiny fantasy creature as the villain in Rumpelstiltskin, but that had much of the same result, to a lesser extent. It wasn’t until WWE Films created Leprechaun Origins as a reboot in 2014, with a serious tone, that we got to see Leprechaun in an outright horror movie. Unfortunately, that’s one of the most hated Leprechaun films.
One of the best (and most confusing) aspects of Leprechaun was just how downright gory and brutal it was. We’re talking pre-CG, ’80s-stlye horror gore. The Leprechaun is pulling people’s eyes out, ripping their faces off, and trying to cut open bellies with his belt buckle to get back his gold. It’s such a strange contrast to the tone of the rest of the film, but for me, it works very well in making a solid horror comedy, whether it was intentional or not.
Needless to say, I’m a huge fan of this film. I own three copies of it; by itself, and in DVD and Blu-Ray versions of the entire collection. It’s a great movie to watch with friends, on St. Patty’s Day, or now, to celebrate its 30th birthday.
