Leprechaun IV - In Space

(1997) **1/2

My biggest problem with both Leprechaun 2 and 3, wasn't that they weren't scary or that they were cheap and campy, but that they were just really boring. They were trite jokes with stupid punchlines. As the closing credits rolled on Lep3, I contemplated using the month of November to build a time machine so I could go back in time and burn down Ireland before they invented the Leprechaun.

This one wasn't so bad though. Could have been because I wasn't flying solo as I was with Lep2 & Lep3 (I swear to God, though, I am not going to go back and watch either of them with company just to prove a point). Could also have had a lot to do with the shamelessly goofy idea of putting the whole franchise in outer space. Maybe it was that there's a new ghastly beasty our heroes have to contend with, in addition to the Leprechaun: a gigantic Spider/Scorpion/Computer/Austrian that skitters on to the scene 2/3's of the way through the movie -- one observation I've made through this saga is that the Leprechaun is just not a compelling bad guy. I know, duh, right? But seriously, he's far less a terror than an irritation with a deadly weapon. He's sort of like if you gave the kid from Problem Child a machine gun. The last thought in your head would be, "This little shit gets to kill me? I hate you, God."

But all of these, the space, the beasty, the company, probably didn't improve my opinion of this movie nearly as much as the following bit of trivia at the top of the IMDb trivia page for Leprechaun 4.

"The only movie in the series in which the Leprechaun doesn't rhyme."

Oh, thank the shimmering heavens. The rhyming was killing me a piece at a time. It was like if Peter Jackson had made sure, during the writing of the script of Lord of the Rings, to devote tons of screen time to fleshing out the character of Tom Bombadillo, only way worse because at least Tom Bombadillo knew how to write a decent rhyme. None of that here, save for one scene, completely digestible.

Also, oddly, the Leprechaun waits until the last quarter of the movie to even consider the state of his precious gold. The first 3/4s are divided between his ploy to marry an intergalactic princess and become a Space-King, a sidebar Aliens-style action thread, and a thread about turning the princess's blood into a regenerative serum. The latter is the best thing about the movie, mostly because of all of the screen-time devoted to the head-honcho of the spaceship on which Leprechaun 4 is based: a mad scientist whose body is mostly clunky machine after a lab experiment gone awry. His appearances in the first half are entirely via portable video screen.

Two more left to watch. If they're as watchable as this one was, I'll be a happy man. If not, I'm totally putting the time-machine idea into play and post 1300's Ireland can just kiss its ass goodbye.