Green is Back, Back Again

Do I want to say that I’m one of the few people to have watched every Leprechaun film? Not particularly, but as I steadily make my way through the series (which i was watching on Tubi until they were all removed, and am now watching on Amazon Prime as they’ve gotten all the films, and also this age of streaming services is really dumb with where films end up on any given month) I’m recognizing that this is a goal that’s going to happen, whether I want it to or not. It’s not that these are particularly good, or even inventive or interesting, horror films. But the Leprechaun series went for eight films and I guess someone has to watch them. That someone is me.

It’s really not a fun job, either. The Leprechaun series feels like it goes out of its way to be as bad and stupid as possible. This movie is no exception, with an adventure set in Vegas that, honestly, barely has anything to do with the title villain at all. Most of the film is a padded, silly, waste of space and the only reason it got made is because of the creature at the center of it all. If this were just a normal Vegas film, or a normal monster film set in sin city, it wouldn’t be special at all. The fact that it has the jolly green villain in it meant people watched it, but what they got in the process was a film that, despite the “3” at the end, really wasn’t a Leprechaun film at all. At least, not if you try and line it up with the previous two movies (which also didn’t mesh together). This film is just an excuse to bring Warwick Davis back as the villain and to have him run around and mug for the camera for a bit.

You know, honestly, when I put it like that it doesn’t make the film sound so bad. At least he got a paycheck and got to keep making films he clearly enjoyed. There are worse ways to get along in Hollywood, I suppose. Like being any other star in Leprechaun 3, for example.

This third film takes place in Vegas where an old, poor, half-maimed man drags a leprechaun statue into a pawn shop. He sells the statue, along with the medallion it’s wearing, to Gupta (Marcelo Tubert), the pawn shop owner, for twenty bucks, but with the clear warning that the medallion should never be removed. So, of course, as soon as the old man is gone, Gupta removes the medallion, awakening the leprechaun and causing himself a world of trouble. Gupta tries to get the leprechaun’s gold, but is only able to dislodge a single shilling from the pot before the vile green villain kills him.

Around this time Scott McCoy (John Gatins) comes to the pawn shop. He’s there to sell his grandfather’s watch after trying, and failing, to win it big at the Lucky Shamrock casino. He has twenty-three thousand before going into the casino, enough to pay for his whole four years at college, but now he’s broke, having lost it all at roulette (to a cheating dealer, Loretta, played by Caroline Williams) and now he needs money. But when he finds, aside from Gupta’s dead body, is a gold shilling. Just talking out loud, he wishes he were at the casino on a winning streak, and suddenly he’s there, a hundred grand up, doing fine. But he still has the shilling and now everyone wants it, from the employees at the casino to the leprechaun as well. But only one of them is willing to kill to get it back.

We’re three deep into this series and the films are getting worse and worse. This threequel feels, somehow, cheaper and dumber than the previous film, Leprechaun 2, which is impressive considering that film was barely worthy of a theatrical release. This film didn’t even make it that far, instead going direct-to-video, and the quality of the production shows. This is a film that feels little better than a C-rated TV movie, with the only point in its favor being that at least it’s not incredibly long… even if, at 90 minutes, it still feels longer than it needs to be.

A lot of that is because the front half of the film is extremely padded out. It takes a full act for Scott to get to Vegas, lose his money, get to the pawn shop, find the shilling, and start using its power. And even then, across the second act, we get a lot of faffing around as the coin goes from one person to the next, giving each of them their wish before the leprechaun shows up to kill them. Nothing that actually matters to the plot, specifically focused on Scott, truly takes place until the third act, and by then everyone in the audience is bored to tears.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand this is a horror movie so having the entire second act taking up with killing all the randos around the casino does make sense. It would work better, however, if anyone in the casino mattered at all. Because of the way the story is set up, with Scott wandering into Vegas and then wandering out after everything is done so he can go to college, no one at the casino – well, aside from his love interest, Tammy Larsen (Lee Armstrong) – actually matters. They’re all clearly set up to die the second the leprechaun finds them, so we never really care about them either way. And because they barely affect Scott’s story, since his plotline is entirely focused on the leprechaun past a certain point, everything that happens to them is just filler.

In fairness, some of their deaths are amusing. The greedy casino boss gets a sexy woman to makeout with, only for it to be revealed she’s an android controlled by the villain. Loretta desires to be beautiful and then the leprechaun bimbos her up so much she explodes. And there’s the casino magician who falls prey to his own magic tricks at the hand of the leprechaun… plus a chainsaw. None of the kills are really great, but they’re at least comically amusing, and for a film like this I’ll take what I can get.

It would be better, though, if the characters were worth watching, and much of the problem here lies in the fact that all the actors suck. The worst offender is Armstrong, who had absolutely no career after this, starring in exactly three things, all of them direct-to-video and none of them good. Her performance is so bad that even porn stars would think it’s beneath them. She over emphasizes lines, overplays emotions, and generally feels like a bad fit for every scene she’s in. No one really comes out smelling like roses from this film, but she’s easily the worst thing about this film, bar none.

Well, okay, Warwick Davis comes out of this just fine, but that’s because he gets to deliver the same kind of performance he gave for two films already, and he’s clearly having a ball. This film is bad, and his character is barely a part of the story for most of the runtime, but when he shows up the film at least finds some life and some degree of credibility. Honestly, Davis was too good for this film series, but he did get to have fun filming it so I can’t complain too much. At least, not for him.

But with that said, this film is utter trash otherwise. It’s a poorly made, cheaply designed film with bad characters and worse acting. When the villain is the only thing that livens it up, then, sure, it makes for an amusing slasher film, but not a good one. The studio was right to send this third film in the series right to video stores and the bargain bin because this one is an utter stinker. It’s so bad, I’m sure it killed the franchise for many fans… if there were any to begin with.

Supposedly this series does find some life once it heads to space and then into “tha hood”. I have my doubts, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough…