Review of Leprechaun 3 (1995) by Jesse F — 01 Jul 2016

There are dozens and dozens of horror movie franchises centered around a villainous character and very few of them are top tier in terms of popular culture (i.e. Halloween, Friday the 13th, Chucky, Freddy, Leatherface, Pinhead) and most are in the lower tier (Troll, Ghoulies, Critters, Evil Bong, Gingerbread Man, Jack Frost, The Lawnmower Man, etc.

). I think the Leprechaun falls somewhere in between. Conventional horror movie wisdom is that this is a lower tier character and franchise, but I'm a defender of this ridiculous series. What this series does well, particularly the three films directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, is that it gets the tone just right.

It's not really a scary horror films. It's more of a gory comedy. The premiss of an evil leprechaun is, of course, ridiculous, but this film embraces that and that's what makes it work. There is a parallel to be found in the Child's Play/Chucky series, where the first few sequels focused on trying to be scary and really did not work at all, but starting with "Bride of Chucky" adopted the gory horror/comedy model that the Leprechaun films already did so well and reinvigorated the Chucky series.

To this film in particular, this time the leprechaun finds himself in Las Vegas and once again someone has stolen his gold. Seeing the leprechaun walking through the busy Vegas strip is pretty funny, as it seeing him put on a magic show for a packed Vegas audience.

There are plenty of goofy leprechaun one liners and also a funny subplot about one of the film's protagonists slowing turning into a leprechaun after a leprechaun bite. In terms of the cast, Warwick Davis gets most of the credit for making this film work as the very goofy villain.

So if you're in the mood for a bloody horror/comedy, I found this film quite entertaining, but I'm also guessing most people would just find this film stupid.