Review of Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997) by Niko K — 22 Mar 2010

It took Jason ten movies before he made it into outer-space (in the incredibly dire 'Jason X (2002)'), other iconic horror villains like Freddy Krueger and Michael Meyers have never even left the Earth's atmosphere. But in just four movies the Leprechaun takes that one small step for man and, leaving the bright-lights and glamour of Las Vegas seen in 'Leprechaun 3 (1995)' behind, he finds himself inexplicably in space.

Director Brian Trenchard-Smith could have bogged down the plot with the intricate details of how, exactly, a Leprechaun could find himself in space. But this is a movie so fast-paced that tackles such a mind-boggling variety of ideas, that it quickly becomes abundantly clear why this issue was swept aside and conveniently ignored. The Leprechaun is in space, and that's that. Deal with it. Now onto the plot... please do try to keep up.

'Leprechaun 4 - In Space (1997)' opens with the little critter once again trying to court a bride. Of course, he's no longer trying to make her sneeze three times like 'Leprechaun 2 (1994)' because, well, you obviously saw how that plan ended. Instead, we find the Leprechaun on a desolate rocky planet trying to kidnap Princess Zarina, so he can wed her and then murder her father, in order to become King of her home planet, Dominia. His plans are somewhat thwarted when a group of marines attack after following an alien signal, but naturally the Leprechaun isn't going to go down without a fight, and he kills one of the marines with a light saber. Frankly, it's a surprise George Lucas didn't sue someone.

The Leprechaun soon finds himself exploded in to many small pieces after leaping onto a grenade carelessly thrown by a marine, in order to save Princess Zarina. Unfortunately she still loses a hand, but the hapless marine who urinates on the Leprechauns decapitated head is soon in for some bigger problems. Somehow, and once again the director is careful to not get caught up with details, the Leprechaun's essence or spirit or demonic presence, whatever you want to call it, waits patiently in the marine's penis until they are back on the woefully designed CGI spaceship. Once this marine starts getting a bit hot and heavy with steretypical butch lady marine (her name is insignificant, she soon dies) the Leprechaun bursts forth from his penis, unsurprisingly killing the marine in the process. I do hope you're keeping up, because the plot only gets more bizarre from here...

What follows is an 'Aliens (1986)'-esque game of cat-and-mouse, just replace the black menacing aliens with a wee Irish Leprechaun and you have the right idea. But of course, the plot isn't quite as straight-forward as that. Throw in a shiny silver headed hyper-masculine sergeant who ends up cross-dressing in a rather memorable song-and-dance number, before wielding nun-chucks and attacking the surviving crew (he's under control of the Leprechaun, so his actions can almost be forgiven), and then there's the small matter of the Leprechaun discovering an experimental enlargement ray which he uses to enlarge himself, obviously, oh and Princess Zarina unhooks her spikey bra and flashes the surviving crew for a good thirty seconds as the camera lingers, as this is apparently a death-sentence on her home planet, so you see it's not long before we have a melting point of intriguing ideas bubbling away. But that's not all, for one highly important character has, so far, been over-looked.

Dr. Mittenhand is, essentially, a head and an arm confined to an electronic wheelchair and reliant upon a machine to keep him alive. Seemingly channelling Peter Sellers Dr. Strangelove character from 'Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)' Dr. Mittenhand is every bit the stereotypical evil Nazi scientist. He wants to keep Princess Zarina on board the spaceship for her blood (coloured blue) has regeneration powers, and he wishes to regenerate his body. Unfortunately, once that pesky Leprechaun gets involved, Dr. Mittenhand finds himself injected with a combination of Princess Zarina's regeneration blood, a spider and a scorpion, all blended together courtesy of one Irish mischief-maker. So the surviving marines find themselves not only having to content with an oversized Leprechaun, but a part-Dr. Mittenhand part-Princess Zarina part-spider part-scoripon hybrid. Yes, you read that right.

So gleefully bonkers plot aside, the Leprechaun movie franchise seems no longer content to dwell within the confines of the horror-comedy genre, and has thrown science fiction in to the proceedings too. Now, the big question is, does it work? The reply: did you just skip to this paragraph and not read my wonderful plot summary? Of course it bloody works! How could it not? It's sheer genius in film-form.

Sure, the acting is mostly wooden, the characters aren't particularly well developed, and there's one of the most pathetic excuses for a gratuitous boob-shot ever commited to celluloid. But where else are you going to see a movie about a Leprechaun in space?