Review of Leprechaun 4: In Space (1997) by Vince K — 08 Dec 2009

Wow. I feel severly brain-damaged after watching this. It's shockingly bad. It starts off good enough - Leprechaun is on a distant planet 1,000 years in the future (for no apparent reason), which makes the next 2 installments prequels.

He has kidnapped a beautiful alien princess, and marrying her will make him King of the Universe. The twist this time is that she's actually into him. Once he promises to make her rich beyond her wildest dreams she falls in love with him just like Anna Nicole Smith did with that zombie billionaire.

She becomes his evil sidekick throughout the movie; and it's pretty awesome to finally see the Leprechaun teamed up with someone. But then the "Space Military" comes and steals his gold, and his bride, and go back to their spaceship.

It's pretty awesome that the Leprechaun's cane in this one doubles as a lightsaber; but we only see him use it once which is disappointing. The movie just goes downhill from there. Although, we are introduced to the ridiculously-named Dr.

Mittenhand, who is shockingly similar to Austin Powers' Dr. Evil. The bald head, mannerisms; just the way he speaks. This came out before Austin Powers, and if you watched Saturday Night Live in the early '90s it was evident that Mike Myers was a big Leprechaun fan.

It's pretty obvious that Dr. Mittenhand was the inspiration for Dr. Evil, which is shocking. Later he turns into a mutant spider, apparently just because Leprechaun puts a spider in a blender then injects his brain with the goo.

The special effects are so awful that you're constantly reminded of how low-budget this is. The exterior of the ship is a poor animated 3-D graphic. Even the props suffer from the low-budget; the biologist's medical scanner is just a metal sheet with a small calculator glued to it.

The Leprechaun is also painfully underused, and his lines are not as catchy; plainly because the script is so badly written. At least nothing he says is as cringe-worthy as the bad dialogue exchanged between the marines.

The best dialogue is when the black guy acts like a minstrely stereotype from the '30s, saying stuff like "Oh lordy, it sure is dark in here" and "Feet don't fail me now". And just like in the first one, none of the characters seem to realize that their weapons CANNOT HURT THE LEPRECHAUN, and never stop trying to shoot him, always confident that this will finally kill him.

The first act and set-up was pretty good (it WAS a great idea to put Leprechaun in space), but the 2nd and 3rd act plod along deteriorating the movie badly. I couldn't stop groaning, and couldn't wait for it to be over.

But I have pretty high hopes for the next installment, "Lep in the Hood".