Leprechaun 3

Once again we’re starting over.  We open at a pawn shop in Las Vegas and a man missing an arm, a leg and an eye hauls in a statue of the Leprechaun with a medallion around its neck.  He wants to cash it in but warns the shopkeeper to not remove the necklace.  Of course the advice isn’t taken and the Leprechaun comes to life and immediately bites the shopkeeper’s ear and toe off.  Through some shenanigans a gold coin goes missing yet again and the Leprechaun hunts it down while killing anyone who gets in his way.

It's mildly frustrating that each installment scraps the previous films and does its own thing.  If the scenario, vibe and production were totally different from picture to picture that could potentially be a damn fun idea.  However, that’s not the case.  Instead they basically keep hitting the reset button which is incredibly odd.  On one level it’s an interesting experiment but it doesn’t succeed that well for me.  For instance the Leprechaun’s powers are always slightly different, his backstory changes or isn’t explained at all (as is the case here, he’s in Vegas now and frozen into a statue, no explanation needed, deal with it), different methods are employed to kill him despite each film claiming there’s only one true way, the power the gold gives its bearer varies each time and etc.  You have to blank your mind going in otherwise it’s impossible to keep any of this shit straight.

Moving on, there are two main gimmicks they throw at you this time.  One is that whoever possesses a Leprechaun’s schilling can make one wish.  Unlike in part 2 the wish is fulfilled without a nasty loophole.  It’s only when the Leprechaun intervenes later and alters the wish that the situation becomes deadly.  The best death in the series to date is executed through a wish.  A scummy casino worker (Caroline Williams (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2)) wants to be young and beautiful again and is granted her desire.  When the Leprechaun shows up though he puffs out her ass, boobs and lips larger and larger until she explodes.  Probably the most gruesome death so far is when the Leprechaun chainsaws a magician in half in front of an audience revealing stringy bits of gore between the two halves.  Yuck.

The other gag introduced is that if a Leprechaun’s green frothy blood gets inside your body (via an open wound in this instance) you will then slowly turn into a Leprechaun yourself like a vampire.  Your skin becomes blotchy and decrepit, you speak in rhyme, crave potatoes, develop some special powers and so on.  Aside from a few jokes like when a doctor runs an EKG and the readout says “Fuck U” spelled out in shamrocks nothing much is done with the Leprechaun turning.

They definitely punch up the humor here by having the Leprechaun don several silly costumes and do a rash of fake infomercials such as a televangelist.  There’s also the lame duo of mob adjacent thugs that have miserable seemingly improvised banter as if to say “see, these guys aren’t intimidating at all, they’re a bunch of goofs”.  And because we’re in Vegas they felt obligated for the Leprechaun to have a run in with an Elvis impersonator.  They both swivel their hips and all that crap.  The one thing I can say is John DeMita (tons of anime overdub work including The Animatrix), who plays a terrible magician, is legitimately funny in most of his scenes.

I’d say this is the worst so far.  They lean too far into the comedy instead of finding a better balance like part 2 did.  Nothing makes sense in terms of who the Leprechaun is and what he can do.  And I’m willing to accept that to a certain extent but damn it, I would love a little more consistency.  Everything feels too annoyingly made up as they go.