The Thing from Another World

Hot take: horror had a rough go of it in the 50’s.  Actually the 40’s through the 60’s was a long slog that definitely yielded some certified masterworks but the bulk of it was pretty bad.  And in my opinion the 50’s fared the worst of the three decades.  Giant insects and space aliens that simply resembled humans except for one exaggerated body feature was a lot of what was on the menu then.  Look, I understand that’s where we were with the filmmaking and what audiences liked to see at that time.  That’s all fine.  It just doesn’t hold up that well.  And at least on the surface The Thing from Another World fits into that mold.  A creature crash lands on Earth in the form of, well, a human being with claws and a square head.  What makes this particular picture rise above its peers though is the damn good story idea and execution.

Based on the novella “Who Goes There?” by John W. Campbell the setup involves an isolated group of scientists and military personnel stationed at the north pole who investigate a peculiar object that dropped out of the sky near them.  Turns out to be a flying saucer.  They accidentally blow up the ship when they attempt to recover it using thermite (oops!) but take the consolation prize of an otherworldly beast encased in ice back to their base.  They want to keep the thing frozen until the higher ups arrive and decide what to do with it.  Another accident occurs when one of the guys guarding the ice block unknowingly places an electric blanket on top thawing it enough to let the organism out.  It’s hostile and ping pongs between attacking everyone and hiding out in and around the encampment.

What I really dig about the film is the mystery, suspense and intrigue.  There’s good build up with learning that there’s something foreign in the ice, the holy shit discovery that it’s an alien, the panic of it now being on the loose, not knowing what it is or how to deal with it, figuring out what it wants, how to defeat it, etc.  It could be lurking around any corner and attack without notice.  And it’s made up of plant-like material.  Each piece of itself can function independently of the main body and it can regenerate if given enough time.  This is completely different from anything we’ve seen on our own planet and it’s scary.

Part of what makes this villain so creepy is that whenever it does show up it comes in fast and hard.  These quick bursts of action only last a couple of moments but they’re intense because they rev up the scene from 0 to 100 in a snap.  Of course the standout attack is when the alien busts through a door out of nowhere and our protagonists act immediately to set the thing on fire.  It’s an iconic visual and well deserved because fuck me did it look dangerous as all hell to perform.  I mean the actors are throwing buckets of flammable material onto a stunt guy in a suit who’s already on fire creating massive bursts of flames on top of flames.  The surrounding set and props all catch fire as well.

It can’t be overstated how influential The Thing from Another World was.  It frightened the pants off and inspired a whole generation of filmmakers.  You can see its legacy in Alien, Aliens (the alien motion tracker is very reminiscent of the Geiger counter here that shows how close the creature is), slashers in general (I wouldn’t classify this as a slasher exactly but it certainly has elements of one) and of course, John Carpenter’s impeccable remake.

Interestingly one of the other few good horror features from the 50’s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, also involves a plant based life form infecting Earth.  They replace humans with their own homegrown pod beings so you don’t know who’s an alien and who isn’t.  This is similar to “Who Goes There?” and Carpenter’s version of The Thing where the alien can precisely replicate any entity it comes in contact with.  Just wanted to point that out.

Boy did it take me a long time to finally get to this one and it’s a fun time overall.  However, I’m not saying it’s a totally incredible movie.  It’s extremely dialogue heavy, has smarmy characters and the creature design is more or less a lazy Frankenstein knock off instead of the shape shifter from the book.  But that was the style of the time and as long as you understand that going in you’ll be ok.  For any big horror fan it’s required reading because its influence looms large to this day.  You can trace a bunch of your favorite films and tropes back to this guy.

Leprechaun Series Wrap Up

The lure of the Leprechaun and his pot of gold was strong enough to warrant four pictures in four straight years.  Then a bizarre hood themed revival a short time later and finally a real deal rebootquel for modern audiences some twenty years later.  That’s a legacy for any franchise to be proud of regardless of how low rent it is. 

Original writer/director Mark Jones (Rumpelstiltskin (1995)) along with effects artist Gabriel Bartalos (Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives, Darkman) and Warwick Davis (Solo: A Star Wars Story) created a very well known and instantly recognizable horror icon.  He may not run in the same circles as your mega boogeymen but there’s an endearing quality to the Lep that people connect with.  In all honesty he comes across the most like a third rate Freddy Kreuger with his one liners and seemingly unlimited magical powers but that doesn't mean he isn’t fun to hang out with.  It’s just that we never learn much about him as a character or exactly how his powers or world in general works.

This leads me to my biggest gripe of the whole thing, consistency.  I gotta say I really kinda hate that each installment has its own set of rules surrounding the Leprechaun’s abilities.  For example in several films he clearly demonstrates he can teleport yet uses that power at random.  It’s especially frustrating when you see him chase after his victim on foot or drive any kind of vehicle.  Another thing he can do is control any object, including humans, through a jedi force or whatever but once again, it’s used at random.  There are a few instances where he mentions his gold is tied to his powers so whenever he’s missing his schillings he’s weaker.  But this device is used as an awful excuse for his prey to escape and for scenes to end.  It’s also never established that employing his powers drains his energy so he has to be careful with it.  By and large the guy seems to be infinitely magical so I don’t understand why anything is ever a problem.  Combine that with the fact that he can’t be destroyed by any conventional means and in this sense they made the character way too powerful.

A related weird issue is the constant resetting of the sequels.  It becomes a doubled edged sword.  The good news is none of them connect in any way whatsoever so you can pop in and out as you please without having to worry about being lost story-wise.  It also allows enormous latitude to do whatever the fuck you want each time out.  Let your imagination run wild.  In this case however that approach comes across sorta lame and lazy with the smaller budgets imposing limitations.  Shooting the Leprechaun into space is the craziest they ever got but I argue it’s not inventive enough despite a large humanoid spider monster showing up towards the end.  So then the decision to not build off the previous films is ultimately a detriment in my opinion.  The universe never gets filled out and we never get a deeper insight into the Leprechaun’s psyche.  It’s a shame.

Aside from some neat looking practical effects work Warwick Davis is really the main thing that makes most of these films fairly entertaining.  His enthusiasm for the part is palpable and that rubs off to a degree.  He’s perfectly wicked in his mischievous attitude.  I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say these movies are worth watching for his performances alone but check out a couple of clips online and then decide if you can handle an entire ninety mins of it.

For my money part 2 is by far the best.  They did everything they could with the premise in that one.  It’s strange that the original didn’t lean into the concept nearly enough so there was plenty for the first sequel to capitalize on.  The St. Patrick’s Day theme, the drinking, the monkey’s paw wish twisting, manipulating victims fantasies, half a plot revolving around something other than the Leprechaun hunting down his stolen gold, balancing the humor and horror well, etc.

And I guess I want to apologize a bit for ragging as much as I did on part 3.  It’s one of those cases where you look back and realize you never knew how good you had it.  An effort was put in to expand the mythology of the series which none of the others even attempt.  And sure, I’m not so into how goofy they went with the comedy but the wishing stuff, technical aspects and effects work is easily more enjoyable than a good chunk of what came after it.

Lastly, it’s too bad Returns didn’t make any waves because the filmmakers did as good a job as you can expect both bringing the Leprechaun into the twenty first century and paying homage to the first picture.  It’s not amazing or anything but maybe folks weren’t interested without Warwick Davis in the lead.  Being associated with the Syfy channel probably didn’t help much either.  Oh well.

While this was an amusing bunch of B tier horror to examine it’s not essential for anyone out there yearning for a better understanding of the genre or the times.  If these seem like your thing then by all means have at ‘em.  If you’ve shied away all these years then don’t worry, you’re not missing a ton.  Maybe give the original or part 2 a shot and go from there.  Happy (belated) St. Pat’s Day and if you happen to find a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow don’t touch it.  Once you get a Leprechaun into your life it’s hard to shake him loose.  He might rip your face off too.

Leprechaun Returns

After twenty five goddamn years we’re served up a true Leprechaun sequel.  All the other films produced in the wake of the original acted more as reboots that didn’t acknowledge any previous events.  But now, NOW!, we return to the house in the middle of nowhere North Dakota with the clover patch, the barn and the well where the Leprechaun melted.  A couple of decades of neglect hasn’t changed the place much.

In typical rebootquel fashion the daughter of Jennifer Anniston’s character, Lila (Taylor Spreitler (Amityville: The Awakening)), comes to the house because it’s been turned into a sorority associated with the local college.  She specifically transfers here and joins the sorority because of her connection.  Her mother died recently crippled by the fear of the Leprechaun potentially lurking in the shadows.  Lila had to take care of her because she refused to leave her house.  By visiting the ol’ homestead where all this shit started I think Lila’s looking for answers as to what drove her mother insane.

Since the house is isolated and a fair distance from the school the students are allowed to experiment with becoming self-sufficient as part of their curriculum.  So they must grow their own food, provide their own electricity through solar, dispose of their own waste and source their own drinking water.  Additionally they haven’t gotten around to setting up the equipment that would give them cell service and internet.  So naturally there’s no calling for help when shit goes down.

Now I know what you’re thinking, the well with the Leprechaun carcass is gonna cause trouble.  Ok, yes but they kinda messed this part up in my opinion.  First I should say that Ozzie (Mark Holton (Teen Wolf)) is the only recurring character from the old cast.  He’s the dimwit painter who accidentally swallows one of the gold coins.  He ends up giving Lila a lift from the bus station to the house.  When he gets there the well geysers up and some water gets in his mouth which allows the Leprechaun to come back to life and burst through his stomach.  There’s some bullshit the Lep spews about how he could return at his discretion and only decided that now was the right time.  Look, you could’ve simply had Ozzie ask for a glass of water when he drops off Lila and not realize it’s from the well, which presumably hasn’t been used in twenty five years.  The Lep’s essence gets in the guy and slippitly slap he’s back in business.  This is such an easy fix.  Anyway, the Leprechaun wants his gold back and attacks everyone at the sorority.

The big question on your mind is how’s the new fella in the lead role and the answer is Linden Porco (Nightmare Alley) does a pretty great job.  He took some getting used to but by the end he definitely grew on me.  He’s not quite in the same league as Warwick Davis but he can handle the menace fine and deliver a nice giggly high pitched laugh after each quip.  I had difficulty understanding him half the time but that’s most likely due to the heavy makeup and fake razor teeth he had to wear.

Getting a bit more technical the humor feels off.  All the modern meta jokes I didn’t care for that much and also a bunch of the characters behaving like assholes I think is supposed to be funny.  However, the combination of the cinematography being dark and totally serious and the movie opting to be pretty gory doesn’t completely add up.  Comedy mixed with blood and guts can certainly be a winning combo if done carefully but it doesn’t gel that well here.  Humor is extremely tricky to land where camera setup, editing, performance, soundtrack and rhythm all need to work together in a precise manner.  And it’s not that the other Leprechaun films are hilarious or anything it’s just that this one seems like they’re trying hard to jam in jokes all over the place where they don’t fit.  The one gag that made me chuckle though is when the Leprechaun is momentarily distracted by disorganized shoes in a closet and goes to neaten them up.  And when he gets to a pair of Crocs instead of putting them away he just throws them in the garbage.

One major aspect that must be applauded is they chose to do almost all of the effects practical.  One dude gets split in half vertically so the front part of his body and the back part of his body separate and they do it with models and props and tons of fake blood and everything.  Even the few moments where they use a green screen or CGI it doesn’t look terrible.  The new design of the Leprechaun is cool and pointier, heads roll, green blood flies, entrails spill, etc.  This is easily the strongest aspect of the picture and might be worth checking out for alone.

If you’re a fan of the Leprechaun series or into the newer rash of updated horror classics that are a sequel to the original then you’ll probably dig this.  Similar to its brethren they incorporate topics of today like going green, mental health, apathy towards major global issues, they invert the cast of the first film by having most of the protagonists be women and so on.  It doesn’t do anything new or unique and in some instances wears its influences on its sleeve perhaps a touch too much like An American Werewolf in London, Evil Dead, Army of Darkness and the Leprechaun looks more like the Creeper from Jeepers Creepers than previous iterations.

Overall this is pretty ok.  I had a decent enough time.  It’s at least as good as its predecessor and certainly better than parts 4-6.

Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood

That Leprechaun hood movie must have done well enough because three years later they did another one.  It’s still completely its own thing though not associated with anything else.  This time we begin with the Leprechaun being defeated by a priest who throws holy water on him at a construction site for an upcoming youth center in LA.  A year later a group of friends have a bbq on the still unfinished site (funding ran out) and one of them falls through a hole.  She discovers a small chest of gold and divides it up between her and her friends.  They use it to splurge on clothing, cars and (I’m not kidding) large black trash bags full of weed.  The theft brings the Leprechaun back to life and he hunts down the gang.

Unfortunately there are lots of problems here.  The story and characters are your run of the mill late teens/early twenty somethings for this type of picture looking to break free from their downtrodden lives.  One works for a shitty boss at a hair salon, one slings drugs, one does nothing but goof around and get high and one goes to school.  Nothing interesting is done with this setup.  The discovery of the gold is a game changer that could provide a better future but they don’t have it long enough to where we see a true impact on their lives.  They only get as far as buying frivolous stuff for themselves.

The pacing is off.  There’s a long stretch in the beginning where the Leprechaun isn’t in the film for like thirty mins.  The opening with the priest battling the Leprechaun must have been tacked on later to address this.  And then once he starts to show up he’s kind of inserted randomly into scenes.  Finally in about the second half we do get the typical Leprechaun chasing after his targets routine from the other installments.  This ramp up is sluggish and the dull characters and story aren’t sufficient in holding your attention.

Continuity and editing are some of the biggest issues.  Clothing and hairstyles will match in scenes that are supposed to take place on different days, one character gets arrested for possessing pounds of marijuana (something that carries a sentence of years or even decades of prison) but a short time later he’s among his friends and the situation is never brought up again, several different scene transition swipes are used arbitrarily (sometimes within the same scene) and a psychic with Leprechaun knowledge sardonically dismisses someone’s suggestion that a cross could harm him yet the very first scene depicts a priest conquering the Leprechaun with holy water meaning at least some Christian trappings have an effect (further evidence the opener was an afterthought to hastily stick more Leprechaun in the film).

Out of all this shit though maybe the aspect that annoys me the most is the Leprechaun’s teleporting ability.  We’ve seen this power in other entries and he uses it quite a bit in this one.  But of course he doesn’t use it all the time which I don’t get.  There are moments when he gets temporarily stopped by a door when he could teleport in or out.  I mean the sonuvabitch could easily escape any circumstance and kill whoever at the drop of a hat but just doesn’t.  It could be that it’s too much of a strain on his energy but that’s never established.

To end on a positive note I do like the updated look they give the Leprechaun’s outfit.  He sports a darker, dirtier green velvet suit.  Gone are the striped stockings, buckles on the shoes and hat.  It’s a more menacing look that matches his other grotesque features almost like he’s a rotting corpse that rose up from a grave.  Although I guess that sorta accurately describes what happens to him.

And the filmmakers deliver a few good hood related gags that mostly one up the previous film.  Like the Leprechaun rips a bunch of bong hits and gets giggly high and he gets blasted by a whole gang of thugs with machine guns.  The most original hood-related idea is placing the Leprechaun underneath a lowrider so as the protagonists are trying to race away from him they hop the car up and down while zooming along the road to try to smash him.

Leprechaun in the Hood

Boy I remember when this came out and it piqued everyone’s interest, everyone.  I think since hood movies were passé by 2000 that only made the prospect more intriguing.  Similar to Leprechaun 4: In Space the title says it all and certainly sounds like a joke.  More fish out of water shit.  So does it work?  Not really.

Of all the movies so far this one has the most story.  Three friends form a hip hop outfit and approach record mogul Ice-T (Surviving the Game) to show off their demo.  He’s willing to work with them but after the group shows hesitation over proposed changes to their image he withdraws his services.  The rappers decide to get revenge by breaking into Ice-T’s office to steal his shit.  One of the pieces they swipe is a medallion that’s hung around a statue of a Leprechaun.  As in part 3 once removed the Leprechaun comes to life and chases after the guys who stole his gold.

Three pals trying to make it in the music biz while struggling with life in the hood is deeper than any other plotline explored in the series.  It’s also sorta generic.  You need strong characters, writing and performances to pull off a story like this and they come up short.  There’s an extra angle involving the Leprechaun’s magic flute that the three friends use to hypnotize their audience into thinking they’re the best performers ever (this is how Ice-T got rich (the character in this film, not the real life person, at least that I’m aware)).  In a dramatic picture I could see this being an idea worth exploring.  Do you use the flute to obtain wealth and fame?  If you do then would you feel like a fraud?  None of this is delved into so whatsoever.

The feeling I get is this was not originally a Leprechaun script.  It was some old thing the filmmakers decided to jam the wee lad into.  I swear he has the least amount of screen time compared to the other installments.  There are long stretches where he’s simply forgotten about and extra scenes are added using either POV shots or other actors to give the illusion he’s just out of view.  Bummer.

In that same vein the film isn’t technically up to snuff.  For example it seems that either they forget to get certain shots or some of the shots they did get were unusable because the editing is kinda terrible and baffling at times.  Also, several deaths oddly occur off camera.  And there are two separate scenes of guys in drag which is redundant.  And the same nighttime cityscape establishing shot is used over and over again to help link scenes.  And none of this is good.

While this is undoubtedly a hood film with the Leprechaun smoking weed, banging a horde of chicks, our protagonists battling to break free from their surroundings, etc. the end product doesn’t come together.  The strangest aspect is that the concept came along at least six or seven years too late.  I mean the Leprechaun even does a full rap at the end with fly girls by his side doing a choreographed dance routine.  Yes it’s awful and somewhat embarrassing and shit that people did like a decade prior.  It’s so fucking weird.

Leprechaun 4: In Space

*sigh* they don’t even call him a Leprechaun.  He’s an extraterrestrial creature now hanging out on some planet attempting to woo a space princess of some other alien race.  He wants to be king and bribes the princess to team up to take over her kingdom.  During the nefarious plot discussion space marines invade his cave lair because I forget why.  They blow him to bits, “rescue” the princess and return to the ship.  Actually right before that one of the marines takes a piss on the Leprechaun’s remains and this somehow acts as a conduit for the Leprechaun to invade the marine’s body.  Later the imp bursts out of the poor schmuck’s groin and attacks everyone on the spaceship.

The thing I can’t quite wrap my head around is the setup.  The two ideas presented are incompatible in my opinion.  The Leprechaun still dresses, talks and acts the same as he had before.  Tiny green suit, buckle hat, buckle shoes, striped stockings, grotesque wrinkly skin, sharp razor like fingernails, evil monologuing, quippy attitude, the whole works.  But since he’s supposed to be some other creature (I think?) then why are all of his attributes exactly the same as the other films?  If he had started on Earth and somehow got launched into space then that would be perfectly acceptable.  But bizarrely that’s not what they decided to do.  I don’t think the word Leprechaun is used once.  This is similar to Jason X where an earthy character is plucked out of its natural environment, placed into a radically different scenario unaltered without explanation and it’s just too dumb to be that much fun.

And aside from not thinking about what they were doing story wise the filmmakers were in over their head in terms of the type of movie they were making.  This is a special effects heavy assignment that calls for lots of intense makeup work, large scale creature sculpting, puppeteering and a heaping spoonful of CGI.  That last bit definitely looks the worst.  The crude 90’s spaceship flying around and the morphing of objects to make them appear to shrink or enlarge are atrocious.  On the other hand the half human, half machine Dr. Mittenhand (Guy Siner (Lost Highway)) with his upper body sort of bolted onto a motorized medical cart is decent.  The large scale spider/humanoid monster is also kinda cool if on the rubbery side.  I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the budget went into these couple of bigger practical effects.

One thing that’s sort of a funny idea is towards the end they blow up the Leprechaun to be a giant.  Get it?  He’s usually only three and a half feet tall or something so they went in the opposite direction by making him fifty feet tall.  Obviously the first thing he does is look inside his pants to marvel at his now enormous wang.  But besides that you can’t do a whole lot with him at that size so he mostly lumbers around the cargo bay searching for a space marine to smoosh.

Depending on your preference you may have to take what I’m saying with a grain of salt because while I like sci-fi fine it’s not my most favorite genre.  To be totally honest I have no patience for a low budget space adventure like this with junky sets, plasticky costumes and cheap looking effects.  It’s a very hard type of picture to pull off convincingly because you need to have a strong vision.  I understand this is more or less a spoof movie that simply wants to have a good time with a ridiculous premise and a few gags but space fantasy stuff is a real tough sell for me.

Blatantly knocking off Alien, Aliens, Terminator 2, Star Wars and Gremlins 2 doesn’t help either.  Again, this is more making fun of other films than attempting to do its own thing.  As stupid as part 3 is at least it introduces new ideas into the franchise with the vampire-like transformation of a human into a Leprechaun and modifying how the wishing works.  With part 4 they simultaneously stretched themselves too thin on the technical side and went too far afield with turning the Leprechaun into an alien.

One last thing, the poster is yet another aspect that’s a complete head scratcher.  It depicts the surface of the moon with the old 60’s lander on it and the US flag but that has nothing to do with the movie.  Apparently the genesis of the idea for this one was to parody Apollo 13 which came out the year before.  Maybe the poster was cooked up before they made the film but then they forgot to change it.

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.