by: Dr. Boogie

...CONTINUED

Tory races back to the house to save the day. After all, how hard could it possibly be to find a four-leaf clover? They're so common, I sometimes wonder why three-leaf clovers aren't considered the lucky ones.

Yeah, she's screwed.

She's so screwed that even the movie is starting to feel pity for her. She finds a clover patch a ways away from the house, thanks to a mysterious green light shining over the area. And then the Leprechaun grabs her.

I'll bet you didn't see that coming... unless you've been reading this article for the past few minutes or so.

So more chasing, more of Tory falling down, more of the Leprechaun laughing. Yawn.

In her panic, Tory manages to find the cop car that the Leprechaun drove up here and, thinking a cop must be inside, she hops in herself.

Oops, he's dead. Yeah, he was even dumber than you and Nathan, sorry. Now the Leprechaun has caught up again, so Tory grabs the nightstick that was thought to have been discarded in the woods and jams it right into the Leprechaun's eye socket.

He doesn't sound any angrier, but I get the impression that losing an eye has made him a bit mad.

A bit mad indeed. It's an unusual show of strength, but that's still not the most remarkable thing about this scene. The thing that really struck me was what happened next.

"An eye for an eye, me dear!"

With the movie nearly over, the Leprechaun finally does something ghoulish: he rips out the dead cop's eye, and places it in the now-empty socket that once held his right eye. And it works! Man, now you can add "surgeon" to the Leprechaun's long list of professions.

He still hasn't mastered the art of dodging, though.

So the idiot brigade heads back to the "clover patch" to look for four-leaf clovers. Tory laments that they'll never find one, but Ozzie is confident that they will because "I found one once when I was a kid". Three things, Ozzie:

1. You're still a kid.
2. You're a habitual liar.
3. Stop saying stupid shit. There are enough people doing that already.

Anyway, the scene only gets worse when Ozzie criticizes Tory's lack of faith in finding the clover. Once she states facetiously that she does believe, however...

Man, look at all the light shining through that huge hole in the plot! It's blinding! Hey, how about Alex? Is he dead yet?

Not yet. He thinks that if he can setup the bear trap in the Leprechaun's barn workshop, maybe the Leprechaun will become as stupid as Nathan and put his face right in it. Well it's a cinch someone's face is going in that bear trap.

In a panic, Alex calls out to his witless manservant Ozzie to save him. Sure enough, Ozzie shows and reveals to the bloodthirsty Leprechaun that he swallowed the coin like some kind of precious metal gastrolith. Bad move, Ozzie. The Leprechaun puts Alex aside and takes off in pursuit of Ozzie. Tory shows up with Nathan in tow, hoping to put yet another eight ounces of buckshot in the Leprechaun's chest.

"How's yer leg?"

The Leprechaun rushes right past him, stopping for a moment to smack his bad leg out from under him. Is it bad that I'm actually rooting for the Leprechaun at this point?

He actually manages to tackle the fleeing Ozzie. You would think that the Leprechaun would produce some sort of knife and try to cut the coin out of Ozzie's stomach, but no, he has no knife. He does, however, have an unusually sharp shoe buckle! Looks like Ozzie is doomed to die a stupid death after all.

But wait! Alex has the clover! And gum! Can he use these two things to affect a proper rescue?

"Fuck you, Lucky Charms!"

Ladies and gentleman, the most competent member of the "3 Guys That Paint" house painting company, Alex. Not only does he touch the Leprechaun with the clover, he fires it down the creature's throat. The Leprechaun stumbles back toward the well, making the kind of sounds my stomach makes when it's full of spicy food. Is the clover working?

Boy, is it. It's working so well that somehow, one side of the well has suddenly disappeared so that the Leprechaun's dissolving corpse can fall in without any difficulty.

The nightmare is finally over.

"I... want... me... goooooooold!"

Aw, for...

Nathan is so sick of the Leprechaun that he heals his leg enough to walk normally so he can finish him off. He knocks the Leprechaun back into the well and grabs a can of gasoline from off the jeep.

Did I say gas? I meant rocket fuel.

Hours later, the police show up, not to do anything useful, just to stand around and hear the Leprechaun's finally proclamation:

"I'll not rest 'til I have me gold. Curse this well that me soul shall dwell, 'til I find me magic that breaks the spell."

And that was the end of the Leprechaun's first big adventure, but it was far from his last. His pursuit of gold would take him from "North Dakota" to California, then to Las Vegas, then to outer space, then down to Compton, and later back to another ‘hood.

This really is a ridiculous movie, but I have to say that Warwick Davis gives a fantastic performance as the Leprechaun, the only character who seems to recognize how silly all of this is. As for the protagonists, this is a group of people who are so goddamn stupid that you want to see them killed by the Leprechaun. But it never happens. In fact, only four characters are killed in the entire movie. Granted, they all pretty much deserved it too for being stupid, but that girl and those painters... they wanted to paint the house red and blue!

If I could've seen all of them killed in the final few minutes, I would've been satisfied. Oh well.

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