LEPRECHAUN

Warwick Davis

LEPRECHAUN (1993). Director: Mark Jones.

Tory Reding (Jennifer Aniston) has gone on vacation with her father (John Sanderford) in North Dakota, and is appalled by the filthy house they are occupying with its dust, cobwebs, and tarantulas. Where is the pool and the shopping mall? she wonders. Little does she know that there are worse problems, such as the fact that a leprechaun (Warwick Davis) is imprisoned in a crate in the basement. This nasty little fellow is after gold that was stolen from him twenty years before, and he attacks and even kills anyone who gets in his way. If even one coin is missing, this leprechaun will take revenge on anyone who may have stolen it. With a massive ad campaign that helped generate a profit, Leprechaun emerged a successful film and has so far spawned six sequels, some of which went direct to DVD. While one can't say it's a particularly good movie -- in fact, it's kind of ridiculous --  in its own strange way it's somewhat entertaining, and Davis offers a showy and charismatic performance as the evil leprechaun. The other characters include slow, chubby Ozzie (Mark Holton); his smart little brother Alex (Robert Hy Gorman) and Nathan (Ken Olandt), who has a kind of romance with Tory. There's some gore and violence, and the tone throughout is strictly black comedy as opposed to out and out horror. Some scenes have a little suspense and excitement, not to mention laughs, and the characters and actors are not without appeal.

Verdict: If we must have a movie about a killer leprechaun, this could be worse. **1/4.