He enters his darken cavern, rhyming sadistically a warning to all; "try as they will, try as they might, who stills me gold wont live through the night". Behold the terrifying tale of the Leprechaun.

    Drunk Mr. O'Grady arrives home after visiting Ireland to bury his dead mother. His wife is shocked and foul tempered at him showing up in a limo, claiming they were now rich as he had caught a leprechaun while overseas & got his pot of gold. She thinks her dear husband has gone daft and goes to make him some tea to sober him up. While she's in the kitchen prepping the tea she hears the angelic childlike singing voice of our dear little green friend who surprises her & unfortunately scares her to death. He's come for his gold & O'Grady had better give it up but he's unwilling and finally is able to subdue Lep by using the magic of a four leaf clover to lock him up in a crate. However, before he can strike a match and burn the crate and subsequently the house down with it, he suffers a stroke, leaving the job of finishing off Lep unfinished.
    Fast forward to ten years later and we meet Tory Redding & her dad as they show up at the O'Grady  house (how about that!) having just bought it. Like any rich girl in a horror movie, Tory meets local good looking boy Nathan & his painting buddies Ozzy & Alex as they are working on the house for her dad. While Tory is creeping around in the basement flirting with Nathan, she comes across the dusty crate Lep's been stuck in since that lonely night ten years ago. They almost open it but after they are distracted by Ozzy & Alex, it is Ozzy who ends up accidentally removing the clover keeping Lep at bay and he bursts through the crate.
A natural story teller, Ozzy informs everyone of their newly uninvited guest but they don't believe him. Looking up into the sky, he is shaken yet curiously happy to see a rainbow in the sky. While him & Alex (who's like twelve) head off to find the end of the rainbow while Tory and Nathan get busy.........painting. Sure enough the boys find the end of the rainbow, along with some magically appearing gold pieces that Ozzy doesn't realize aren't lucky charms before accidentally swallowed one. Still, the gold is a damn good find in their eyes and they hide all but a piece in the well near the house until they can have the gold appraised.
    Now that Lep is free, he wants his gold but since the boys have hidden it he has to torment his new found friends to get it back. He sneakily feels Tory up & takes a bite out of her dad before following them into town on his trike (I though three wheelers were illegal now?) and pogo sticking the local collector in town to death to get back the coin Alex gave him to appraise while Tory & Nathan get to know one another at a local diner after dropping her dad off at the hospital for observation for hist bite wound. As they all return back to the old O'Grady house, Lep finds himself a little truck & loads it up, heading back to the house himself to get the rest of his gold. A deputy on duty watches him drive by before pulling him over & giving him shit for being short. Lep doesn't take kindly to the cracks about his height and gives him a skin clawing palm to the face before they play a game of hide and seek in the woods that leaves the deputy the loser.
    Our boy beats them home and while he waits for them to arrive he spends his time compulsively shining shoes. I guess when you're a shoe shiner by trade it's hard to fight the impulses. When they do finally get home the war begins as he chases them about, taunting them for his gold coins. Nathan takes the brunt of his brutal tactics by finding himself caught in a trap, literally. Eventually Alex & Ozzy tell Tory & Nathan about the gold in the well and; in Linda Hamilton fashion, Tory goes out to the well to retrieve the gold. She hands it over to Lep but he's disappointed that they caught him one short. Looks like Ozzy still hasn't passed that last bit yet.
    Desperate for a final solution, they realize that Mr. O'Grady had kept Lep at bay at one point and so Tory heads off to a care home to ask him how he did it. Lep follows in his ever impressive roller skates but he struggles getting there. Eventually he beats her yet again (the boy can move!) and gives O'Grady the beat down ten years in solitude will get ya but he's able to reveal the magic of the four leaf clover to Tory before he dies. One last time they all meet back up at the O'Grady house of love and Ozzy & Lep finally have their rumble while the others look for clovers. Alex ends up saving the day with a sling shot of clover straight into Lep's mouth, sending him down the well.........for now.

    All said and done, Leprechaun offers up great makeup effects as Warwick Davis who plays the Leprechaun is unrecognizable; wonderfully corny moments & some pretty damn fine acting from Jennifer Aniston. It's fun and witty and while it may not out right terrify you, it may make you second guess taking something that doesn't belong to you and the deceptively happy go lucky lore behind leprechauns.

Until my next post,

sit back, relax & don't forget to scream!