Summerfest 3 Day One: Leprechaun 3

"It was the Leprechauniest Leprechaun since Leprechaun 2" - overheard during the post-film smoke break.


At some point during Leprechaun 3, I turned to the others and asked "So how exactly did they make it six films into this series?" It's not that Leprechaun 3 is any worse than most direct-to-video films, or even worse than other films in its own series, but there's not a lot of movie to watch. The film follows a simple pattern: The Leprechaun (Warwick Davis) walks away from his pot of gold, someone takes a shilling, loses it, and the Leprechaun arrives too late to retrieve it. Rather than asking about the next person who took the coin, Leprechaun kills them and then wanders around aimlessly through Las Vegas, stopping in front of landmarks, making lousy jokes or terrible couplets like "I want my gold shilling. Tell me where it is or there will be another killing."

Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith (Dead-End Drive In, Deathcheaters), Leprechaun 3 is almost a dry run for Wishmaster. Well, since none of the folks involved in Wishmaster had anything to do with Leprechaun 3, perhaps the term "rip-off" is more apropos: the Leprechaun grants wishes (a CD-ROM catches us up on all necessary leprechaun lore), but when he finds out the gold coin is no longer around, he inverts them ironically. For example, Loretta (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2's Caroline Williams) wants to no longer have sagging fake boobs and a terrible wig, so she wishes she looked more like Caroline Williams. Then Leprechaun shows up and makes her breasts, lips, and ass expand until she gets stuck in a doorway, then explodes. Then he says this:

"Now that was quite a load to have to explode. What a lovely lass, I had to blow up your ass but now I must hit the road!"

I suppose the story is really about Scott McCoy (John Gatins), a hayseed traveling to Los Angeles to go to college, until he decides to help magician's assistant Tammy Larsen (Lee Armstrong) get to the casino she works at, home of the Amazing Fazio (John DeMita). None of this has anything to do with the Leprechaun for about 70 of the film's 91 minutes, since Warwick Davis spends the first 30 minutes in a Pawn Shop and then another 40 minutes literally just walking around Las Vegas. He meets an Elvis impersonator, makes bad jokes, and generally doesn't kill anybody. It's exactly what you hoped for!

You might say the upside to Leprechaun 3 is how bad it is, but for my money the film lives and dies on the decision to turn Tommy into a leprechaun halfway into the film. You know this because after the Leprechaun bites him, he grows a unibrow, gets terrible teeth, and craves potatoes. Strangely, Trenchard-Smith couldn't find an actor that kinda looked like Scott but was leprechaun sized, so there's a giant leprechaun fighting Warwick Davis at the end. I never thought I'd actually type those words in one sentence, but there you go!

Up next: The Burning!