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Afro pick, magic, semi-auto pistols, bare hands, microphone stand, fire, claws, fork, four-leaf clover joint, chair
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Reviewed by: Pontifex Aureus
Ok…I will admit that I went into this review looking for an easy target to pick on; what better than something ridiculous like Leprechaun in the Hood, right? Well, surprise—it wasn’t actually all that bad! I take that back, it is bad…but I could sit through it once. The Leprechaun series was never one to take itself very seriously, but Leprechaun in the Hood takes it to new levels of stupid and almost ends up being decent if only it didn’t skimp on the gore and run out of comedic gas early on.
There isn’t much in the way of plot, but basically, a trio of young rappers rob a local gangster and steal his magic flute that has the power to make everyone like your music, no matter how terrible it is. As it turns out, the gangster himself stole it from the Leprechaun, who gets awakened during the robbery and sets out to get his flute back, discovering the joys of weed and rap along the way.
The movie starts off surprisingly well; inside the first ten minutes, we get to see a man stabbed to death with an afro pick and Ice-T pulling a baseball bat out of his afro Looney Tunes-style. After this, a few amusing scenes with the rap trio trying to pawn a guitar left me with high hopes that Leprechaun in the Hood might actually turn out to be pretty good. Unfortunately, the laughs die out quickly around the 20 minute mark and the movie becomes unbearably dumb. Where we started off well with silly but effective slapstick, we end up with lame rhymes and cross-dressing rappers by movies-end. Also, the horror and comedy aren’t particularly well blended; rather than both elements being in harmony, they seem to diminish each other, with horror and comedy taking turns at being dominant.
Ok, so the story’s bad and it’s not all that funny, but does it deliver the gore? Sadly no, it does not. For a horror movie, Leprechaun in the Hood is pretty stingy with the special effects. Many of the kills aren’t even shown at all, but are either implied or happen off-camera. Other kills are simply lame, like death by green CGI lightning or the Leprechaun’s favorite attack of pointing at someone and magically blowing a hole through them. Honestly, he might as well just be going around shooting people with a gun…hell—that actually sounds like a funny premise (Leprechaun with a Shotgun)!
But worst of all, after the initial strong beginning, the movie becomes boring and not very well made. In fact the direction is so poor that some scenes don’t really make sense at all. In one scene, a man is making out with a woman who starts to morph into a monster, therefore implying that she’s the Leprechaun in disguise, right? But no, because as the monster woman makes the kill, the camera cuts to the Leprechaun laughing inside of…somewhere, some kind of void. It’s not clear where he is or if he’s watching what’s happening. Later on however, the Leprechaun gets trapped inside a safe and there we see him inside that void we saw earlier. So in that earlier scene with the monster woman, they actually cut to the Leprechaun inside a safe that he wasn’t even in yet.
Leprechaun in the Hood, to the surprise of no one, is a bad movie and its over-all boringness and unimaginativeness makes it fall short of attaining even so-bad-it’s-good status. However, it really does start off well, it’s not the worst Leprechaun movie I’ve seen (cough, Leprechaun 4, cough), and I give the film credit for its wacky premise. The idea of an evil Leprechaun running around Compton is so juicy that you really wish that they’d done more with the idea. If you decide to watch the movie, do yourself a favor and watch the first 20 minutes, stop the DVD and then imagine a better movie in your mind. Oh…and in case you were wondering, yes, the Leprechaun raps and yes, it is every bit as painful as you’d think.
splatterjunkie 