LEPRECHAUN 2~ 1994, Rodman Flender, USA
Dutifully slapped together and rushed out the door in an attempt to satisfy the allegedly ravenous fans of the first movie (review here), Leprechaun 2 was clumsily plopped onto shelves way back in 1994, exactly one year and three months after the release of the original. It’s a good thing too, that Ewok money can’t pay Warwick Davis’ mortgage forever.
“Can we do like, 11 sequels to Willow? For fucks sake, I got full sized bills!!”
The plot- Leprechaun 2 is Leprechaun at his rapiest. The story concerns our little green fuck face and his quest to land a human bride, which he then plans to impregnate and surgically alter, so as to make her appear more Leprechaun like. Why not just date Leprechaun women in the first place? I really don’t know. Maybe there aren’t any. I have no idea how their system works, all I know is that it must be stopped, because it’s already hard enough to meet people in this day and age, we don’t need any percentage of our dating population being kidnapped and mutilated by fucking Leprechauns. Why isn’t Donald Trump working on a wall to separate us from the faerie kingdom? I wish I had the answers, folks, but I do not.
So we start out 1000 years ago in Ireland, on St. Patrick’s Day, which also happens to be Lep’s birthday. What a coincidence! And this is no ordinary birthday, our boy is turning the big one triple zero! To mark the momentous occasion, Leprechaun and his badly abused human slave are out to bamboozle a fair maiden into the loathsome and all binding contract that is matrimony using a time honored tradition of making her sneeze three times. If she sneezes thrice and no one says “God bless you,” her mind, body and soul belong to the Leprechaun, which is a fucked up and nonsensical rule. Even so, Lep’s human slave is happy to participate in the capture of his master’s bride to be, because he’s been promised his freedom once Lep ties the knot- but he suddenly has a change of heart when he learns that the apple of the Leprechaun’s beady little eye is none other than his own daughter, who is hot as hell and just so happens to sneeze pretty often. Shit! That tricky little Leprechaun. Predictably, the slave dude betrays his master and ruins his plan to entrap his bride, an act of cockblockary that costs him his life, and forces Lep to postpone his wedding a full one thousand years, because a Leprechaun is apparently subject to a lot of stupid rules.
So, we fast forward ten centuries to present day (Well- 1994. It WAS present day), and Lep is once again on the prowl to find lady love, this time in twentieth century America. Good luck, asshole. This time he sets his sights on the equally hot descendant of his previous potentially kidnapee, an empty-headed, flinty voiced babe named Bridget, who is already in the early stages of courtship with some bland dumbass called Cody. Cody sucks, folks. He sucks hard. He just doesn’t bring anything to the table, and that’s a problem for Leprechaun 2, because he’s also our protagonist, and nobody in the world would be sad to watch him die gruesomely. On the other end of the spectrum, however, we have Morty, Cody’s money grubbing, alcoholic con-man mentor, who is far and away the best and most enjoyable character in the film. But again, he’s a secondary character, and for most of the film, we’re stuck with fucking Cody.
So, anyway. Lep shows up, he rhymes a lot, Brigitte is kidnapped, and Cody and Morty spring into action to launch an elaborate scheme to somehow rescue Bridgitte, and, if possible, score some of that sweet, sweet Leprechaun treasure. It’s a horror film franchise with a 99% genetic match to a fucking cereal commercial.
The Lucky Charms commercial filmed on Lucky’s 1000th birthday is going to go down very, very differently.
So, the upside here is that there’s actually an idea behind Leprechaun 2’s plot- this is a good, old fashioned cautionary tale against the destructive powers of greed. Lep is greedy, Morty is greedy, Cody has to learn not to be greedy, and if you’re greedy, it doesn’t end well for you. That’s all well and good. Problems pop up, however, when you factor in how the character of Bridgitte is handled- she’s basically immediately downgraded to being an object that men fight over for the entire film. She could just as easily be a 20 dollar bill, or a really great sandwich. To the ultra sensitive eyes of the Millennial, this shit is like, PRIME trigger fuel, but back in ’94, absolutely zero fucks were given. Also, we had better music, and the Sega Genesis. It was an awesome time to be alive.
Another mark against Leprechaun 2 is that ALL the actors are total garbage, except, of course, for Mr. Warwick Davis, and Sandy Baron, who plays Morty. Actually, strike that, Tony Cox has a small role in this one, too- you might remember him from Bad Santa. Cox is a fine actor in his own right, but he doesn’t get much of an opportunity to shine in Leprechaun 2. What he does get to do is to play an integral role in the single most bizarre and disturbing men’s restroom scene I have ever seen this side of No Holds Barred (Review Here).
This isn’t a classic, but by all objective criteria, this is a much better movie than the first. It’s less childish, never as bland, and it features quite a few memorable scenes. Or at least I thought it did. When I rewatched it just now for the purpose of writing this review, I didn’t actually remember ever having seen any of these so called “memorable sequences” ever before, except for one; the one wherein Leprechaun uses his magical illusion powers to make one of Brigitte’s more date-rapey suitors believe he is slowly moving in to motorboat her bare chest, when in actuality, he’s gently ramming his face into the whirling blade of an upturned lawn mower. That was pretty awesome. Later, Lep uses his illusion powers to make out with Cody, though, so that mostly negates the coolness of the lawnmower kill.
Still, it’s mostly good. The one thing this movie has working against it in comparison to the first film is that this is fucking Leprechaun 2. That’s a pretty fatal flaw. With the first film, you could throw that puppy on for an annual “leave it on in the background” type deal at a St. Patrick’s Day party, and people might be onboard with it, but nobody puts on Leprechaun 2 every year. Your friends would just look at you like you were a fucking idiot… and let’s face it… you might be!
C
Our two kaiju briefly throw down, and Gamera somehow winds up paralyzed, at which point he topples over into the ocean upside down like an idiot. REALLY feels familiar, doesn’t it? Probably because we’ve seen this a thousand times before. Gamera has a long legacy of getting his ass kicked early on, which leaves him out of commision for the entire second act of his fucking movies, only to then come back strong in the third act and save the day. Apparently, we must save Gamera before he can save us. Guess how we manage to pull that off this time? If you guessed “children in a submarine,”, then you’re right on the money. This submarine sequence is middle of the road, it’s more entertaining than the one from 
Anyway, this one is actually pretty good, and thank goodness, because the next film in the Gamera franchise is widely known to be a stinker of the harshest, most regrettable magnitude. The preceding two or three films weren’t really home runs, either, so a halfway decent afternoon with Gamera really hits the spot right about now. Truthfully, this was a hard time for just about every film studio in Japan, and their creative output suffered across the board as a result. This movie is certainly a little more humble than what we saw Godzilla doing over in Toho Town around this time, but it isn’t really shittier. It feels like maybe this one last time, Daiei finally caught some traction. Some weird, crappy traction.
Until Gamera shows up. I shouldn’t really have to drag you through the plot here, if you’ve seen one, you’ve kinda seen ’em all, but I’ll sum up the particulars. Apparently, Jiger is vulnerable to sound, and is also a female, so that’s fun. She uses her weird rocket horns to lay her monster eggs inside Gamera’s freaking heart, which basically puts him into a near death, unresponsive state for a large chunk of the film. In hopes of rescuing everybody’s favorite whirling turtle beast, two young boys called Hiroshi and Tommy, hijack a submarine (this feels familiar) and pilot it into the open mouth of the now catatonic Gamera on a mission to reach his heart. When Hiroshi and Tommy discover a baby Jiger living tucked away inside Gamera’s freaking guts, they damn kill it, with a Walky talky. Now THAT is awesome. I wanted walky talkies super bad when I was a kid, and I was totally unaware that they could be used to murder monsters. Walky talkies just keep getting better and better! There’s also a point at which Gamera rams telephone poles into his ear canals to block out the noise of some Anti-Jiger Noise weapons the Japanese cooked up, and I greatly enjoy that, too.
adventures or not. 
This kid knows what I’m talkin’ about.
See how cool that looks? How did this manage to suck!?
That thing looks like it was purchased at a damn Hot Topic… And by now, it probably can be.
Plus, where was the Vatican on this one? Are they just not condemning anything anymore? Someone needed to do something about this.
You’re all gonna die, you idiots!!!
It’s like I’m seein’ double!
“I don’t wanna be a pirate!” – Guilala