St. Patrick's Die!: Leprechaun in the Hood

Another year, another Leprechaun film.  Mondo Bizarro has covered three films in the series so far- Leprechaun 2, Leprechaun 4: In Space and now today's film.  We're covering fifth and penultimate film in the series today: Leprechaun in the Hood.  Just read that out loud and try not to laugh.  You can't.  It's impossible.  The film stars Warwick Davis and Ice-T, a pairing that has not been seen before or since.  What is the plot of this train-wreck, you ask?  Well, Ice-T steals a magic flute from the Leprechaun and becomes a famous rapper.  In the present, the flute is stolen again, putting our hero in between the two men (sort of).  This will probably hurt...a lot.  Get out your woodwind ex machina as we go to visit the...

The film begins in the 1970s, which they show us by having Ice-T wearing an afro wig.  It's odd how he appears to be the same age over twenty years later too!  Ice and a buddy accidentally wake up the Leprechaun (so much for continuity in the series, I guess) and he kills the guy.  That's what you get for hanging out with Ice-T!  The creature gets turned into a statue when a necklace is put on him.  In the present day, we meet our heroes- a trio of wannabe rappers.  Their whole plot involves trying to win a contest and go to Las Vegas...to win another contest.  Actually, this happens after they fail to get a record deal with Ice-T.  Why does he reject them?  Because one of them tries to touch the Leprechaun statue.  You're a great businessman!  Our heroes decide to rob Ice-T and use the money to buy new equipment.  They manage to steal a magic flute from him, as well as a bunch of jewelry, and escape...after they wake up the Leprechaun.  He immediately begins making pop-culture references...which he wouldn't be aware of.  How do you know who Tiger Woods is?!?  He rips off Ice-T's finger and tells him that he has to steal the flute back.  Oh yeah, the Leprechaun starts smoking pot too.  Cut to the face.

What follows is a pretty transparent and silly series of events.  Our heroes meet someone as part of their goal (i.e. the guy who sells speakers, the grocery store owner) and, two scenes later, the Leprechaun kills them.  The pair have a couple bits with Ice-T, but they always get away somehow.  Oddly, one scene involves the trio being confronted by both Ice and the Leprechaun (best movie title ever!) & Ice steps out of the way, apparently just leaving off-camera.  Who writes something so haphazardly?  We also get some other cliche characters that include a Preacher at singing black Church and a Pre-Op transvestite.  Our hero slowly figures out that the flute is magical and makes people like whatever music you play.  To review: Ice-T stole a Leprechaun's magical flute and became a rap mogul.  Words fail me, gentlemen.  I also have to take a moment to address a line that just sticks out to me: "I need to summon my zombie Fly Girls."  I had to just pause the film for a minute and say to nobody in particular (I wasn't watching this with company) "Someone wrote that.  Someone was paid to write that." After a couple rap numbers to pad out the run-time, our heroes win the contest to go to Vegas.  Nothing can kill their excitement.  Oh, hi Leprechaun.

Things turn sour when the trio lose the flute and one of them gets killed by the Leprechaun.  To be fair, the creature was leaving when the lead guy provoked him, leading to the death.  Yeah, I'm blaming you!  They work up a plan to get the flute back...which involves dressing up like women.  Waiter, it appears that you got some terrible, black comedy in my horror film!  Oh yeah, we also get a new Leprechaun Rule: They temporarily lose their powers when exposed to four-leaf clover essence.  They use this by making a 'doobie' that has four-leaf clover essence in it and giving it to the Leprechaun.  They escape, but run into Ice-T, who randomly forgets that he's in this movie.  I don't blame him.  During a hail of bullets fired, the other friend dies. Aw, I'll miss you...not.  Ice-T tries to get our hero to work with him to stop the Leprechaun, but just gets shot.  Don't worry- he's not dead...until the Leprechaun blows his heart out of his chest.  Now he's dead!  When he's hit, Ice conveniently tosses the necklace he was carrying into the air, causing it to land on the Leprechaun and turn him back into stone.  No, really.  In the Epilogue, our hero is now a big-time rapper.  More importantly, we get a shitty rap number by Warwick Davis over the credits.  The End.

Rap (at least in this movie) is crap.  The plot of this movie is awful and just doesn't work.  It's half-comedy, half-horror.  Of course, you know what I'm going to say next.  The humor is not funny and the horror is not scary.  The film is just insulting- plain and simple.  It's a good thing that I'm not black, because I'd be pissed.  I am part-Irish, however, so I retain the right to be a little mad at this.  There are just so many things wrong here.  Davis seems to have had fun in the role, even if his rhyming dialog is so trite and cliche that I could finish every one of them for him!  The Leprechaun has a big presence here, but a number of his kills are just very weak.  One guy is killed off-camera by a Fly Girl, while he just chokes another.  The whole 'shotgun blast' trick is nice, but nothing all that special.  What happened to the crazy kills like the pogo stick one or when he put his pot of gold in the guy's stomach?  The movie is just terrible.  It has some funny moments (the ones that aren't on purpose), but it mostly just hurts.  On the plus side, I have another 365 days until I have to cover this...

Up next, we return to the Mechanical Terror theme for a movie about a deadly hologram.  It's much more action-packed than that premise sounds, I assure you.  Stay tuned...