Lousy Lottery 40: Leprechaun 4: In Space!
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 40! This week we get a little action with 1996’s Leprechaun 4: In Space! But first, let’s talk plot.
It’s the year 2096 and a group of, no I’m not kidding, this is what they called them, Space Marines are on a ship for reasons that aren’t explained on a ‘search and destroy’ mission on a planet that isn’t named for reasons that also aren’t explained. They arrive and instantly seem incredibly on edge and ready for a fight. Why? Again, no reason given. It’s unclear, but it seems like the person they’re hired by or working for or whatever you wanna call it is some kind of evil genius. Why this evil genius is obsessed with searching this planet and destroying it’s lifeforms is unclear.
Once the Space Marines arrive on the planet’s surface they interrupt our beloved Leprechaun as he’s wooing a space princess. It’s clear he is wooing her because he wants to become king of this planet, lusting for power and riches. You might be asking yourself some very reasonable questions right now. Like, how did the Leprechaun get there from Earth? Or perhaps, why would an immortal, mythical creature who can use magic to make people do things and create an endless supply of weapons and gold need to woo anyone? Well, I must agree, those are reasonable questions.
So, anyway, the Space Marines arrive and interrupt his woo sesh and he doesn’t appreciate it. Fight ensues, terrible choreography abounds and our ol’ pal the Leprechaun gets blowed up. Lucky for him some Space Marine decides to take a leak on his corpse, because it gives the Leprechaun’s, uh, spirit or maybe essence a chance to enter the guy’s dick and hide out in his balls. As one does. Huzzah’s all around and the Space Marines return to the ship with the princess as a hostage. Now, you may be asking yourself. Wait, why would they leave the planet? I thought it was a search and destroy mission to wipe out the planet’s lifeforms? Again, great questions.
Back on the ship, the crew learns that their evil scientist boss is actually barely human. Most of him is a machine and he’s got a real MODOK vibe going. He learns they retrieved a space princess and homeboy wants to use his scientific prowess to extract her DNA, which is apparently a blue liquid that can just be poured into a jar like Kool-Aid, and further improve himself. Hey, evil scientist gon’ evil scientist, I suppose. Well, our magical antagonist won’t have his lady friend being dissected, oh no! So, out of the dick he comes (pun begrudgingly intended) and now the Leprechaun is loose on the ship!
Leprechaun uses his magic and superpowers to take out one Space Marine after another. You would think that he’d have an easy go of it, given that he’s, you know, an all powerful magical creature, but it seems to take all his cunning, somehow, to take them down. Frankly, he doesn’t even succeed. They also sure seem to try and shoot at him a lot, even though they’re in a spaceship and, well, that’s just ill advised. Either way, he mixes a spider and a scorpion into some of that DNA I keep hearing about and injects it into the evil scientist and turns him, super scientifically, into a sort of human-spider-scorpion hybrid. More accurately, a human-spider hybrid, as they don’t even mention the scorpion again, nor do they even try to have him look like one.
Now Leprechaun goes to take out the last of the crew. During the showdown, someone accidentally hits him with a growth ray that hasn’t been mentioned, used or explained before and turns him into a giant. I must say, I enjoyed the whole giant dwarf thing better when Marvel did it in Endgame, but whatever. Now that he’s huge, he ought to have an even easier time taking out all the crew and Space Marines, right? Nah. They open a hatch and he gets sucked out into space. For no damn reason that causes him to explode and our parting shot is my favorite of the entire film, a giant Leprechaun hand giving the middle finger.
Really, that final shot is sort of poetic to my experience of the movie. Watching this movie was almost like watching the filmmakers give us, the audience, the middle finger for the for the entire runtime. I remember really enjoying this movie when it came out. I haven’t seen it since. It came out in 1996. I would have been 17, a drug dealer, in and out of juvenile detention and surely higher than an eagle’s nest when I saw it. So, well, I kinda get why I might have enjoyed it back then. Now that I’m older and not living that lifestyle so much, I just straight up didn’t care for it.
There was absolutely no gore, they rarely if ever even showed the kills. Seriously, how is this movie rated R? I’ve seen more gore in an episode of Goosebumps. There’s also absolutely nothing sexy in this movie from start to finish. Yes, I’m including in that description the one nude scene which, honestly, may well be the most gratuitous bit of nudity in a movie ever. There’s not a single second of this flick that’s scary, not even a single jump scare. It’s also just not fun. The jokes are corny, the bits are dated and often homophobic or misogynistic, and there’s absolutely no one to root for.
Look, I love b-movies, I love ‘em! But they have to be fun or scary or both. One doesn’t ride a roller coaster to have a deep existential experience. No, one rides a roller coaster to have a blast. If that coaster is boring and neither fun nor scary, it’s okay to say, even by coaster standards, that was shit. Well, this movie was shit. As I’ve gone through these 40 flicks for Lousy Lottery, I’ve watched nearly them all with my friend Drew. When Leprechaun 4 ended, he declared that this flick is the worst in Lousy Lottery history. I don’t agree, not as long as Llamageddon exists, but I think his declaration does make an apt statement about how enjoyable this movie was, even after a bowl of weed and a few beers.
Let me say this, though, Warwick Davis is a goddamn icon and a true gem. I enjoy watching him play literally any role. I’ve never not enjoyed his acting, ever. That’s the same here. When he’s on screen, when he’s talking, I enjoyed it, but overall this movie is not terribly enjoyable. It’s not fun, it’s not funny, it’s not scary and it’s definitely not gory. So, if you’re a Leprechaun purist and need to see them all, by all means, include this in the bunch. That said, if you could care less about Leprechaun the series and are just looking for a fun time of a flick, well maybe peruse the rest of the Lousy Lottery’s and find some of the solid gold in the mix. If you just gotta check it out, though, head over to Amazon Prime where, strangely enough, all the Leprechauns are for now.
Don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 41! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
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