The Curator of Schlock #218 by Jeff Shuster

Leprechaun: Origins

Don’t get your hopes up. It’s not an actual origin story.

The Suspiria Blu-ray came out this week. Synapse spent three years painstaking restoring the original film to full 4K glory under the supervision of the movie’s original director of photography, Luciano Tovoli.  I could be covering that classic this week, but I chose to cover movies from this current decade for the rest of the year. Oh well. I can always check out the Suspiria remake due out later this year, the one starring Dakota Johnson, star of 50 Shades of Grey, 50 Shades Darker, and 50 Shades Freed. Yup. Looking forward to it. Can’t wait.

By the way, Happy Saint Patrick’s Day! We’ve got another serving from WWE Studios this week in the form of Leprechaun: Origins.

Don’t be expecting Warwick Davis spouting limericks or whatever he did in those movies I’m trying desperately to forget. I think he made a pot of gold materialize inside some poor sap’s stomach. Not cool. Anyway, the leprechaun in this week’s feature is more beastly, more like a beast than a jolly gnomish creature. Huh? Gnomish is an actually word and I think I used it in the proper context.

The movie starts out with some Irish teenagers being chased by a monster because they stole some gold coins. They get killed and eaten by whatever is chasing them. Next up, we see some young American tourists backpacking through Ireland. I’ll never understand the protagonists in these modern horror movies. They’re all good-looking young Americans from wealthy families. They always end up traveling to Eastern Europe or South America and end up being getting their organs stolen or tortured to death.

No one likes you! Stay in Beverly Hills or you’re going to die!

So we have a group of four vacationers. There’s Sophie (Stephanie Bennett), a history major who will end up being the final girl. There’s Ben (Andrew Dunbar), a Harvard man, and that makes him better than all of us. Then there’s Jeni (Melissa Roxburgh), a girl with lots of gold piercings. Those gold piercings may come into play later in the movie. Jeni has a drunk punk boyfriend named David (Brendan Fletcher). Brendan Fletcher also played the Parasite on Smallville. I’m just saying.

One of the local Irishmen overhear that Sophie is a history major. He tells her about some cave nearby that has historic relevance. He buys them all dinner and offers them a cabin on his property so they can stay the night. They gladly accept, only to find themselves locked in the cabin in the middle of the night with a rampaging leprechaun that wants to eat their flesh.

Look, there’s polite and then there’s too polite. Too polite is offering you dinner and a free room for the night. If it sounds too good to be true, it means you’ll be eaten alive by an angry leprechaun. As I said before, stay in Beverly Hills.

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.