EDITOR’S NOTE: Paul Andolina already covered this film way back on March 17, 2019 but now we’re doing a whole week of these movies. 

Leprechaun was supposed to be a straight horror film, but what made it work was Warwick David bringing more humor to his role and lots and lots of gore. In fact, I would argue that more blood and guts can improve almost every movie.

Ten years before this movie starts, Dan O’Grady has come back from Ireland with a stolen pot of gold, which he buries just in time for leprechaun to kill his wife and try to murder him, too. He uses a four-leaf clover to stop him, traps the evil mini-monster — whose name is Lubdan — in a crate and then promptly has a stroke.

Later, J.D. Redding and his kids — yep, that’s a very young Jennifer Aniston — move into the farmhouse and, is the way that horror films work, free the leprechaun, who promptly going wild to get his gold back.

Writer and director Mark Jones was influenced by the small monsters in Critters and a Lucky Charms commercial to make this movie. Well, it worked. It worked so well we’re doing every one of the seven sequels on the site this week.

There are some interesting thanks in the credits. George Lucas is one of them, as he let Davis make the movie despite having him under contract. And Dan Quayle sped up a working visa for Davis.

Leprechaun was Trimark’s first homemade movie and 1993’s first movie release. They went all out hyping it, with everything from having Davis ring the American Stock Exchange opening bell* to NBA teams having Leprechaun Nights and even bypassing Domino’s Pizza and Subway corporate to reach out directly to their franchises to sell the movie. It worked, because this low budget film was the number one movie of the week when it premiered.

*Lucky Charms cereal ripped this off, which has to sting. They had allowed a scene with their cereal in the movie until they saw it, which is why the line “Fuck you, Lucky Charms!” is in this.