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LEPRECHAUN 2
aka
LEPRECHAUN 2: THE BRIDE OF LEPRECHAUN; ONE WEDDING AND LOTS OF FUNERALS
Rating: 
USA. 1994.
Director – Rodman Flender, Screenplay – Turi Meyer & Al Septein, Producer – Donald P. Borchers, Photography – Jane Castle, Music – Jonathan Elias, Visual Effects Supervisor – Paolo Mazzucato, Mechanical Effects – Ultimate Effects, Leprechaun Makeup Effects – Gabe Z. Bartalos, Makeup Effects – Todd Masters, Production Design – Anthony Tremblay. Production Company – Trimark.
Cast:
Warwick Davis (Leprechaun), Charlie Heath (Cody), Shevonne Durkin (Bridget/William’s Daughter), Sandy Baron (Morty), Adam Biesk (Ian), James Lancaster (William O’Day)
Plot: Every thousand years The Leprechaun is allowed to take a wife. William O’Day, who has become the Leprechaun’s slave, is shocked when he finds the Leprechaun’s intended bride is his daughter. However, the Leprechaun must make William’s daughter sneeze three times before she can become his. The Leprechaun reappears one thousand years later in present-day Hollywood on Saint Patrick’s Day. There it becomes fixated on Bridget, the descendant of William O’Day, and determines that she must become his bride. Bridget has just walked away from her boyfriend Cody after he was forced to cancel their date because of his drunken boss. In trying to get her back, Cody sees Bridget snatched by the Leprechaun. During the scuffle, the Leprechaun inadvertently drops one of his gold coins. Cody discovers that this gives him the power to rescue Bridget back from its clutches but, at the same time, the Leprechaun comes, wanting the coin back.
This was the second in the series of films that began with Leprechaun (1993). The Leprechaun films (see below for the other films in the series) were a clear attempt to create another Freddy Krueger-styled horror franchise – all set around 3’6” Warwick Davis’s Leprechaun despatching teen victims in effects-heavy ways while cracking bad puns.
The first Leprechaun was savaged by everybody but proved to be a hit on video shelves. The news is that the second film has not improved any. It is made with a B-budget competence but comes across as tatty. The Leprechaun makeup is not particularly convincing, although Warwick Davis at least plays with a good deal of gusto. However, the one-liners are excruciating – “It’s finger-lickin’ good,” says the leprechaun after ripping off a victim’s finger. “Had your iron today,” says hero Charlie Heath as he despatches the leprechaun at the climax via a suddenly discovered vulnerability to wrought iron. Most of the killings are extremely silly, particularly so one scene where the leprechaun materializes in a Formula One racing car (which is simply an ordinary car painted over with leprechaun symbols) to run a victim down. Another scene with the leprechaun granting Sandy Baron three wishes and then materializing a pot of gold in his stomach looks silly but has a certain nastiness to it.
In one of the most ridiculous sequences, the leprechaun manifests an illusion of Shevonne Durkin to tempt Adam Biesk. There is a laughable preposterousness to the scene where the Shevonne Durkin doppelganger takes her top off and is replaced by a body double – in so doing, going from an A-cup bra size to a D-cup – the film could not more obviously signal the substitution, which is then followed by an amusingly ridiculous scene where Biesk goes to place his head between her breasts and they suddenly become a twin set of spinning lawnmower blades. One of the more amusing parts about Leprechaun 2 was when it was released on video in the UK and distributors tried to capitalize on that year’s hit romantic success Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) by retitling it One Wedding and Lots of Funerals.
Director Rodman Flender had previously made the artificial insemination horror The Unborn (1991) and went onto make the possession comedy Idle Hands (1999). He had earlier worked in various capacities for Roger Corman’s Concorde-New Horizons. Most of Flender’s subsequent work has been in television and his only return to horror material has been the werewolf comedy Nature of the Beast (2007).
The other Leprechaun films are:– Leprechaun (1993), Leprechaun 3 (1995), Leprechaun 4: Leprechaun in Space (1996), Leprechaun in the Hood (2000) and Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood (2003).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2011
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