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LEPRECHAUN 3
Rating: 
USA. 1995.
Director – Brian Trenchard-Smith, Screenplay – David Dubos, Producers – Jeff Geoffray, Walter Josten & Henry Seggerman, Photography – David Lewis, Music – Dennis Michael Tenney, Visual Effects – Kim Bailey, Mechanical Effects – Frank Ceglia, Makeup Effects – Atlantic West Effects (Supervisor – Gabe Bartalos), Production Design – Ken Archele. Production Company – Trimark.
Cast:
Warwick Davis (The Leprechaun), John Gatins (Scott), Lee Armstrong (Tammy Larson), Caroline Williams (Loretta), John De Mita (Fazio the Great), Michael Callan (Mitch), Marcelo Tubert (Gupta), Tom Drugan (Art), Roger Hewlett (Tony)
Plot: The remains of the leprechaun are sold to a Las Vegas pawnbroker and then accidentally revived. A shilling from its pot of gold passes through the hands of various people in one of the casinos. The coin’s ability to grant the possessor’s wish is discovered by accident whereupon it immediately becomes sought by the greedy and ruthless. As the leprechaun fights to get its shilling back, it gives each wisher a sadistic death.
Brian Trenchard-Smith is an Australian director, the greater part of whose output could be best described as hackwork. In between the cult action film The Man from Hong Kong (1975) and churning out episodes for Australian-shot US tv series like Time Trax (1993) and Mission: Impossible (1988), Trenchard-Smith made a variety of undistinguished films such as Turkey Shoot/Escape 2000 (1983) and BMX Bandits (1983). However, tucked in between this are a couple of decent small films that show Trenchard-Smith capable of promise – the subtly effective children’s film Frog Dreaming/The Quest (1986) and the clever near-future satire Dead-End Drive-In (1986). Following Brian Trenchard-Smith’s migration to the US in the 1990s, his output has consisted mostly of production-line tv movies. With the amazingly silly Night of the Demons 2 (1994), Trenchard-Smith jumped on the post-Elm Street camp horror bandwagon. This approach was clearly enough to net Trenchard-Smith directorship of not only Leprechaun 3 but also its immediate sequel Leprechaun 4 (1996).
As with the other films in the series, Leprechaun 3 is a lame attempt to spin out another Elm Street-styled horror franchise with a boogey man despatching an array of victims amid bad puns and cartoonish gore set-pieces. The typically gimmicky showcase despatches get very silly – one victim turned into a human one-arm bandit uncontrollably spilling coins out of his mouth; another by a killer android/mannequin torso that electrocutes him during sex. In the most amazingly silly effect that one has seen on screen in some time, Caroline Williams gets her wish for a perfect figure where she is given a butt and set of breasts so big she is unable to turn around, before being blown up.
The other Leprechaun films are:– Leprechaun (1993), Leprechaun 2/One Wedding and Lots of Funerals (1994), 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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