Leprechaun: Back 2 Tha' Hood

Leprechaun In Tha Hood (2000) was arguably the worst of the Leprechaun movies (Except the remake) so another one had me fearing the worst.

This was also the last official Leprechaun movie, the last one to feature Warwick Davis and it's hardly a fitting end for the little fella.

It tells the story of a group who find the Leprecauns gold and become stalked by him. Pretty formulaic stuff, but the main difference here is how dark is.

The Leprechaun movies are comedy horrors and aren't to be taken seriously, with over the top death scenes and regular quips they are supposed to be silly fun. This has minimal comedy, Leprechaun doesn't quip and the deaths are far from comedic. That was a really strange decision by it's creators and in this guys opinion and a really really stupid one.

If you enjoyed Leprechaun In Tha Hood you might enjoy this but as a final entry to the series this was somewhat undeserving.

The Good:

Has its moments

The Bad:

The lack of comedy hurts the film

I struggled to care about anyone

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

No Leprechauns were harmed in the making of this motion picture. The Leprechauns featured in this production were handled with care and concern for their safety and well-being

Saw this for the first time few months back while on a marathon of the series. The film is once again set in the hip hop area but nowhere connected with the earlier one. Here we get to see the origins of leprechauns in animation. In the present day we see a priest gets hold of the gold while managing to send off the leprechaun back to the hell pit before succumbing to his injuries. His intention of building a youth centre gets sidelined due to his untimely death. One year later few friends enjoying a barbecue at an abandoned youth centre discovers the leprechaun's gold and they use it to fulfill their fantasies unaware that none can enjoy the leprechaun's gold. Jokes n nudity is missing but it has some gore but nothing memorable. Stabbing by a bong, jaw gets removed, stabbing by a flashlight, a heart gets ripped off but the best is the ripping off the entire leg of a karate kicker. This time our leprechaun does get a beating, he gets kicked, he gets mowed down by a bike n later by a car, his eyeball gets removed, he gets shot by a shot gun, automatic machine guns n a pistol, he is punched, fried n concretised in a pool of cement.

Hairdresser from tha hood Emily Woodrow (Tangi Miller) and her ghetto pals discover a chest full of gold coins and, ignoring a warning from a psychic woman to deny their newfound wealth, find themselves threatened by a malevolent leprechaun.

What has made the Leprechaun sequels bearable thus far is their blatant silliness and camp characters, with the focus on twisted humour rather than genuine horror. Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood plays everything a little too straight for its own good, with not nearly enough in the way of knowingly dumb nonsense: the death scenes are forgettable, and with some of the least likable protagonists of the whole franchise (drug smoking, gun toting thugs with few redeeming qualities), Back 2 tha Hood proves to be quite the painful experience.

The funniest scene in the whole sorry mess is when Leprechaun (Warwick Davis, returning for the paycheck) smokes a bong, but we already saw the little guy get stoned in the previous film (which handled the whole 'G' thang with a lot more fun).

`. . . he's the man behind the mask!' Oh wait, that's the song from F13pt6. Nevermind.

Here we are on another visit to the land of horror, where the monsters never die and no two sequels explain the title character the same way, but this is a given for anyone remotely familiar with franchise horror. No, you don't get a cookie for guessing that other than the title character and on-screen references, this film has no narrative connection to its predecessors.

In reviewing Leprechaun 5, I expressed my overall disappointment, but stated that `Leprechaun still has enough moments to get my rental at least for one more film.' Well, the Lep's second trip to the hood is far more entertaining than the first. The humor is fresher, more precisely delivered, with plenty of little nudges at the Leprechaun's height which I found the funniest – especially coming from Warwick, himself, with quite a bit of enthusiasm so it's all in good humor. Okay, that and an ancient creature discovering our technology and customs is interesting (and not painfully done as in the first ‘Hood' Leprechaun movie).

The script/characters are more intelligent than some previous films (don't get your hopes up; it's not saying much) . . . overall it's one of the more entertaining Leprechaun sequels (again, that's not saying much.)

I dunno ‘bout other fans of the series, but Warwick Davis is my interest in the Leprechaun films and anything else that isn't hideous is a bonus. Other than typical complaints and shortcomings that all horror sequels showcase, I didn't have much to gripe about . . . so the sixth Lep outing satisfied my expectations.

This was the sixth and final installment that starred Warwick Davis in the titular role.

As the title says, the movie partially recycles the plot from the previous film. A Los Angeles priest named Father Jacob engages Lubdan the Leprechaun in battle and then banishes him to hell before dying of his wounds. A year later, as par the course, the gold is discovered in a sinkhole by a group of four friends consisting of a drug dealing motorcyclist named Rory (Laz Alonso), his wimpy pot-head friend Jamie (Page Kennedy), Jamies girlfriend Lisa (Sherrie Jackson), and Rory's ex-girlfriend Emily, who ignored the previous warnings from a psychic named Esmeralda (Donzaleigh Abernathy). The four friends split the money and spend it recklessly, awakening Leprechaun once again and setting him on yet another rampage throughout Los Angeles to reclaim his gold.

Like the three protagonists in the last movie, the main cast isn't very likeable. Rory is a drug-dealer, Jamie is a dumb, whiny pothead, and Lisa seems like a gold-digger. Only Emily is sympathetic and wants to get out of the hood and go to college, but even she's far from a saint. The rest of the cast are just nasty, one-dimensional jerks and extras set up to be killed by the Leprechaun, like a couple of fat beauty salon customers who mock Emily's ambitions, and some gang members led by Watson (Shiek Mahmud-Bey), who lacks any of the charisma that Ice-T presented as Mack Daddy in the last movie.

As always, Warwick is a riot to watch as he supplies 90% of the films humor. This time around, he's surprisingly easygoing, usually only killing when he's angry. We see him happily smoke pot with some guy before he notices that he has one of his coins, and even politely asks Watson and a cop for his gold back before they provoke him into violence. He's way more likeable and sympathetic than the four protagonists.

The movie maintains its gory horror comedy genre; we see officer Whitaker get his leg ripped off by the Leprechaun and then weakly hopping over demanding it back before bleeding to death and the reused joke of the Leprechaun having his eye gouged out during a fight with Emily. Other than that, we got more cartoonish and ridiculous humor, like Leppy getting high off pot then getting hit in the face with a refrigerator door and then knocked into it while he's got the munchies.

Of course, the film is so silly and idiotic, you can't take it seriously. Even so, it's still funny as hell and not at all scary. I think it's a little better than the fifth movie, but that's not saying much. Still, if you're bored and a fan of cheesy, low-quality horror comedy, give this one a watch.