Justin's Rating: Shakespeare has met his match
Justin's Review: My local video store had a bargain bin of used movies for $2 each (that's $150 Canadian). How could I resist? As I rummaged through such gems like Kazaam, I stumbled upon Leprechaun 4: In Space and let my grubby paws snatch it before the lady behind me could steal it for herself. The title intrigued me for one: there are leprechauns? In space? The history channel NEVER covers stuff like this. Lo and behold, I think I have found one of the best cult flicks ever made, even better than Benji Returns.

Take the overwhelming success of the first three Leprechaun films (yes, I know you've seen them all) and where do you go from there? Well, why not blatantly rip off (both satire and parody seem too mild a word) James Cameron's Aliens? Sure! It'd be a lark! So we get a team of overly gung-ho idiots, er, marines who manage to piss off the leprechaun over some deal with a princess and lots of gold. Tell me, what do space people need with gold? After conquering space, is it really that rare a commodity? Mr. Lucky Charms boards the big, REALLY fake CGI spaceship and engages in a battle of marine Go Fish for the next hour and a half. It's easy to see the similarities, once you mentally replace those big black aliens with a midget Irishman.

Only the Swahili language contains enough synonyms for "stupid" and "cheesy" to accurately cover this film. Unfortunately, I'm still taking classes for that, so you'll just have to read my mind. Actors swallow and spit out lines like "Siemper Fi, Do or Die, Kill, Kill, Kill!" with such honest, straight faces that you just want to adopt them out of sheer pity. Our main hero marine looks like a cousin of Sly Stallone, and emotes about the same. The marines have the most inaccurate weapons ever made, as the bullets veer miles off target, and even if they hit, the leprechaun just regenerates.

Every cliché is dredged up from the dead for yet another exploitation exercise. Sex kills (as one marine finds out when the leprechaun bursts out of his crotch - and YES, you read that right). If you're not dying fast enough, split up so the baddy can pick you off easier. There is no financial reward high enough to trade for your life. And breasts signify a death sentence.

Whoa, okay, let me back up. Almost toward the end of the film, the princess (yes, a Princess: In Space) undoes her spiky bra so that the remaining males and the camera can fixate for about 30 seconds on her breasts. "Yes, those are breasts," I said to the TV. "Thank you." Only after incapacitating our minds are the breasts returned to their natural habitat and a very lame excuse given for their showing. Apparently, on whatever backwater Playboy-deficient planet this princess comes from, showing ones breasts level a death sentence on the viewer. Don't be mistaken: this movie was made by guys.

Dr. Evil's little brother makes a seriously silly appearance as the part-man Dr. Mittenhand, who takes every stereotype of the mad Nazi doctor and never stops talking. He eventually gets transformed into a spider-thing, but that's neither here nor there.

Read me right, you'd have to be devoid of any sense of humor to not enjoy L4:IS. It's not just partially campy, boring for the most part; it's thoroughly inventive and saturated with goofiness. If you get to the scene where the leprechaun uses a lightsaber to, um, bring a marine to his knees and don't find yourself bouncing in cult glee, then go find yourself Meryl Streep-inspired movie. Once you get to the part where the sergeant goes transvestite dancing, you should be well primed to recommend this to most of your close friends.

I could sense that the filmmakers really tried, very hard to get that extra credit for this project. They put in many details in trying to make this realistic... or something... one does wonder why they have a discotheque on the ship, or why marines are on a contract basis, or if romance mainly consists of falling on each other a lot. The leprechaun legend lends itself strangely to an outer space situation, but he gets the least attention, as everything and everyone else is way more kooky.

Didja Notice?
The ultra-high tech stylis the doctor uses has nothing but a simple calculator inside of it
DNA will change your appearance if you just inject your head with some other animal's

The Movie Store!
Leprechaun 4: In Space: Movie [VHS]

Intermission!
The leprechaun was played by dwarf Warwick Davis, who has had an astounding film career, for a midget. He was a Yoda stand-in for The Phantom Menace, played the evil leprechaun in all five Leprechaun movies, a good leprechaun in A Very Unlucky Leprechaun, the lead character of Willow, and was the Ewok Wicket for Return of the Jedi and the follow-up Ewok movies.

Groovy Quotes

Sargeant: Oh Lord, be with us as we hunt down this ungodly son-of-a-bitch who's out there waiting for us, and give us the STRENGTH to kill anything in our path, and may ALL our wounds be those of flesh wounds only. Amen.

Marine: Real vacation spot.
Sargeant: I've seen worse. Ever been to De-troit?

Sargeant: No, no, you stay with cupcake!

Marine: Easy, you don't want to hurt Mr. Snake.

Girl: I have a black belt in karate. And a merit badge when I was in the scouts.
Books: The scouts, hm? You should have told me, I would have taken the day off.

If you liked this movie, try these:
Willow
Leprechaun 1, 2, 3, and 5
Aliens