Sometimes hitting the multiplex just isn’t in the cards. That’s when cable, the web and streaming step in to provide an instant movie fix. But how to separate the wheat from the chaff? I’m happy to help, every week I’ll pick a flick and see if it’s worth your time. This week? “Leprechaun 5: In the Hood”
Characters and Crew Of Leprechaun 5: In the Hood
Main Cast:
- Warwick Davis as Luby the Leprechaun
- Ice-T as Mack
- Omar Epps as Stray Dogg
- Paula Jai Parker as Deja
Crew:
- Director: Mark Jones
- Writers: Daryl Wein & Rick Wien (screenplay), Sean Hood (story)
- Producers: David Hoberman, Jeff Nathanson
Everybody wants to be a star. But it’s easier for a nobody to steal a leprechaun’s gold than it is to make it big (unless you’re on Jersey Shore.) At least that’s the story in Leprechaun in the Hood, the funniest entry in the Leprechaun series. It may not be great cinema, but it’s a hilarious look at low budget horror slapstick. And hey, it’s got Ice T as a pimp!
Ice, not learning his lesson about signing onto sequels after Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, is Mack Daddy, the Big Pimp About Town. At least he is after he stole the Leprechaun’s stash of gold and his magic flute. Mack D is able to trap the Leprechaun out of sheer good luck, luck that runs out when a group of rappers he insults decide to break into his house and inadvertently unleashes the little green death machine. Randy from Scream coulda told this little band of wanna be rapper thieves that wasn’t a good idea. C’mon, these homies are from Compton, they couldn’t find a multiplex for a little Horror Movie 101? Rapper Postmaster P (“because he delivers a positive message”) takes the Leprechaun’s magic flute which…well, I have no idea what it actually does, except make people stop dead in their tracks with a slack-jawed look on their face. Which, come to think of it, isn’t far off from the looks the cast gives throughout the movie. At least the body count gets gruesomely icky, thanks to Lep’s dastardly ways. And every now and then there’s a little bit of Ice T’s rap coming through on the soundtrack.
Leprechaun in the Hood manages to do the one thing that crappy Z-movies do well; insult every race and ethnicity it can get it’s hands on. Here, every African American just wanna be a gangsta. “Bitches and hos ain’t all my man knows!” Really? Awesome. And Asian store owner Chow “shacking his nasty groove thing” would be really offensive if it wasn’t so breathtakingly stupid. “Miss Fontaine”, the transgender prostitute, is so over the top she won my heart, though I have a feeling that this wasn’t intentional. The one semi-intelligent character in the whole movie, Postmaster P (bless his poor idiotically named self) ends up deciding to sell out just like everyone else, and so the morality play ending — the only thing that saves most 80’s bottom barrel horror movies — doesn’t happen. Instead, we get Leprechaun rap and “zombie fly girls”.
The Leprechaun films are famous for one thing. Okay two things. Sucking, and the horrible puns the title character spits out. This installment is no different. This go-round he’s all but throwing gangster signs and smakin’ the hos. “A friend with weed is a friend indeed…but a friend with gold is the best, I’m told.” “I’m not here to play with fruit, I only want me magic flute!” Of course it doesn’t fit in with Celtic mythology, your point? As Mack Daddy says, “this shit is REAL.” As in real funny. But funny like Troll 2, not funny like an actual satire. Yes it has it’s tongue fully in cheek, but that doesn’t make it good. It just makes it a wanna-be cult movie that has launched a thousand drinking games. Seriously, Google that. You’re welcome.
So if you’re looking for a new way to entertain your friends on a day that’s too hot to go outside? You could do worse than Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in the Hood and a few green beers. There’s always Leprechaun: Back 2 da Hood….
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