Sunday, March 15, 2015

Leprechaun in the Hood (2000), Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood (2003), and Iconic Horror Villains



If you couldn’t tell by looking at the genres that I tend to cover in the Sunday “Bad” Movies, one of my favourite genres is horror.  It has nothing to do with me being scared.  I just like the tone or attitude that most of the films in the genre present to the audience.  The filmmakers care less about pleasing studios and care more about making something entertaining or boundary pushing.  Few other genres share the connection between filmmaker and viewer in the same way that horror movies do.

One of the stranger things that happens in the horror genre is primarily a part of the slasher subgenre.  These are movies where the vast majority of the characters are unlikeable douchebags, especially in sequels.  It makes it difficult for a viewer to root for their survival.  In fact, the audience tends to take joy in their deaths.  It’s kind of a cruel, telling trait about the human race.  You don’t like someone so you find pleasure in their demise.  People are horrible, aren’t they?  If the audience isn’t rooting for the “good” characters in slasher movies, there is nobody left to side with other than the villain.  And that is part of the reason why slasher frachises try to find an iconic villain.  The other, much less interesting reason is that the final character, typically a girl in stereotypical slasher movies (Laurie in Halloween, Sidney in Scream), needs a memorable foe to fight in the final encounter.  It makes for easier franchise branding as well.

Slasher movies have provided some interesting villains over the years.  The four most popular villains would likely be Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, Freddy Krueger, and Leatherface.  Each has a distinct look and a background that only gets more complicated (though not overly complicated) as the franchise goes on.  Michael Myers starts out as an escaped mental patient who causes deadly trouble in his hometown.  As the Halloween franchise progressed, he gained more strength and was revealed to be family obsessed.  Laurie Strode, one of the babysitters from the first movie, was revealed to be his sister.  He would stop at nothing to kill her and any children she would have.  Likewise, Jason Voorhees was fleshed out in the sequels to Friday the 13th.  He wasn’t even the villain in the first movie.  He was simply the motivation behind his mother’s killing of camp counselors.  One thing was constant between mother and son, however.  That thing was their hatred of camp counselors who succumbed to their sexual urges instead of watching over the children that they should have been taking care of.  As the franchise got bigger, Jason was repeatedly killed and resurrected.  At one point, in Jason Goes to Hell, he even had his spirit jump between bodies, possessing people to do his killing for him.  I believe he was also looking for a family member in that movie.  Not to kill them, though.  He wanted to use them to bring his body back.  Maybe it involved killing them.  I can’t quite remember.

Beyond the big four (and I guess Ghostface and Jigsaw now) are the second-tier slasher villains.  This is where you find the odder characters like Pinhead, Chucky, or Jack Frost.  They are the villains that are known within the world of horror, but my not have crossed over into the mainstream outside of being the butt of jokes.  People know Chucky, yet the non-horror fans constantly laugh and say “I would just boot the doll in the head.”  They don’t take him as seriously as horror fans do.  At least, from my observations, this is the case.  The concepts in this second-tier area tend to end up a little more on the wacky side.  Aside from Freddy Krueger, the first-tier is filled with living people who do the killing.  The second-tier is where you move away from people and end up in the world of monsters and creatures.  You get other things too, such as Chucky.  The concept is not as simple as a man killing people.  To go back to Chucky, he is a doll possessed by the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray.  He is still a memorable villain, but doesn’t quite bring the same relatable fear as when the killer is human.

Another second-tier slasher franchise with an iconic villain that is considered a joke by many people is Leprechaun.  This franchise has it all.  It’s insane.  The first movie takes place on a farm.  The sequel goes to a residential Hollywood area.  The third Leprechaun movie takes the shindig to Vegas.  Then the series goes to space before the final two movies show us Leprechaun hanging around in “the hood.”  The villain of the franchise is the aforementioned Leprechaun whose gold and/or treasure has been taken from him.  He will kill anyone who has his gold because he wants it back.  The Leprechaun is played by Warwick Davis in the original six movies of the franchise.  This original depiction of The Leprechaun is comedic in nature.  He talks in limericks, makes jokes while killing, and in the case of the “hood” movies, he smokes marijuana.  (Do I seem like a dork when I refer to it as marijuana?  I’m not sure what the cool kids call it these days.)  It’s the only way to really utilize a leprechaun as a villain.  The character needs to be tongue-in-cheek.  The concept of a leprechaun as a villain is ridiculous as it is.  You might as well play into that ridiculous nature.  If you add a good performer, you get an entertaining movie.  Or, I guess because there are six movies with this interpretation, you get an entertaining franchise.  That is, until the reboot takes away all of the fun that exists in the Leprechaun franchise.

A sure-fire way to find out how important a villain’s established persona is to the success of a movie is to remove everything that made the villain memorable.  At least, that is what happened with the Leprechaun franchise.  The franchise got a reboot a full decade after the one-two punch of Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood.  The two hood-set Leprechaun movies were some of the dumbest fun that you could possibly have.  Leprechaun in the Hood is about the Leprechaun trying to get back his magical flute that brings success to the holder.  With hip-hop musical scenes, crossdressers, Ice-T, and the most random appearance of Coolio that you will ever see, the movie is a hoot.  And it ends with the Leprechaun singing a song based around the line “Lep in the hood, come to do no good.”  Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood is about some 20-somethings in the hood finding Leprechaun’s gold and getting greedy.  It has Leprechaun doing bong hits, stabbing someone in the leg with half of a baseball bat, and participating in a bare-knuckle boxing match in the street.  There are also clover-tipped bullets to round things out.  Both movies rely on Warwick Davis to bring the character to life and give him a personality.  He, as well as the evilly playful nature of his character, makes the movies as entertaining as they are.  The people behind the reboot seemed to not notice this.

The leprechaun in Leprechaun: Origins was barely a leprechaun.  It was some sort of generic low-budget monster that wanted gold.  Not just the gold that belonged to it, either.  This new leprechaun wanted any gold that it could get its grubby little hands on.  That is a crucial element of the character to have changed.  It makes the motivation of the character entirely different.  The human characters are no longer at fault or deserving of what befalls them.  Also a big change is that this new interpretation of the leprechaun does not speak.  Whereas the original six movies in the franchise had an evil jokester as a villain, the reboot just had a silent monster.  It removes the comedy, which is what made Leprechaun such a fun character to watch.  The final nail in the coffin was having the actor be completely unrecognizable.  Sure, when I saw the Leprechaun in the original six movies, I might not see Warwick Davis under the makeup.  At least I knew there was someone under the makeup and they were bringing out some personality.  Leprechaun: Origins, however, signed wrestler Hornswaggle on to play the role, then barely showed the character at all.  Through blurry shots, shaking camera work, darkness, and just plain not having the monster present on screen, it was pointless to promote the monster as having been played by a specific person.  He wasn’t able to add anything to the character because the movie didn’t let him.  Each of these changes combined to show how underwhelming the Leprechaun could be when not done properly.  Turning the comedic horror icon into a serious figure hurt the franchise immensely.

My point here is that successful slasher franchises (successful in the culture, not necessarily in money) tend to have an iconic villain that people latch onto.  It could be Leatherface and his cannibalistic family, or it could be Freddy Krueger and his dream killing.  It could even be a leprechaun with a killer desire for gold.  No matter who or what the villain is, the audiences associate them with the franchise and see it more for the villain than the characters being killed.  The audience takes pleasure in the Leprechaun impaling someone with a bong.  They find joy in Jason Voorhees beating a camper-filled sleeping bag against a tree.  These icons are the true stars of the slasher franchises.  They are an important part of horror as a genre.  They need to be treated right, whether the movie is good or bad.
And now I leave you with some notes:

  • I mentioned a couple of previously covered movies in this post.  I mentioned Jason Goes to Hell and Jack Frost.  For good measure, I’ll also link to Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Friday the 13th: A New Beginning.
  • Leprechaun in the Hood was suggested by @rosstmiller.
  • Daya Vaidya was in both Leprechaun in the Hood and a movie I covered a long time ago called April Fools.
  • Diana Terranova was also in Leprechaun in the Hood.  She was previously in the Sunday “Bad” Movies in a movie called 8213: Gacy House.
  • The only actor in both Leprechaun in the Hood and Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood was Warwick Davis.
  • Have you seen any of the Leprechaun movies?  What do you think of them?  How do you feel about slasher movies?  Do you think that slasher icons are important?  Use the comments below to talk about the stuff I wrote in this post.
  • If you have a bad movie you think I should watch for this blog, feel free to suggest the movie in the comments.  Or you could email me at sundaybadmovies@gmail.com.  You could also message me on Twitter.
  • Next week’s movie is WolfCop.  It’s pretty new, and that name seems promising.  I’m stoked.

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