A strange character, with one eye, one hand and one artificial leg, brings a strange statue to a pawn store in Las Vegas. He manages to sell it for $20 and walks away in a great hurry, after instructing the store owner named Gupta (Marcelo Tubert) never to remove the medallion from the strange object.
The simulacrum depicts a Leprechaun (Warwick Davis). Of course, Gupta immediately takes the medallion and the leprechaun comes back to life.
Meanwhile, a young man, Scott (John Gatins), provides roadside assistance to Tammy (Lee Armstrong), a beautiful young lady who works as a magician's apprentice at the nearby casino...
The winning choice of the film was to entrust the direction to Brian Trenchard-Smith, an icon of Australian genre cinema (although he is British), who emphasized the comic-splatter elements in a sort of very 1980s context, in the sense that one does not want to take the story itself very seriously as much as just want to entertain the viewer. A miserly creature like the Leprechaun is at home in the place of perdition that is the quintessential casino.
There are also a number of very sympathetic side characters: the bumbling magician, his mature, busty mistress (Leprechaun's revenge is legendary), and the casino impresario entangled with two gangsters.
John Gatins, the main character, will be more successful as a screenwriter and as a director (Dreamer - The Road to Victory). The Leprechaun is much naughtier and more ironic: there is fun to be had.
Note how the fifth chapter will trace some of the movie's gimmicks (the statue, the medallion, the wishes the leprechaun must make if you have one of his coins) but with very negative outcomes.
Sympathetic.
Review by Zick
