In Space No One Can Hear You Rhyme

Well just the other day I was critical of SyFy for showing lesser movies of a series out of turn and without context of the earlier better film.  I'm sure the people that run that station read my little blog here (HA) because they immediately changed their game plan.  The showed "Leprechaun" one through four, but they showed them in backwards order.  Actually this makes a bit a sense, the "Leprechan" movies are really dependent on each other.  Each film does its bit to reinvent the little green squirt.  Also, it means that the "best" film (or at least the best known) is shown at a time where there is a potentially bigger audience.  Now that is the sort of thinking outside the box that I can get behind.

"Leprechaun 4," is what I want to talk about for the moment.  As I was saying, this series tends to reinvent itself for each film but none was as radical  as this.  A space platoon of mercenaries are sent after an alien maruarder that is upsetting mining interests all over the known universe.  Turns out the "alien" is our leprechaun played by Warwick Davis.  He has also kidnapped a space princess (this is one of those shows that tends to preface everything with "space") who is an evil spoiled brat.

The mercs are saddled with a scientist to collect samples by the evil Doctor Mittenhand.  You can probably guess the scientist is pretty and female.  Despite having a scientist tag along the mercs manage to kill the leprechaun, or do they?  Here's a hint for future space marines, do not pee on dead aliens.  It only annoys them.

The Leprechaun pops back to life on the ship and starts killing everyone one by one.  Typical of the wrinkly little wart.  Some added twists are given by various "space" ways to die, and that Dr. Mittenhand is as evil and twisted as the Leprechaun.

I like this movie much more than I should.  It moves along at dare I say a spritely pace.  It is unafraid to be silly and yet there is an internal comic book style consistency.  I didn't mind the idea of the Leprechaun being considered an alien.  After all, that's like ten different "Star Trek" plots.  The Leprechaun is like Q but badly in need of a dermatologist.  The character of Dr. Mittenhand who is a mad genius along the lines of Dr. Strangelove is a welcome addition. 

This is definitely the type of bad film that's actually pretty good as long as one's expectations are set on "suitably low."