Horror Nostalgia

Tales From the Video Store: LEPRECHAUN (1993)

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It was a sunny Spring Saturday in April 1993. I was eleven years old and had my weekend routine of riding my bike a mile up to my local shopping center near my home, where my friends and I would peruse Osco Drugs for some snacks and the latest in MAD and FANGORIA magazines along with the ever essential stop next door to our mom and pop video shop, ACTION VIDEO to grab our weekend flicks and video games for rental. After purchasing some leftover Easter candy on sale, we headed to the video store, and as soon as we walked in the door, there was a giant standee VHS cutout of a new release that immediately intrigued us: LEPRECHAUN FROM VIDMARK NOW ON HOME VIDEO.

Fantastical horror was and still is my jam, so of course I right away grabbed a copy knowing full well this was going to be glorious cheese- and it did not disappoint.

SYNOPSIS:

Dan O’Grady (Shay Duffin) steals 100 gold coins from a leprechaun (Warwick Davis) while on vacation in Ireland. The leprechaun follows him home, but Dan locks the murderous midget in a crate, held at bay by a four-leaf clover. Ten years later, J.D. Redding (John Sanderford) and his daughter, Tory (Jennifer Aniston), rent O’Grady’s property for the summer. When their new neighbors accidentally release the leprechaun, he goes on a murderous rampage to reclaim his gold.

If you haven’t seen this movie yet, and what the hell if you haven’t, everyone going into this should know it’s a B-grade cheese show. They didn’t even attempt to make it sound like serious horror back when they were producing it. There are zero reasons anyone should not know the Leprechaun franchise is basically one long-running joke. I’m pretty convinced that as the series went on with sequels, they were just trying to figure out how Looney Tunes they could get with the concept.

But it’s a classic. It was the beginning of a broader movement among writers and directors to have more fun with the concept of horror. The industry was finally beginning to come around to the idea that bad could mean good. All the major franchises jumped on the concept, and that brought us some of the best horror movies I can think of. And let’s face facts: Warwick Davis, a serious theatrical actor, gave an A-grade performance as a homicidal mythological maniac. Props to that guy.

That’s what makes the magic, though. It’s video store gold that you found at the end of the Rainbow Room, behind the Family titles and before you hit the black curtain point of the shop that is about a three-foot-tall, shoe-shining, homicidal sprite, in a green tuxedo. That should have tipped you off to what you were about to get.

It’s one of those movies we rented to watch and riff on with your friends. Which gives it a really special memory in my old nostalgic bank there. The movie is silly, not even remotely scary, hammier than an Italian smokehouse, and carries the plot of something you might expect out of a Full Moon picture. Which I personally love, so that is in no way a complaint here, and the movie can be summed up in the big one-liner delivered by the child actor at the end:

Yet another beautiful video store discovery that has become an annual tradition for St. Patrick’s Day, and then sometimes Leprechaun 3 when I feel a little saucy.

Cool shit to buy

The Toxic Avenger Bust and Pocket VHS Sets From Horror Bricks Live On Kickstarter!

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Toxie wants YOU to have your very own building brick bust of the mopper of justice in your home.

.A brand made by fans, for fans, HORROR BRICKS was born with the idea that a million pop culture-influenced LEGO sets get the green light while the horror genre, unsurprisingly, always gets left behind. With Troma founder and Toxie creator Lloyd Kaufman’s blessings, HORROR BRICKS has launched a KICKSTARTER campaign for a one-of-a-kind brick building bust that any fan of the film, or hell, horror in general, will want to have for their amusement and collection. Complete with a mop and a built-in Melvin origin story sequence. BRILLIANT.

And there’s also the Pocket VHS series — inspired by the golden age of video stores. The first wave celebrates two iconic genres: Slasher and Zombie, each packed into a retro 80’s VHS case. Small sets. Big horror energy. Perfect addition for your video store-inspired corner of your home.

The Kickstareter’s stretch goal is aimed at $30,000 to get production moving with some grand rewards and limited early bird packages available for contributors.

CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE DETAILS AND TO BACK THE CAMPAIGN!

And just to throw this out there because I and others would really like to see this happen…

Editorials

WHAT MADE THE LAST DRIVE-IN SPECIAL IN ONE WORD

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Genuine excitement is a rare commodity these days. And by these days, I’m not simply referring to our daily dose of chaos because it stretches back further than any of us care to think about. No, for the purposes of this piece, let’s wind the clocks back to the summer of 2018.

Seventeen years after Joe Bob Briggs was ousted from TNT’s MonsterVision, a gift was bestowed upon Briggs disciples who’d never stopped missing the drive-in totals: Joe Bob was returning for a 24-hour horror extravaganza intended to be the Grapevine drive-in critic’s farewell to movie hosting. And the fervor felt by legions of Mutants was nothing short of electric.

“This is special, Joe Bob.” The T.V. cowboy (you heard that, didn’t you?) has since referred to Felissa Rose’s remarks from that initial marathon on numerous occasions. And for good reason. She was right.

Eight years on, what is most special can be whittled down to a single word: sustained.

To pull a Joe Bob, what is sustained? Something that is maintained at length without interrupting or weakening. And that, folks, is what made The Last Drive-In so special: that our excitement, from the anticipation of that first dusk-to-dawn marathon to the final regularly scheduled double feature, has been sustained.

Whether it was each week, each month, or each special, our giddiness never waned. We woke excited on Joe Bob Fridays, stocked up on snacks and libations after work in preparation, and shared that excitement on social media as we watched the “Joe Bob Begins” countdown tick toward blood, breasts, and beasts. And we have bookended server glitches to prove it.

The Last Drive-In gave us the most overqualified Mail Girl the drive-in has ever seen. It raised money for mental health, battered women, and more. It made “spry as fuck” part of our lexicon. And birthed an appreciation for Walpurgisnacht that borders on national holiday. It offered respite from the horrors of daily life and provided a community for those who didn’t feel seen. And so much more.

Our excitement and anticipation remained the same from that first night through the final night–last night.

And it will carry on to whatever’s next.

In the wake of Joe Bob’s somber social media post, he followed it up with a short video to answer our worried questions and emphatically stated “we ain’t done.”

So, whatever’s next, be it Shudder specials, another streaming service, or somewhere in between, we will be there because as I said following that first 13-movie marathon that we’d originally thought was the end–the drive-in, and our love for Joe Bob, will never die.