Welcome to a series of articles that I have been looking forward to writing for a long time: Slashers In Space!
A long time ago back in the ’90s, the direct-to-video market was booming, especially in the low-budget horror genre. Most of us that lived that era have wonderful memories of some of the weirdest finds and sequels we had no clue existed to our favorite franchises. This was a time when wild Darkman sequels roamed the land grazing the fertile celluloid fields side-by-side with generations of yearly Witchcraft sequels and increasingly strange takes on The Amityville Horror.
Powered by the momentum, lack of oversight, and lack of budget direct-to-video offered, something happened in the mid-to-late ’90s in the increasingly popular horror genre… our favorite slasher icons went to space.
Before I get into the details here, let me explain something: I unironically love movies that are weird or out there and aren’t afraid to take risks. Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Mac and Me, Miami Connection, Troll 2, Pocket Ninjas, and Phantom Of The Paradise are some of my most beloved films. I love it when films break established canon and let loose. I don’t believe in “guilty pleasures” or “so bad it’s good“, I just love weirdness.
This weirdness brings us to our first “Slasher In Space”: Leprechaun 4: In Space. The film was released direct-to-video on February 25th, 1997, following the success of1995’s Leprechaun 3. If you haven’t seen Leprechaun 3, which was 1995’s highest-grossing direct-to-video film and also boasts a 0% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes, that’s alright. It has basically nothing to do with the fourth film beyond Warwick Davis returning as the titular Leprechaun.
Leprechaun 4: In Space opens where no film ever has left off: with a space princess being held hostage and simultaneously courted by our favorite monstrous Leprechaun before being attacked by a crew of rowdy and vulgar space marines. In fact, the dapper Leprechaun is decimated before we are 15 minutes into the film. Of course, as one would expect, as a marine is urinating on bits of the Leprechaun’s corpse (as one does), the Leprechaun’s ?essence? makes its way upstream, candiru fish style.
This is just the beginning of the film. It gets much weirder from here as we meet the rest of the crew including Dr. Mittenhand, played with scene-stealing glee by Guy Siner who is something of a mad scientist computer… hybrid… thing.
One of the standouts of a surprisingly large main cast is “Sticks” played by Miguel A. Nunez Jr, who many readers will recognize from Friday The 13th Part V: A New Beginning and as Spider from the classic Return Of The Living Dead. Sticks is pretty much the only character that you want to root for beyond the Leprechaun himself. The rest range from pretty bland and uninteresting to blatantly offensive and you can’t wait to see how they get offed.
Similar to Leprechaun 3, the tone of the film is far more dark comedy than the horror the first two films featured. This is likely due to the same director and several of the same producers being involved in the third and fourth films.
The tone works with the unlikeable characters, as it reminds you this is just a fun slasher at every turn and gives Warwick Davis plenty of time to show us how much fun he has in the Leprechaun role. I don’t say that the characters are unlikable to insult the actors, but they aren’t written to more than stereotypes for the most part.
I would love to write at length about Warwick Davis’ portrayal of the Leprechaun but it has been discussed to death over the decades. Facts are simply that he is so comfortable in the character that anyone else, no matter how talented, will feel like a pretender to the throne when they take the role. For the record I enjoyed Dylan “Swoggle” Postl’s take on the character in Leprechaun Origins but it clearly was a different approach by intention.
The sets feel like they were borrowed from episodes of Time Trax or Babylon 5. Not quite “no budget” but certainly “acquired from TV-budget sets” vibe. Again it works, we aren’t here for an epic science-fiction journey, we are here for a goofy fun time watching a Leprechaun eviscerate one-dimensional characters and make puns. We get that, and while the film drags a bit near the second act where it falls victim to the softcore sex tropes of the era, it otherwise is a blast and takes advantage of the “In Space” subtitle with a climax featuring a gigantic Leprechaun trying to stomp the remaining survivors in a cargo bay.
Nothing about this movie is subtle. The kills are satisfying and over-the-top at times, and while there isn’t a lot of gore, the effects are pretty gross and hilarious when they need to be. This movie basically is a live-action cartoon clearly aimed at older teens and adults.
It doesn’t care about established canon or how it will be received. This actually was a big complaint about the previous film as well, as it seems to be a somewhat uniquely American critique that everything has to follow a specific continuity or canon to be “good.” I think this was a common trend in the ’90s, where the freedom of direct-to-video allowed screenwriters to explore “what if” with popular characters.
I often ask no one in particular why it doesn’t happen much anymore, and I come back to the same thing: We view film somewhat differently here in the United States, for the most part, than other cultures.
When I discovered anime as a teen, I learned how much fun not worrying about everything being in the same continuity could be. It was common to get a movie based on a series that takes place in a world where a key event didn’t happen. Manga would be sometimes dramatically different from a series and the movies would be completely different and sometimes contradictory. Doctor Who is a western franchise that also has various continuities and is celebrated for being all timey-wimey.
Yet Leprechaun is taken to task for not being consistent. Give the film an honest viewing through the lens of “What if the Leprechaun was in space?” and remind yourself it is just a film. You should really just relax and enjoy it the way it was intended to be.
This will be a common thread in future Slashers In Space articles. I want to share with you my love for films that take terrestrial terrors into the stars for no other reason than “because we can.”
Would you like to see modern slashers in space? Send The Nun up there to the Event Horizon or see how Sam from Trick ‘r Treat would handle Phoobs breaking the rules of Halloween on Planet Koozebane?
Until next time, watch the skies!
