Film / Leprechaun

"Your luck just ran out."

Leprechaun is a 1993 horror-comedy film starring Warwick Davis as the titular character who although not named in the movies is given the off-screen name "Lubdan". A bunch of people go to a rural farmhouse in North Dakota for a holiday and discover not only a pot of gold but the rightful owner. The leprechaun will kill any who touches his gold but has a weakness to wrought iron and four-leaf clovers, which cancel out his magic. Despite negative reviews, the film went on to spawn a franchise, currently consisting of seven films (or eight if one counts the much-maligned "reboot".)

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I WANT ME TROPES!

• Asshole Victim: The deputy that was smart enough to pull the leprechaun over.
• Bland-Name Product: Lucky Clovers cereal. Which makes it stranger when they refer to Lucky Charms in the dialog: "Fuck you, Lucky Charms".
• Bottomless Magazines: Subverted. When O'Grady shoots at the Leprechaun with a revolver, he reloads after just two shots.
  • Played straight with Nathan firing the shotgun. He fires numerous rounds and never reloads.
• Brats with Slingshots: Alex places the four-leaf clover into a wad of gum and then uses his slingshot to defeat the leprechaun.

  Alex: Fuck you, Lucky Charms!

• Bullet Time: Used briefly in the pogo stick death scene.
• Bullying a Dragon: A highway cop is an asshole to the Leprechaun. Lubdan lacerates his face, tosses his gun, and ultimately snaps his neck.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late
• Creator Cameo: Special effects artist Gabriel Bartalos appears as a diner patron.
• Cassandra Truth: Simple guy he is, nobody believes Ozzie when he says that there's a leprechaun in the basement and how it was going to shine his shoes.
• Chekhov's Gun: Subverted with the deputy's gun.
  • Alex's slingshot.
  • The Leprechaun's eagerness to shine shoes comes in handy when the gang needed to distract him.
  • The gold coin Ozzie accidentally swallows.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: How our protagonists finally find the four-leafed clover in the first film.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Caving in a poor sod's chest with a pogo stick, anyone?
• Death by Falling Over: Mrs. O'Grady's death.
• Dutch Angle: Used in the first movie when Tori goes to the retirement home.
• The End... Or Is It?: The leprechaun is seemingly destroyed by a four-leaf clover, and his body buried in a well, but at the end his disembodied voice vows to return and find his gold.
• Everything's Better with Rainbows: True to the legends, a rainbow leads to the leprechaun's pot of gold.
• Eye Scream: Tori pokes the leprechaun's right eye out with a police billy club. Then he gouges up a spare from the corpse.
• Every Car Is a Pinto: Nathan's truck won't start, twice.
• Fanservice: Some relatively tame fanservice occurs — Tori spends the whole film in short shorts, and a chase scene filmed from The Leprechaun's point of view means we get an extended look at her legs and rear end as she runs.
• Filling the Silence: When Alex sets the bear trap for the leprechaun in the first movie, voiceover of him saying "how he's going to get him" is added.
• Food Porn: Subverted. Tori is visibly disgusted by the meatloaf Nathan is eating at the diner.
• Four-Leaf Clover: The leprechaun's weakness.
• Fright Deathtrap: Used against Dan O'Grady's wife.

• Hard-to-Light Fire: In the prologue, Dan O'Grady tries to burn the leprechaun alive inside its crate, but the match goes out and he’s incapacitated by a Hollywood Heart Attack before he can light another.
• Hollywood Darkness: Made painfully obvious in the first movie, when Nathan brings a flashlight outside.
• Hollywood Heart Attack: Dan O'Grady suffers one just before he's going to burn the leprechaun.
• I'm Melting!: Leprechaun starts to melt when he swallows the four-leafed clover.
• Impact Silhouette: The natural result of a leprechaun on roller skates colliding with a white picket fence in the first film.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: Leprechaun is fond of this.
• Manchild: Ozzie in the first film.
• Neck Snap: Happens to both Mrs. O'Grady and Deputy Tripet.
• No Peripheral Vision: When Tori goes to the basement looking for Nathan, both of them miss each other despite the small space.
• One-Word Title: Leprechaun
• Outside Ride: The Leprechaun attempts it in the first movie, but he can't quite hold on.
• Peek-a-Boo Corpse: Mr. O'Grady at the senior home.
• Precision F-Strike: From Alex, the only minor, of all people.

  Alex:"Fuck you, Lucky Charms!"

• Psychopathic Manchild: The leprechaun from the original movie.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Leprechaun was imprisoned in a crate for decades for ten years until Ozzie knocks the four-leaf clover off the crate and accidentally sets him free.
• Sequel Hook: Leprechaun's declaration at the end of the first film.
  "I'll not rest till I have me gold. Curse this well that me soul shall dwell, till I find me magic that breaks me spell!"
  • And it did get sequels but they weren't connected to the first movie or each other for that matter.
  • Finally, 25 years later he escaped the well and goes after Tori's daughter.
• The Smurfette Principle: Tori is the only female character in the group.

• Take That!: In the first film, the Leprechaun tries a knock-off of Lucky Charms and promptly spits it out.
• Teleportation Spam: Done when the leprechaun harasses a cop in the swallow.
• Tempting Fate: Nathan shoots the Leprechaun at point-blank range with a shotgun (after having done so earlier) and says that it's dead, only for it to pop up alive again.
• Villain Opening Scene: The first scene of the film shows the titular leprechaun coming back to his lair to count his pot of gold.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Leprechaun is vulnerable to four-leaf clovers.

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