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Leprechaun 3 Reviews

Better than its predecessors, if largely by default, LEPRECHAUN 3 is a silly but watchable marriage of gore and giggles. This time, the little monster (Warwick Davis) turns up as a statue in a Las Vegas pawn shop, where he comes to life and kills the owner. The shop is visited by college-bound Scott (John Gatins), who has gambled away his tuition money at the Lucky Shamrock casino and wants to pawn his watch. Instead, he finds one of the Leprechaun's gold coins, makes a wish, and is soon on a winning streak. As the wee fiend pursues the coin, it falls into other hands, but the Leprechaun turns their wishes against them. First, Lucky Shamrock owner Mitch (Michael Callan) is seduced, and then electrocuted, by a robot in the guise of a woman. Next, aging dealer Loretta (Caroline Williams) wishing for better looks, finds her enhanced body expands and explodes. The Leprechaun catches up to Scott, and in the ensuing struggle, the young man's wounds are infected with leprechaun blood. Scott begins to transform into a creature himself. Tammy, a magician's assistant who works in the Lucky Shamrock, takes him to a hospital. The Leprechaun appears once more, and the ensuing chase leads back to the casino, where the Great Fazio (John DeMita), a magician who has also wished on the coin, dies when he is killed with a chainsaw during his magic act. Realizing that the Leprechaun gets his power from his pot of gold, Scott sets it ablaze, killing the little monster. Given that the title creature and his exploits were never very scary anyway, it was a wise move for director Brian Trechard-Smith and writer David Dubos to adopt a more humorous approach for the third film in the series. Instead of being a figure of fear, the diminutive monster is now a murderous jokester who spouts limericks, adopts comic personalities, and, in the movie's funniest scene, encounters an Elvis impersonator. Throughout, the film is more silly than clever, and never quite builds the tension that makes good horror-comedies work. The script is crammed with characters and subplots almost to the point of incoherence, and the acting is generally unmemorable, but Davis appears to be having fun, and the production values are an improvement over previous entries.(Graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, profanity.)