Love them or loath them, the Leprechaun series is an undeniably entertaining franchise, even if the majority of the sequels are unconnected and ultimately standalone in their own right, working more as a deranged anthology. But the real entertainment of these films lie in the sheer joy and mischievous villainy Warwick Davis brings to the Leprechaun whenever he dons Gabe Bartalos’ freckled makeup. While Chucky and Michael Myers were still scaring up the multiplex in the late 1990s, the Leprechaun was already ruling the roost in the DTV horror sequel section, even if all the entries pre and post-theatrical releases were more comedy than horror.
Mention the Leprechaun series on one of the many social networking sites and no doubt someone will chime in with their favourite entry. But it’s the fourth entry that seems to divide fans of the series, due in large part to the inevitable relocation of the horror icon to a space setting. Even for the casual Leprechaun fan, it was possibly a little too insane at the time.
Returning to the director’s chair for a second (and sadly final time) was genre-film royalty and Leprechaun 3 (1995) director Brian Trenchard-Smith. It’s become part of the horror zeitgeist now that eventually when all creative ideas have been exhausted, horror icons will go into space (unfortunately this has only happened to additional horror stalwarts Pinhead and Jason Voorhees thus far).
While this setting frequently becomes the brunt of the joke – often seen as a last-ditch attempt to revive a flagging icon – it could be argued that this self-aware entry in the Leprechaun cannon has matured like a fine, schlocky wine, filled to the brim with gory slapstick, impressive body-horror, and tongue-in-cheek cultural sci-fi references. This fourth entry is the very definition of ‘go big or go home’ with Trenchard-Smith knowingly winking to the audience throughout its scant runtime.
Whether it’s Davis, after starring in countless Star Wars features, finally getting his own version of a lightsaber, or the painfully funny leprechaun resurrection scene, which is clearly designed to lampoon a known sci-fi feature and traumatise in equal measure. Leprechaun 4 is a smorgasbord of gross-out hilarity, ridiculousness and insanity that was sorely lacking from the two following entries. Truth be told, Leprechaun 4 often feels like the last entry to truly embrace its genre madness.
Following the Leprechaun’s space adventure, Lionsgate would request the green menace’s return to earth with Leprechaun in the Hood (aka Leprechaun 5, 2000) and Leprechaun Back to tha Hood (2003), but the overblown insanity for Leprechaun 4 is missed, even if they did include some bizarre moments (the Leprechaun rap for instance). Where Leprechaun 4 really stands out among the rest of the series (barring the more recent Leprechaun Returns (2018)), is in its creature effects work from Gabe Bartalos and his Atlantic West Effects crew. The Leprechaun series is no stranger to impressive practical effects, but what Atlantic West Effects manage to create for this entry on such a small budget is, quite frankly, awe-inspiring.
When I spoke to Gabe Bartalos in 2021 for an interview, he went into detail about how both of these creations came to be under a limited budget. It appears director Brian Trenchard-Smith was a key factor in Bartalos going above and beyond for this fourth entry. “Brian seemed to be able to distil the humour and the pedigree of the film into something that’s the signature of Leprechaun…” says Bartalos. “He [Brian] is really good in that he’s an efficient shooter, but he still loves going for it and conversations with him are contagious, so you want to please him by building exciting stuff. And at the same time for Leprechaun 3 and Leprechaun 4, I specifically wanted to keep outdoing myself, much like for Basket Case 2 and 3”.
Its clear Bartalos excelled at just that, particularly with two creations that remain, in this writer’s personal opinion, the standout creations from not just Leprechaun 4, but the whole Leprechaun series. Both instances concern Dr Mittenhand’s pre and post creature transformation, with the scene-chewing villain (played with gleeful relish by character actor Guy Siner) almost out-acting Davis for sheer on-screen camp, whether humanoid or sub humanoid.
The first appearance of Dr Mittenhand feels very much like a throwback to the low-budget effects of the original Star Trek series – think a delightfully grandiose, but low-tech version of Captain Pike. “The props department had dreamed up that weird rolling cart that he was on…” Bartalos says, “…we then built prosthetics to transition him into the metal stuff, but then I really went for it when we talked about him getting altered with the DNA”.
The DNA altering is where Bartalos’ really got to flex his surrealist creativity, with the second creation being a body-horror nightmare as Dr Mittenhand is transformed into a grotesque abomination, dubbed ‘Mittenspider’ – no doubt a kitsch reference to Cronenberg’s seminal creature Brundlefly from his seminal The Fly (1986) remake. For a low-budget, DTV sequel, it was incredibly ambitious and elaborate, the prospect of which excited Bartalos. So, how was the elaborate Mittenspider created and operated on-set for this low-budget sequel?
“It was very, very ambitious stuff, with these enormous sculptures built on the back of the spider, while the front had a harness Guy went into. Essentially, he was on a giant seesaw, so that his body was extended out and his big spider limbs which came out of the torso were manipulated by puppeteers”, Bartalos tells me.
“The sets were being built while we were doing it…” states Bartalos, “…so we knew they were going to be these dark interior spaceship sets. Also, because it was a fantasy film, kind of anything goes, which allowed me to do a really extreme paint job and make it very theatrical. For Mittenspider I just wanted to, you know, visualize his essence as this evil guy. So, he became this giant bug guy with antennae and weird blinking eyes all around his head. It was great, great fun to really push it”.
With Mittenspider designed and the helpless Guy Siner rigged up and sealed with glue into the body of this enormous spider body, how the hell was it controlled? “There were wheels underneath it and a push bar, like a T-bar, way in the back. So once that was covered in black, it was pretty much shot friendly. You could see in the film there’s a lot of coverage and it doesn’t feel restrictive. Sometimes in movies, you feel as though the cameras are fighting to get a shot, but that just wasn’t the case in Leprechaun 4”.
“I think the crew were happy they could shoot from many different angles, as it really gave a sense of scale to the creature. We had the two main arms and then six more arms coming off pivots in the mid-torso. Those had rods coming out of them that were just out of frame and would be puppeteered. There was also one puppeteer who was in the back pushing the cart which had its direction pre-determined prior to shooting. Additionally, some of the puppeteering was done with large cable levers in the back, so yeah, it was really cool. It was fun to see that in action with everything going suddenly, all these bits and pieces glued together and coming to life with an actor inside of it”.
On an estimated budget of $3 million, it goes to show that creativity and visual trickery goes a long way to disguise a smaller-scale production, and although the Mittenspider is only part of the final act, it holds up incredibly well and like much of Bartalos’ surrealist makeup effects work, has aged like a fine wine.
“I’m really glad you like it and notice that…”, Bartalos tells me with a wide grin on his face. “But yeah, there are so many makeup effects in that film. There’s the assistant that gets his face pancaked with the tray, the Mittenspider freezing and exploding, which was an entirely separate build. Yeah, there was like, multiple films worth of effects put into this one film”.
While Leprechaun 4 is still seen as the lesser of the sequels, there’s no denying the amount of work Bartalos and Atlantic West Effects put into these versions of the villainous Dr Mittenhand and essentially throwing in the entire special effects kitchen sink into this bizarre sequel. With its charming ridiculousness, bad CGI (which seemed dated even by 1997 standards), a level of high camp that gives its predecessors a run for their money, and some effective body horror (Leprechaun rebirth via penis trauma, anyone?), Leprechaun 4 is the ultimate low-budget pastiche on sci-fi films and an unsung entry in the long-running franchise.
DOM O'BRIEN 
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