Leprechaun – A St. Patty’s Day Disaster

Happy St. Patricks Day!

Saint Patrick’s Day or the Feast of Saint Patrick (Irish: Lá Fhéile Pádraig, “the Day of the Festival of Patrick”) is a cultural and religious holiday celebrated on 17 March. It is named after Saint Patrick (c. AD 385–461), the most commonly recognised of the patron saints of Ireland. Saint Patrick’s Day was made an official Christian feast day in the early seventeenth century and is observed by the Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion (especially the Church of Ireland), the Eastern Orthodox Church and Lutheran Church. The day commemorates Saint Patrick and the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, as well as celebrating the heritage and culture of the Irish in general. Celebrations generally involve public parades and festivals, céilithe, and the wearing of green attire or shamrocks.

Blah, blah, blah…for me and most people I know St. Patricks day is about one thing and one thing only; getting absolutely stinking drunk! While I have adhered to this tradition of excessive alcohol consumption for most, if not all of my adult years, I decided to stray a little this year. Irish themed horror! What better way to celebrate St Patricks day! My original choices for Irish horror were Shrooms (which was a great psychological drugged out horror-fest), Isolation (not a bad genetic experiment type horror flick) and Wakewood (which I have yet to see), all horror flicks from the emerald Isle. Something went sideways and I ended up settled on the Leprechaun saga. Yep all 6 films back to back, a great Irish themed horror marathon. That was the plan; 12 hours of bloody Leprechaun madness. Things didn’t go exactly as planned.

The Howling V: Rebirth

Howling V: The Rebirth. 1989.

Howling V: The Rebirth is a 1989 direct-to-video horror sequel to The Howling. It was directed by Neal Sundstrom from the screenplay by Freddie Rowe and Clive Turner, and filmed in Budapest, Hungary.
Director: Neal Sundstrom
Writers: Gary Brandner (books), Freddie Rowe
Stars: Philip Davis, Victoria Catlin, Elizabeth Shé
Release Date: 22 February 1990

Bored outta my mind last night and in the mood for some old school horror, I scrolled crackflix in search of some bloody nostalgia. I came across many tempting entries along the way; The Stuff, Terrorvision and Phantasm. Undecided in which direction I should go; monster, slasher, alien goo or zombie I flipped a coin and settled on Howling V: The Rebirth. It’s been years since I’ve watched a Howling flick, and I was stoked for some werewolf mayhem. Wow. The Howling V was absolute 80’s cheese (filmed in 89 released in 90).

Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption

Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption. 2011.

In a world where zombies outnumber humans 10,000 to one, it is impossible to tell the difference between men and the monsters.

Director: Ryan Thompson
Writers: Ryan Thompson, Ryan Lieske
Country: USA
Language: English
Release Date: 2011 (USA)
Stars: Johnny Gel, Fred Williamson and Joseph Scott Anthony

I can’t resist watching movies involving zombies, zombie apocalpyse’, zombie outbreaks and general gut munching mayhem! With the not-so recent upward trend of all things undead (damn you Twilight, damn you Plants vs Zombies, damn you Call of Duty: Zombies) there has been a plethora of entries into the genre. Quasi Zombie films such as the 28 days franchise, the upcoming World War Z film adaptation by Pitt and company, the excellent Dawn of the Dead remake by Zack Snyder (I don’t care…the Dawn remake is far superior to Romero’s original), the UK zombedy Shaun of the Dead and the phenomenal Walking Dead TV series have set the bar high for genre fans such as myself. Unfortunately the current global fascination of all things Zombie has led to a massive influx of poorly executed and well….extremely bad films into the overly saturated subgenre. So for the discerning Zombie enthusiast it’s really about finding the diamonds in the rough, so to speak. This brings me to the film at hand. Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption; a so-called sequel to the lackluster Zombie Apocalypse (you know, the one starring Ving Rhames. Oh you don’t know).

Lets get to the meat of this thing: It’s 12 years after a global virus transformed the population of earth into flesh eating Zombies. The undead outnumber the humans 10000 to 1. I don’t like those odds! The general breakdown of society has already taken place separating the good from the bad, the groups who want to re-establish a functioning society from the badass rebels who want nothing more than to capture women for sex slavery, to drink and to assemble themselves into some form of quasi-military-roman republic-Fallout New Vegas style raider organization. Fair enough. I for one would tend to lean towards the latter. Now for a $56,000 budget you can’t expect to much, can you? I think you can expect a little bit of common sense and thought. Would everyone in a crumbling broken world overrun with the undead be driving spotless brand new vehicles? Or be dressed in combat gear with not as much as a spot of dirt or stain to be seen anywhere? I guess they had to return alot of that gear after shooting wrapped up. Needless to say that gasoline would be so deteriorated after 12 years that driving anything but a horse would be impossible. I think by this point I had figured out what they spent their budget on. Car rentals and rollback clothing at Wal-Mart. This brings me to the “evil” raiders group and the laughable villain overlord, Roman. This dude had a few things right, he likes to get messed up and he likes his sex slaves dressed in the latest BDSM fashions (brand spanking shiny new btw). I could overlook his horrendous overacting, his confused moments where he stares of into space for no apparent reason and even his sex toy girlfriend who was clearly cast as a Mexican but struggled horribly with her attempts at an accent; making her sound half-Russian mixed with a bit of French and Eastern European. What I couldn’t get over was his costume. Imagine a hockey player crossed with Shredder from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Sigh. I really hope these guys weren’t trying to make anything serious here.

Fred Williamson.

There were two things I half-enjoyed about Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption; the 80’s ish synth soundtrack (I’m a sucker for synth) and the leather clad bdsm style catfight between the two main females during the “climax”. Oh and you might recognize Fred Williamson (the leader of the of the “good” guys) former Kansas City Chiefs football star, blaxploitation mainstay and more recently he appeared in Dusk Till Dawn. The film was tiring, boring, uninteresting, comedic, pointless, inaccurate, exhausting, not even mediocre and generally a waste of F#$k’n time. I only hope that by taking time off of their day job’s at Burger King and Wal-Mart they didn’t lose to much in wages……Zombie Apocalypse: Redemption @ IMDB.

Next Up: a smoke…..