Celtic Mythological Terms in Spanish

1. caballeros de la Mesa Redonda -- Knights of the Round Table.
2. cacería salvaje -- Wild Hunt.
3. druida -- druid.
4. el actual y futuro rey -- the once and future king; King Arthur.
5. El Rey Pescador -- The Fisher King.
6. hada -- fairy.
7. hombre de mimbre -- wicker man.
8. La Dama del Lago -- The Lady of the Lake.
9. la reina del aire y las tinieblas -- the queen of air and darkness.
10. leprechaun -- leprechaun.
11. Rey Arturo -- King Arthur.
12. Santo Grial -- Holy Grail.

The Weariness of the Mean

Ah, 1993. The same year that The X-Files debuted on TV and proved that there was a market for smart, witty science fiction and horror on the small screen. Unfortunately, it was the same year that saw the release of Leprechaun, a movie that would prove there was still a market for astonishingly dumb horror movies on the big screen.

It would be nice to say that Leprechaun was not as bad as the above poster suggests, and that it was in actuality one of those undiscovered horror classics that was never fully appreciated by the critics of its day. But no, I saw it more than a decade after its release and it was still as stupid as the day it was conceived. If anything, the film itself is even worse than the above poster suggests. The film seems to begrudge its audience any bit of humor that might have made its premise bearable. Even the inevitable reference to Lucky Charms cereal -- which, of course, includes a leprechaun on the cover of its boxes -- goes over as flat as a set of whitewall tires in Carrie Underwood territory. As if that were not enough, the film's title character (played by Warwick Davis) is just plain unlikable. Apart from a few quaint poems recited near the beginning of the film, the Davis character is generally directed to act so mean and nasty that even director Wes Craven of Nightmare on Elm Street fame would find his antics a bit excessive.

The movie is best known today for the feature film debut of American actress Jennifer Aniston, who is best known as the former star of the NBC comedy series Friends. The most charitable thing that can be said about Ms. Aniston's performance is that it is not as memorably awful as a lot of lines given to Mr. Davis. Indeed, this is one of those movies where it seems better for an actor or actress to be merely forgettable than memorable for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway, the story, as slight as it is, revolves around a leprechaun who is tricked out of his pot of gold by a mere human and who swears vengeance on whoever stole it from him. The leprechaun ends up trapped in a crate that has been sealed by the magic of a four-leaf clover. After a decade, the house where the crate has been placed is rented by an unsuspecting family and the leprechaun is inadvertently released by a mentally disabled friend of the family. As if that is not enough, said friend stumbles upon the leprechaun's pot of gold and accidentally swallows a piece of the treasure while biting into it. There is also an unbearably mawkish bit concerning said friend but that is a relatively minor complaint compared to what happens later in the film.

Eventually the leprechaun finds out his pot of gold is missing. Immediately, all Celtic hell breaks loose. The leprechaun ends up killing a lot of people and of course, almost every one who gets killed gets killed in the cruelest way possible. People try to kill the leprechaun but of course, every attempt to kill him fails until the very last, and even then the film makers can't resist leaving room for a sequel.

In any event, this movie eventually produced five sequels, most of which are rumored to be even worse than the first movie. But that seems to be the way with horror film sequels; few of them are rarely ever better than the original. And when you consider how often the original is a bad film to begin with, that is saying a lot. One might even suspect that there was a curse involved. But alas, the only pot of gold to be found inevitably belongs to the people who make these crummy movies.

Movie Quote of the Week

Try as they will, and try as they might, who steals me gold won't live through the night.
--Warwick Davis, Leprechaun (1993)

To Thine Own Celt Be True

Aye and begorrah! If it isn't everyone's favorite swashbuckler* Tyrone Power playing the part of one Stephen Fitzgerald in the 1948 film The Luck of the Irish. And is not it just great that Fitzgerald just happens to be an Irish-American freelance journalist -- not to be confused with one F. Scott Fitzgerald -- who has gone back to the old sod on his way back to New York from Europe? And who should he come across in this odd enchanted land save a not so wee member of the wee folk (played by Cecil Kellaway). A leprechaun, that is, who looks uncannily like the guy who played Veronica Lake's father in I Married a Witch.

Fortunately, Power's adventures with the supernatural prove a lot more benign in this movie than Fredric March's were in I Married a Witch. If anything, one may say they prove too benign. Fitzgerald wins over the trust and affection of a centuries-old shoemaker so quickly that one might be tempted to dismiss the whole affair as a load of cobblers.

But then Fitzgerald meets Nora (played by Anne Baxter), a local colleen whose charm is such that she may be a supernatural being as well. Unfortunately, Fitzgerald is also engaged to a rich American girl named Frances (played by Jayne Meadows) and has promised to take a job with her father David Augur (played by Lee J. Cobb), a powerful newspaperman seeking to make a run for the Senate. Fitzgerald does not agree with many of David Augur's political stands but he finds the combination of Frances' glamour and her father's money to be a powerful temptation.

Of course, one does not have to have seen many American movies to guess whom Fitzgerald will choose when he is forced to decide between the poor and humble Nora and the not-so-poor and not-so-humble Frances. But I must admit I found the way to that decision to be quite interesting. However, I did find it unusual to see a movie made in the Yankee Doodle Dandy era which actually encouraged the audience to cheer on a fellow who ultimately chose to emigrate back to his ancestral homeland rather than to stay and make a go of it in America -- moreover, one which encouraged the audience to applaud his decision to pass over a nice red-blooded American girl in favor of some foreigner.

Then again, if I had a certain bright-eyed colleen waiting for me in the Emerald Isle, I would be tempted to make the same choices Stephen Fitzgerald ultimately made -- and I would not need any supernatural intervention to help me make up my mind.

* Apart from Errol Flynn, natch.

Trailer of the Week: Leprechaun 2 (1994)

Horror films in the 1990s were so classy before the big corporations got involved.