The Corner Penthouse

Leprechaun Returns is the eight installment in the 25-year-old Leprechaun franchise. Is it any good? Read on to find out...


Leprechaun Returns features the deadly, wisecracking Leprechaun (Linden Porco), who's back in all his gory glory. When the sorority sisters (Taylor Spreitler, Pepi Sonuga, Sai Bennett, Emily Reid) of the Alpha Upsilon house decide to go green and use an old well as their water source, they unwittingly awaken a pint-sized, green-clad monster. The Leprechaun wants a pot of gold buried near the sorority house, but first he must recover his powers with a killing spree - and only the girls of AU can stop him, with a little help from old soul Ozzie (Mark Holton).


Having premiered on the Syfy channel this past March for St. Patrick's Day, Leprechaun Returns is the eight film in the franchise, and the second not to have Warwick Davis playing the titular character. It follows the first film, Leprechaun (1993), and ignores all of the sequels. It focuses on Lila, the daughter of Tory Reding, the character played by a pre-Friends Jennifer Aniston. Tory has a voice cameo in this film, but Aniston did not return for it. Lila returns to the house that Tory and her friends stayed at in the first film, which has been taken over by the Alpha Upsilon sorority. The name is a clever reference to the chemical symbol for gold, AU.


The sorority sisters and their boyfriend are your stereotypical young dumb Millennials, several of whom take selfies with the Leprechaun. If you're not familiar with the Leprechaun franchise, it's not straight horror. It's Horror Comedy with tongue in cheek, as the selfies is an example of. Surprisingly, or not, the female characters tend to be smarter than the male characters, even though they play dumb at first.


Our main girl, Lila, is played by Taylor Spreitler, whom I've liked ever since I saw her on the ABC Family sitcom Melissa & Joey back in 2010. She has the most tender-looking facial features and the softest-looking skin. I watched all two seasons of that horrible Kevin James "comedy" Kevin Can Wait because of her.


Mark Holden reprises his role of Ozzie from the first film. As we learn in one of the bonus features, his character originally had a smaller appearance in the film, but it was expanded because he was so well liked.


Leprechaun Returns is presented in its original 1.78:1 aspect ratio with a runtime of 1:32:55. On the audio side, there's an English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. The film includes English, English SDH, and Spanish subtitles. The first print run includes a beautiful slipsleeve.


Before I get to the bonus features, I need to mention that the Blu-ray main menu music is VERY loud. Okay, now here is the list of the bonus features that can be found on the disc, all of which are in HD.

• Going Green with Director Steven Kostanski (19:41) - A rather lengthy interview with the young director of Leprechaun Returns that covers various topics of the production.
• Behind-the-Scenes Footage (3:33) - Various silent bits of B-roll while music from the original Leprechaun plays over it.
• Still Gallery (3:49) - A slideshow of 40 images while music from the Leprechaun Returns plays over it.

A digital copy code voucher is also included in the standard Blu-ray case.


Leprechaun Returns is available on Blu-ray and DVD. The previous films in the series are collected in the Leprechaun: 7-Film Collection, which is available on Blu-ray and DVD. You should get the Blu-ray set because all of the films are in HD widescreen and there are all new bonus features. The DVD set has the first four films in 4:3 fullscreen, the fifth in 4:3 letterbox, and the last two in anamorphic widescreen; and the first five films just have trailers for bonus features on DVD (the last two have a few extra things).


All images were taken from the photo gallery on the disc. The Blu-ray has been provided by Lionsgate for review on this site.