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writer and director Mark Jones recalls

Jen n ifer An iston and Willow’s Warwick

BY JACK BERESFORD

1978, JOHN CARPENTER’S

Halloween ushered in the era of the slasher movie.

Halloween was responsible for something else, too. Over the next 15 years, any number of weird and wonderful horror movies popped up inspired by notable dates in the calendar. Friday the 13th, Mother’s Day, My Bloody Valentine, and April Fools Day all cashed in on the concept.

It was against this backdrop that TV writer Mark Jones came up with the most brilliantly bizarre entry of them all: Leprechaun. “Back in the 1980s, there was a lot of advertising for Lucky Charms with this little leprechaun character,” Jones tells Den of Geek. “It suddenly occurred to me that no one had done a St. Patrick’s Day horror movie. Everyone knew what a leprechaun was. Plus, they were little creatures that dealt in rainbows and magic. So it seemed like a natural idea to gravitate to.”

For over a decade, Jones had written and produced for shows like The

A-Team and Knight Rider, as well as Scooby-Doo. But by 1988, he was determined to direct a film. In an era when horror movies proved fertile ground for emerging talent, Leprechaun was perfect.

“Every horror movie finds an audience, and you could put it together without spending a lot of money,” he explains. “You didn’t necessarily need stars. The creature is the star. So it was a great inroad for getting into directing. Plus, I could have fun with it.”

Further research into the origins of leprechauns only served to enhance his convictions. “I discovered they could be really evil little creatures,” Jones says. He set to work on a script that would see a leprechaun, searching for his missing gold, embark on a murderous rampage around a secluded farmhouse.

Coming at a time when small creature-led horror movies like Gremlins, Critters, and Ghoulies were the order of the day, Jones’ riff on leprechaun lore eventually attracted the attention of Trimark, a direct-tovideo distribution company looking to make it in the movies.

Early drafts of Jones’ script were a world away from the fun-loving, pun-loving prankster fans would come to know and, in a strange way, love. “The original Leprechaun was more horrific with much less of a personality,” Jones says. “He was a killing machine.”

Faceless killers had been all the rage in the 1980s, with characters like Jason Voorhees scaring up a treat at the box office, but Jones had noticed a sea change in the way they were being depicted.

“People were more accepting of comedy and horror alongside one another. Child’s Play had come out and what I liked about that was that Chucky had all these funny lines,” he says. “He became a personality you kind of loved to hate.”

With others like A Nightmare On Elm Street icon Freddy Krueger increasingly playing it for laughs, it something that kids would find fun.”

Taking inspiration from his earlier work, he set about creating what he calls a “Scooby-Doo horror movie.” The main cast even consisted of characters who wouldn’t have looked out of place driving the Mystery Machine, with a handsome hunk and teen girl joined by a streetwise kid and his dimwitted older friend. The violence, meanwhile, was positively cartoonish. “I made the Leprechaun do things like drive a tricycle around and