Happy St. Patrick's Day! After missing out on my last day-specific opportunity (Friday the 13th), I was determined to make good on St. Patty's and find something appropriate. And I didn't want to watch any Leprechaun sequels... so I ended up with Red Clover. It apparently premiered on Syfy (eek!) as a part of a Leprechaun-themed marathon, under the title of Leprechaun's Revenge - probably to try and trick people into thinking they would be seeing some Warwick Davis action. And what kind of themed marathon would that be anyways? I don't think there are any other Leprechaun horror movies out there. So you're pretty much just watching a bunch of Leprechaun movies, topped off with an (unrelated, mind you) Red Clover.
Anyways, despite it's reputation of (a) premiering on SyFy, and (b) being a killer leprechaun movie, it's actually pretty good. It's cheesy at times, but overall it is quality b-movie fun. It's not going to blow anyone away, but certainly a worthy holiday watch. I'd watch this again over any of the Leprechaun films, for what it's worth.
It's about a teenager in a small town in Massachusets named Karen O'Hara (Courtney Halverson) - she's out hunting with her grandfather/'pop' (William Devane) and comes across a red clover. She picks it and is suddenly attacked by a strange creature that bursts out of the ground. Luckily, Karen has a gun and shoots the creature, who scampers off. Her father (Billy Zane) is also the sheriff, and is called to the scene and berates 'pop' for putting his daughter in danger. Karen relays the story of being attacked by some weird thing, but everyone assumes she's just crazy.
'Pop' O'Hara, it turns out, has a reputation around town for being a drunk and a lunatic - he's always going on and on about leprechauns and the fairy world and all sorts of nonsense. But what if it turns out he's right? Karen starts to have these crazy hallucinations about the creature, and begins going into trances and randomly freaks out from time to time. 'Pop' informs her she's been cursed by the leprechaun that's been buried in town for hundreds of years but recently escaped. If they can't get him reburied within four days, she'll die! So they go after him.
The first thing I noticed about Red Clover is that our leprechaun baddie here is not the sort of creature you expect (little mischevious wise-cracking guy with a green suit). According to 'pop,' leprechauns are the "vermin of the fairy world," and the one here follows suit. He's almost portrayed like more of a wild animal - he has cloven feet, growls, and swipes at people with his sharp claws. He's actually a pretty creepy looking creature - kind of a smaller sized mix of Pan (from Pan's Labyrinth) and a gargoyle. And he's got freaky goat eyes, where the pupils go horizontal instead of vertical. (Seriously, goat eyes freak me out.) He *is* still after people's gold, although in this case he eats it (to get more powerful, or to regenerate if he is injured). Red Clover plays more like a monster movie than the Leprechaun films, and it works well. There is one incongruous scene where he runs over someone with a car, but otherwise he pretty much just bites/slashes/hacks/disembowels people.
But that's not to say it's void of humor. Most of the comedy comes from Billy Zane as sheriff O'Hara. It's kind of interesting watching him - at the beginning it seems like he's acting in a totally different film. He's got this strange delivery, with line breaks in the wrong places. While most of the cast plays it straight, he kind of plays up the b-movieness of the whole endeavor, and gets most of the good lines for the first half of the film. But somewhere along the line, the rest of the movie catches up with him. Other characters get in on the fun and you end up with much more of a horror-comedy than you'd have expected. So even though the two halves of the movie are different tonally, the change is gradual enough that it works well. Plus Zane was already there to begin with. I feel like either - straight-ahead serious or straight-ahead comedy would have made Red Clover a slog, but the marriage of the two works out well here.
The horror aspects of the film do work to a certain extent. A lot of the kills are offscreen - mostly the leprechaun takes a swipe and a bunch of gore flies up against a wall. Not ideal, but I did admire how chunky it was at times. There are a couple of prosthetic effects that work well - there is an especially good bit where a guy gets the side of his face swiped off by the beast. And it's almost all practical, which I appreciated (the one obviously CGI part looks like absolute garbage). What it doesn't have going for it is that it isn't that scary. A lot of people die (some of them mere seconds after being introduced, in classic SyFy tradition), but you are not super attached to the characters. Red Clover isn't the kind of film where you're supposed to care about the characters too much, and it knows it. (As evidenced by the great line following the death of a significant character: "what's his name is dead!")
There are some odd, disorienting choices in how it's been shot/edited. Some of Karen's hallucination scenes are kind of confusing in how they are put together, and there are a couple of obvious, weird lighting choices. But mostly, Red Clover looks good - and it seems like a great deal more care went into it than your traditional SyFy fare.
Overall, Red Clover is pretty quality b-movie fun. It's not earthshaking or anything, but it delivers enough of the goods to be worth a watch. Especially if you are in the St. Patrick's Day spirit. I'm not a Leprechaun guy - so maybe next year I'll have to just settle for a non-leprechaun Irish horror film. Suggestions?
I would recommend this film.
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