Leprechaun 4: In Space (1996)

Horror franchises can be daunting. There is a great abundance of long running franchises, more than pretty much any other genre. There have been eleven Halloween movies, twelve Friday the 13^th movies (including a crossover with A Nightmare on Elm Street), nine films in A Nightmare on Elm Street (including that same crossover), four Scream movies plus a television show, eight Saw movies, six Paranormal Activities, five Sleepaway Camps, at least ten Hellraiser movies, five Final Destinations, and numerous Children of the Corn and Amityville flicks. That’s only scratching the surface.

Long running horror franchises tend to go off the rails after the first two or three entries. They add new details and twists in an attempt to grow the mythology. It ends up diluting how effective the horror is. The people writing the scripts want to keep things fresh. Nobody wants to go into a sequel and see exactly what they saw before. The same goes for reboots. What would be the point in watching them if there was nothing new? You could watch the original instead. The writers sprinkle in some new things. A new story, or some character background can go a long way. The setting might change. These things have been discussed many times before.

Getting more specific than the tendency of sequels to try and change things up is one specific location that many long-running franchises decide to visit at some point. It is a location that frequently gets visited in horror franchises as the writers try to top what came before. There are four franchises that immediately come to mind when thinking about sequels that pushed the limits of location for a setting. What’s the location? Well, of course it will be space. That’s in the title of this week’s movie.

The Leprechaun franchise began in a location that didn’t have anything special to it. There were a bunch of people at a farmhouse. A leprechaun showed up and started attacking them to get its gold back. That was it. It was a country location. There were no major landmarks. There was no history with the location. There was no genre that came with it outside of the slasher stuff that came with the leprechaun’s goals. It was as unremarkable a beginning location as could be had with a horror movie.

The first two sequels brought more interesting locations that could play into the story. Leprechaun 2 took place in Los Angeles. The main character was part of a dead celebrities tour, which took tourists to see the final resting places of a bunch of famous people. The setting was mostly used as a way to bring the leprechaun into the big city. Leprechaun 3 was set in the big city of Las Vegas. It utilized many of the Las Vegas clichés and tropes that have been in many other movies. It might have felt derivative, but it was at least trying with the location.

Then things stepped up a notch for the fourth movie. Things went out of this world. Leprechaun 4: In Space took the action to outer space. Again, the story was derivative. It felt like someone took Alien and Aliens, then mashed them together with a Leprechaun storyline. The leprechaun had gotten onto a spaceship and was slowly killing a group of space marines one-by-one. There was a lightsaber and a kidnapped princess to harken back to Star Wars. There was the reveal of someone important being a secret android. That came straight from Alien. And there was the leprechaun right in the middle of everything.

As derivative as Leprechaun 4: In Space was to science fiction movies of the 70s and 80s, it did highlight something that happens in quite a few horror franchises. As each series moves on into their later entries, they want new locations where the action can take place. They move from the country to the city. They move from one city to another city. They go around the world. But, eventually, they run out of locations and set their sights elsewhere. They decide they need to go out of this world. The franchise heads into outer space.

Another franchise that has been featured in the Sunday “Bad” Movies is Sharknado. The first movie was set in Los Angeles, with a few of the city’s features being highlighted. The action began near the Santa Monica Pier. At one point, the Hollywood sign played an important role. And, of course, it was close to the ocean so that the sharknado could happen. The second film took the action to the east coast, as the main character went to New York. There was even more location influence. Taxis, skyscrapers, the NYPD and NYFD, CitiField, the ferry, and a pizza shop all got their time to shine. The franchise had changed locations and felt bigger because it let the location become a more integral part of the story.

The third movie had to step it up even more. Instead of the one sharknado of the first movie in Los Angeles, or the few sharknadoes of the second movie in New York, there was a whole storm front of sharknadoes covering the entire eastern seaboard. The main character drove from Washington D.C. to Orlando to find his family, and something in Florida was going to be the only way to stop the storm. Cape Canaveral would allow the main character to travel into space and use some space tech to take down the giant front. There was a lightsaber chainsaw because every space movie needs to reference Star Wars. There was a trip to the moon. The Sharknado movies had taken three entries to reach space.

The third franchise that should be noted is one where the space entry hasn’t yet been covered. The Friday the 13^th movies began fairly simple. A bunch of camp counselors were prepping for another summer when they began dying at the hands of someone mysterious. One by one, dead counselors kept popping up. As the franchise went on, the action didn’t always take place at the camp. It did take place near Crystal Lake, though, which kept a sort of contained universe to the whole thing. That was the case until part 8, when Jason took Manhattan. Part 9 took place all over as Jason tried to get his own body back through possessing other people. Then came space.

Jason X was set in the far future. Jason had been captured and cryogenically frozen during the first decade of the 21^st century. In the future, he was brought to a spaceship for experimentation. He ended up unfrozen and that led to murder. Some elements of space were utilized. One of the deaths had to do with someone getting sucked through a hole in the wall because of the pressure difference between the spaceship and outer space. Most of it had to do with the future element, though. Cryogenics, nanobots, and fully aware androids were a part of the story. Jason X was a future space movie, through and through, because the franchise was trying to find new settings as it dragged on into its tenth installment.

An argument could also be made for the Predator franchise. The first film took place in the jungle. The second brought the action to the city. The third took it back to the jungle, with a twist. Predators featured a jungle setting that was on a different planet. It was on the planet of the predators as they hunted the humans in a style familiar with The Most Dangerous Game. It was a familiar setting with a slight twist, making it a space movie that wasn’t really set in space. It sort of counts but not really.

When franchises grow, they usually try to grow out their scope as well. Sometimes it takes a little longer than others. It took the Friday the 13^th franchise eight movies to get away from Crystal Lake while the first sequel of the Leprechaun franchise changed up the location. Other times, franchises will build out the mythology. Whatever way they go, the people behind the movies want their franchises to grow. They want to give audiences more to appreciate about them instead of keeping everything relatively the same.

Space went from being the final frontier to being a setting for aging franchises. Leprechaun, Sharknado, Friday the 13^th, and Predator have all gone to space. And it’s not just horror movies that look to the stars for their future. James Bond went to space in Moonraker. There are rumours that the Fast & Furious movies might also make the trip. Action movies are getting in on the space race. And people are still excited for space to be used as a setting. Space sequels will never die.

The notes section of these posts will also never die:

• Here are the posts for Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120), Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood (week 120), Sharknado (week 190), Sharknado 2: The Second One (week 190), Sharknado 3: Oh Hell No (week 190), Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning (week 46), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (week 85), and Friday the 13th Part VII: Jason Takes Manhattan (week 294).
• Leprechaun 4: In Space was the fourth Sunday “Bad” Movies appearance of Warwick Davis. He had previously been seen in Leprechaun in the Hood (week 120), Leprechaun Back 2 Tha Hood (week 120), and The Ewok Adventure (week 287).
• Miguel A. Nunez Jr. appeared in Leprechaun 4: In Space. He also showed up in Friday the 13^th Part V: A New Beginning (week 46) and Street Fighter (week 280).
• Finally, Geoff Meed returned this week after making an appearance in 6 Guns (week 247).
• Have you seen Leprechaun 4: In Space? What do you think of space sequels? Are there any that I forgot to mention? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments.
• You can find me on Twitter or in the comments and let me know about the movies I should be checking out for future weeks of the Sunday “Bad” Movies. I’m always open to suggestions, especially since I don’t have too many at the moment.
• There is an Instagram account for the Sunday “Bad” Movies that has things going up on a regular basis. There may be more coming to it soon. 
• This was week 359 of the Sunday “Bad” Movies, which means that next week is a franchise week. It’s also October. I’ll be checking out more than one movie from a horror franchise, and I think I chose a pretty good one this Spooky Season. Three movies, each with a new evolution of a monster. Comedy and horror put together. One theatrical outing and two direct-to-video sequels. There are more movies in the franchise that I might cover at a later time. For next week, though, I’m taking a look at the first three Tremors movies. I’ll see you then.