Red Clover



AKA: Leprechaun’s Revenge
AKA: St. Patrick’s Day Leprechaun

While out in the woods hunting wild boar with her grandfather, Karen stumbles upon a red clover at the base of a tree that has been covered in horseshoes. But upon picking the natural wonder, Karen inadvertently casts a curse upon herself and releases her hometown’s ancient enemy, an angry, bloodthirsty leprechaun that the town’s founders brought over from the old country that they used to bring themselves great fortune. Local legend says that the monster got loose 60-some-odd years ago and went on a killing spree, massacring 14 people before the O’Hara clan finally trapped and imprisoned it. But now the angry fairy-folk is loose again and going on another rampage, and Karen only has four days to stop it before the curse takes her out as well.



Well, St. Patrick’s Day was yesterday (whoo!), so in its honor I tracked me down a leprechaun movie. But, as usual, I have bad judgement and apparently picked one of the few that was produced by the SYFY channel (go me!). Originally titled Red Clover, the movie’s name was temporarily changed to Leprechaun’s Revenge when it aired on the SYFY (gods I hate that spelling) channel in 2012, likely to try to capitalize on the Warwick Davis films in an effort to trick viewers into tuning in. But the title was changed back to the original Red Clover a year later for the DVD release, so that should probably be what it’s listed under, should you go searching for it yourself. And why would you possibly be searching for a SYFY (argh!) movie yourself? Well, mostly because, unlike the vast catalog of films from that one accursed network that I hate to name, this one surprisingly wasn’t half bad.


I know, I know. I was stunned too.

Now, don’t get me wrong. This is still very much a low-budget, Made-for-TV movie. But for something that was clearly meant as a B-film, I didn’t think it was half bad. In fact, I actually thought it started off pretty strong. The opening segment had some very nice atmosphere and established what was going on and kicked off the plot fairly quickly. And within less than 20 minutes they’ve already explained most of the character relationships and had the monster kill off three people. So obviously this was a movie that was ready to roll and wasn’t keen on wasting too much time and I appreciate that. Granted, the overall plot itself is pretty standard and a bit predictable for a horror film, so there’s not going to be anything here that you haven’t seen before. But overall, it was still generally well put together.



There’s also quite a bit of blood and guts on display, too. No nudity, of course, because it aired on television. But for the gore-hounds there’s a surprising amount of blood. People are stabbed, disemboweled and cut (pulled?) in half, arms are ripped off, faces are torn asunder… This feisty leprechaun is actually a pretty brutal creature. I think around a dozen or so people (probably another 14 if I had to count) end up dead by the end of the film, most of them dying in spectacularly brutal ways. The only downside is that a lot of the deaths either happen VERY quickly, we’re talking ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ levels of swiftness, or just off screen, to the point where you only see the aftermath. But there’s still a lot of blood splatter and body parts lying around, so there really isn’t any doubt about what transpired.



Another bonus? Considering the network it aired on, there is actually very little CGI in this film. Which is great, because as we all know cheap cable CGI sucks a$$. I mean, I can’t lie, it’s still here, but it’s used minimally and very quickly. An odd glow here, a quick blood splatter there…. It usually just pops up for a second or two, so it’s not too bad. Thankfully for the most part they seem to have stuck with practical effects for the bulk of the film, so most of the bloody, gutsy parts are quite real and quite copious, to the point where I suspect someone on set had a hell of a good time flinging blood buckets all over the set. I think the worst and certainly most notable CGI offender is at the end, when Karen throws the leprechaun off the top of her car and you can see it falling and rolling down the road behind her. Or at least that thing is supposed to be the leprechaun. Mostly it looks like a very oddly shaped grey, lumpy potato. But other than that rather amusing travesty of rendering, most of the effects are pretty decent.


Good grief, throwing a dummy out of the back of the Jeep would have looked better than this.

And the acting? Oh my goodness, even the acting was okay! I’m not sure how, but they managed to get Billy Zane and William Devane to be in this, and not just for a quick five minute appearance like you might expect. They’re main characters and are here for almost the entire movie. Admittedly, Zane kinda feels like he’s coasting on autopilot, but Devane’s presence alone is definitely better than what a silly B-Movie like this deserves. Even Courtney Halverson, who some might recognize from True Detectives, does well here. In fact, I think most of the cast, minus a couple of quick auxiliary victims who are only on screen for a few scant seconds, do a pretty good job in this movie. Not great maybe, but certainly better than your average Made-for-TV horror film.



Now, the one big downside to all of this is that by the half-way point the movie… Well, it almost feels like it shifts gears and suddenly starts to try to inject more humor into the production? AND the characters start to gradually act more and more stupid? I don’t know. It’s kinda weird. Almost like the movie had two separate writers that weren’t quite on the same wavelength. Except there’s only one writer. So I suspect they may have been rushed somewhere around half way through, and then things started going off the rails a bit.



It all starts when the town’s local conspiracy writer/blogger decides to coax the leprechaun out of hiding with a piece of gold. Cause leprechauns don’t hoard gold, they eat gold in this movie  – Don’t worry about it. Just roll with it – Anyway, he’s trying to bribe the thing, but his object of choice ends up being a (fairly new looking) pen and ink well. Except those things are almost 100% made of brass or bronze. Rarely are they made of gold. So it’s probably only a gold colored ink well. But I guess that’s good enough for this movie, because our monster shows up and then kills the guy by… running over him with his own car? And when, pray tell, did this thing learn to drive a car? Don’t know, cause it never does anything quite so ‘modern’ again. But it’s the point in the movie where things start to take a turn and people start acting profoundly dumb, needlessly withholding vital information, being surprised by things that have already been established (Honey, your gramps already told you he was going to help you. Why do you look so shocked to see him after he said he’d be back? Does the curse cause brain damage? Did the writer just forget? WTH?), or just saying dumb junk. Like the line where Karen says she feels like she’s trapped in a “bad monster movie.” Yes, movie. Ha ha ha, very clever.



Coincidentally, this is also the point in the film where the movie becomes extra predictable with things like jump scares. Almost like they were reading a basic “how to” manual while writing it and decided to follow it word for word. Like, “Oh, she opened a door. So now when she closes it the monster is going to be right there hissing at her or something, right?…. Yup.” Or, “Ah, look. A tender moment between parent and child. I assume this is going to be interrupted by the monster and followed by a grizzly death of some sor-….. A ha! There he is. Right on time dude.”
After the decent start they had, it’s more than a little disappointing.



There are a few other, smaller peculiarities with Red Clover of course. Like how I’m still confused as to how ripping a tiara off the top someones’ head is somehow supposed to cause a giant hole to appear in the back of said head (Seriously, how TF does that work? What the hell just happened?) But for the most part I still don’t think that the move was that bad. Not necessarily good, maybe, but still a decent and very watchable B-flick that moves at a generous pace. It’s a bit too predictable and certainly not very memorable (you’ll likely forget most of it in about a day or so), but if you’re a fan of B-movies and looking for a new holiday film to watch that doesn’t involve Warwick Davis or Jenifer Aniston then this one is pretty easy to follow along with or put on in the background. Just don’t go in expecting too much.

Red Clover is available on a variety of streaming services.

Red Clover is also available on DVD.

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