Leprechaun is a really terrible horror movie that somehow got a 30% rating on the Rotten Tomatoes tomatometer. My guess is that about 3 out of every ten people who rated the movie did not understand the rating system.

Really, it is a horribly bad movie. Not “evil” bad, just “lame” bad. It is also the funniest movie ever.

It was when I was in college. One Friday night, me and my buddies were all hanging out because none of us could get any dates. So we decided to go to the video store and rent some videos. We went to a place called Hastings, which they still have in Logan, before they invented Blockbuster, where you would rent the movie and then inexplicably would have to return it the next day. Anyway, my roommate Shannon (not a girl) paid for the movies, because he had a job and therefore all the rest of us assumed he had money.

We rented two or three videos. One of these was The Golden Child, for reasons I probably don’t have to explain. Another was Leprechaun, a new release at the time. All we really knew about Leprechaun was that it had Jennifer Aniston in it, you know, when she was, uh, younger. So it had some promise.

When we got back to the apartment, most of the group wanted to watch The Golden Child, including my roommate Shannon. Brandon and I took Leprechaun into the other room and watched that instead.

For nearly two hours we watched intently, but what can I say – it totally, completely sucked. When it ended, I turned to Brandon and said, “You know what we should do? We should make a big noise and act like this movie just ended and that it was the most awesome ending ever. Then those other guys will stay up and watch the whole thing and have to suffer through it like we did.” Brandon liked this idea, so we really played it up as we started shouting and whooping and hollering as we came out of the other room, telling everyone how awesome it was.

“WHOA! That was the coolest ending EVER! You guys have to see it!!”

They were a bit surprised. “Really?” they said. “Oh yeah,” we continued. “It seems kinda lame at first, but you have to watch the whole thing all the way through, even if it seems lame. It totally throws you at the end, it is way awesome.”

Well, we completely convinced everyone, including Shannon, who said, “Okay. The rest of you guys have to wait for me. I can’t watch it tonight, and I have to leave this weekend, but I’ll come back on Monday and we can watch it Monday.”

Heeheeheehee.

Well, Monday comes. Shannon had by this point kept the movie an extra three days at the additional cost of $3 per day. It came time to watch the movie, and all these other guys showed up. Shannon said, “Yeah, I told all these other friends of mine about how awesome you guys said this movie is, so they came over to watch it with us.”

So there’s like ten guys here in the room and the movie starts. Ten guys, intently watching every single second of the movie. Every so often, one guy would look over at me, with an expression that said, “Really?” And I’d return an expression that said, “Yes. Trust me.” It also said, “You sucker.” But that was after they looked away.

They watched that movie clear into the closing credits waiting for it to get good. We waited for someone to figure it out. Finally someone said, “…… what the …… ?”

Brandon and I burst out laughing. Shannon was totally upset that he’d spent an extra $9 and invited all his friends over to watch one of the worst movies he’d ever seen.

Yeah. Funniest movie ever.