Director Mark Jones attempts to replicate the success of his 1993 light-hearted horror hit Leprechaun with yet another tongue-in-cheek effort featuring an ugly, ancient, diminutive, wise-cracking fairytale villain; instead of 'I need me gold?', it's 'I want the baby John', wicked goblin Rumplestiltskin being more concerned with collecting the soul of an infant than in gathering up the shiny yellow stuff.
Jones opens his film in the 1400s, somewhere in Europe, with Rumplestiltskin (Max Grodénchik) being pursued by angry villagers who are a little upset about his baby-stealing ways. As punishment, the pointy-eared chap is turned into a stone figurine and thrown into the sea. Cut to the present, and the hideous statuette is now on sale in a dusty old antiques shop in Los Angeles, where it catches the eye of recently bereaved cop's wife Shelley (Kim Johnston Ulrich); clearly doing alright on her widow's pension, Shelley buys the ugly effigy, but comes to regret her decision after she makes a wish whilst holding her new purchase: Rumplestiltskin, revived by Shelley's tears, makes her dream come true (granting her a brief reunion with her dead husband), but wants her baby son John in payment for services rendered.
Rumplestilitskin is a reasonably entertaining slice of mid-90s trash: the script is suitably silly, the pacing reasonably fast, the gore good 'n' cheesy, and the dialogue delightfully daft ("F**keth me!"), with dumb but fun highlights including Rumpel going all Easy Rider on a Harley, and a desert buggy versus truck highway chase scene between Rumpel and unlikely hero Max (Tommy Blaze) that ends with a surprisingly decent crash/explosion. Essentially, it's a Leprechaun movie in all but name, and should prove passable entertainment for any fan of Warwick Davies' long-running franchise.
That said, if I were forced to choose between Leprechaun and Rumplestiltskin, I'd have to go with the cheeky Oirish chappie's first outing, partly because Davies makes for a more memorable monster than Grodénchik, but mostly because Davies' co-star was a young Jennifer Aniston. Kim Johnston Ulrich is pretty, but she's no Aniston (although, unlike the Friends star, she does provide some welcome nudity).
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