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Table of Contents description: ELF-ABUSE: The luck of the Irish runs out when the mean, green "Leprechaun" makes the scene.

We're looking over a gore-leaf clover, and what do we find? The latest in the miniature movie monster brigade.

A cold wind blows through the trees and into the bones of those who have braved frigid night temperatures on an isolated Southern California hilltop location to complete Leprechaun's last five days of shooting. But the weather hasn't dampened the enthusiasm of first-time writer/director Mark Jones. "I'm not one of these guys who look at this as a stepping stone to something better," explains Jones as he rubs his hands around a styrofoam cup of coffee. "As far as I'm concerned, Leprechaun is better."

On this positive note, Jones leaves, bucking the wind as he wanders back to a pickup truck that is the centerpiece of a Leprechaun attack. In this scene, the diminutive but evil title character (played by Willow's Warwick Davis) leaps onto the hood and smashes his fist through the windshield in an attempt to get at its terrified passengers.

The screeching of tires on loose dirt signals the arrival of the van from the production base. It grinds to a halt and disgorges Davis, wearing truly horrific Leprechaun makeup (courtesy of Gabe Bartalos) and dressed in the expected green pants, coat and top hat. The actor moves to a nearby director's chair, where he is wrapped in a heating blanket. This is his first night back on Leprechaun after a five-day absence due to illness, and so the actor's health and warmth are of utmost importance.

Jones, despite 15 years as a TV writer for such genre fare as The Highwayman, Galactica 1980 and Superboy, bubbles over with enthusiasm as he fiddles with camera angles under the watchful eye of line producer and genre filmmaker David (Children of the Corn II) Price. "What we need inside the cab is one camera that can pick up Warwick's face," he tells a veteran crew who seem to have captured the spirit of adventure apparent in this ultralow-budget shocker.

The director calls for Davis, who is lifted up onto the hood and told just where to hit the windshield for the required breakthrough. Jones is ready and calls for a couple of rehearsals. When it comes time for the actual explosion of glass, Jones' excitement temporarily gets the best of him.

"Uh, Mark, you can't stand there," reproaches his AD. "You're in the way." "What if I stand here?" queries the director. "No," chuckles the AD, "get over here!"

With the director safely out of frame, the cast - Ken (April Fool's Day) Olandt, Jennifer Aniston, Robert Gorman and Mark Holton - jump inside the truck cab and are instructed to look frightened (which, in this teeth-chattering weather, is not hard to do). Jones calls for action, and Davis slams his fist through the windshield, sticks his head through and attempts to bite off an unlucky victim's ear. Jones likes the fury, prints it and steps in once again to point everyone in the direction of the scene's continuation - which leaves time for a background check on the pint-sized assassin.

Leprechaun, which Trimark plans to release this spring or summer, appears to be something of a knockoff on the surface, along the lines of Gremlins, Child's Play, Critters and the other recent minimonster flicks. But Jones would have you know different. "I wrote the script in 1985, long before there was a Child's Play," he argues. "But I had a hard time convincing anybody that a little creature could be evil. Nobody could seem to understand that scariness could be a little thing coming at you."

Leprechaun's storyline has our title terror's pot of gold stolen in Ireland by a villain who flees to America and succeeds in imprisoning the creature in a trunk, topped off with a Leprechaun's answer to a vampire cross: a four-leaf clover. Ten years later, the new owners of the farmhouse where the trunk has been stashed accidentally knock the clover off, releasing the little monster. The creature then goes on a campaign of violence, acting under the mistaken assumption that a plucky group of young people actually have the gold.

The struggle of the characters against the creature is equal to that waged by Jones to get the project off the ground. "Moviestore Entertainment, who bought the script with myself attached as director, let it languish for years before I had to sell my soul to the devil to get it back," Jones laments. "I finally took it to Trimark, who don't really like dealing with first-time directors. But I went so far as to make a bad deal with them, the only condition being that I get to direct, and they finally agreed."

And while the folks at Trimark have been nervously looking over Jones' shoulder, the fledgling director hasn't given them too much to worry about. "Oh, there was that scene we shot last week, where the Leprechaun gets a billy club smashed into his eye and loses it," admits the director, who doesn't believe in hiding his miscues. "We shot the scene, and then realized that we couldn't have the Leprechaun running around for half the movie with only one eye. But with our short schedule (around 30 days), we didn't have time to reshoot the scene. I thought about it for a while, and then I asked Gabe if he could make an eye. We ended up shooting an additional quick scene in which the Leprechaun goes over to the body of a nearby policeman, yanks one of his eyes out, and sticks it in his empty socket."

Bartalos comes to the rescue once again as filming of the attack sequence continues. The scene, in which the Leprechaun gets a cigarette lighter in the nose, needs something, and it's decided that smoke will do the trick. Bartalos volunteers that a tube up Davis' sleeve, with smoke blown into it out of camera range, is the easiest way to go. The director gives the OK and the FX pro hightails it back to his trailer for the tubing. The break in the action gives Jones an opportunity to discuss the genesis of his film debut.

"Researching a film about leprechauns wasn't really that easy," explains Jones. "Outside of Darby O'Gill and the Little People, there hasn't been much in the way of movies and, historically, there hasn't been a whole lot written about them. What I found was that leprechauns are the offspring of evil spirits and demented fairies, and that there's no way to kill them. So what I ended up doing was mixing historical facts with things like the four-leaf clover stopping him, which I made up."

Leprechaun's screenplay went through a number of very distinct drafts, with the character developing accordingly. "Originally, my concept for the Leprechaun was that of a horrible, murderous creature," Jones says. "But I found that just a little too one-dimensional, and ultimately made him into a character whom audiences could almost love, yet was totally evil.

"What we basically have here is a horror comic book, the kind of thing Walt Disney might have done if he had been a little bent," Jones continues. "We've taken that approach in every aspect of the movie. The lighting is kind of like the look Dick Tracy had. It's really off the beaten path, and I'm getting off on that."

Jones claims that directing for the first time has been "an unbelievable shock. I'm standing between Trimark and the crew, I'm having to please everybody, explaining why things didn't work. Directing this film is like being the general of two battling armies."

Bartalos returns with the tubing and conceals it in Davis' coat, while Price is recruited to hide under the truck with the other end of the tube and blow cigarette smoke into it. The scene unfolds: the lighter is jammed into the Leprechaun's nose. The creature rears back out of the windshield, cupping his hand to his face. Price blows smoke, which filters out from behind the hand. The producer gets a round of applause as he returns to a background chair to explain why, with Leprechaun, he's gone from directing to supervising.

"Mark's doing one hell of a job," Price points out. "There's really been nothing for me to do. But I suppose the company is a little nervous with a first-time director, so they wanted somebody to make sure we stay on schedule and get the coverage necessary to tell the story. I was a first-timer once, so I know what Mark's going through.

"With a budget of just a bit over $1 million, there's not much chance of this not showing a profit," claims Price, who foresees some franchise potential in the monster in green. "It's different. He can go anywhere because of who he is. The next film could take him into the city or back to Ireland. This is the type of thing that can go on forever."

Actor Davis would no doubt embrace the chance to reprise his role - he's always wanted to play a villain. But his reputation as the good guy in somewhat wholesome epics (he also appeared in TV's The Ewok Adventure) nearly cost him the chance to bite down hard in Leprechaun.

"They wanted me, but they had seen my work in Willow and thought, 'Well, he's too nice a guy to want to play such an evil character,'" recalls Davis during a midnight break in his trailer. "But I thought the script was great, and insisted that my agent get my pictures to them. They were shocked that I was interested."

The actor describes his character as "just vicious enough. He's a demented, evil person who is on a quest to get back his gold, and he's willing to do whatever is necessary to get it. He's evil, but within that context, I can basically open myself up and be as free in my interpretation of it as I want.

"But it's not as one-note grim as all that," he says. "There's also a lot of humor connected with this film. There's a scene where I'm driving a police car, while wearing a police cap and eating a doughnut, that's quite funny. And I don't know about you, but I think that killing somebody by jumping up and down on him with a pogo stick is hilarious."

Davis says he has taken every opportunity to do his own stunts on the film, but it has been an uphill battle. "I think it's hard to double me effectively because of my small stature, and I've been able to convince the powers that be often enough so that they've let me drive a go-cart, rollerskate and do a scene where I get run over by a truck. There's nothing really dangerous about the stunts in this movie. But you know how film companies and insurance are."

The tiny thespian gets a call back to the set. The smile, distinctive through the prosthetics, stays on his face. There's no Method to Leprechaun's madness, and he has a good laugh at that notion's expense. "I'm not the kind of actor who immediately gets into the part and walks around all weird until the end of the night. I'm Warwick until they say action. Then I become the other guy."

Helping the actor become this onscreen nasty has fallen to Bartalos, who used the not-clearly-defined image of a leprechaun to his creative advantage. "My thought was to go really wild with it," says the makeup whiz, "and to fully exploit Warwick's acting ability. With a full over-the-head mask, we'd lose the exact thing they hired him for. But the nine-piece appliance makeup I've designed is thin enough to allow for his expressions and the tons of dialogue he has to come through, and to clearly define his character."

During the film's transformation phases, Bartalos modified the nose, chin and ear pieces to complement the growing evil. Gloved hands help implement the growing-nails phase of the transformation.

"The look of this character is constantly changing," reveals Bartalos, "which makes this job more interesting and a lot less monotonous. I also like the idea of working on a lead character. It's not like the Leprechaun just shows up. He's the star of the film."

Bartalos' FX savvy is once again called into play for a close-up sequence in which the Leprechaun chases the kids into the farmhouse and has the door slammed in his face and his hand severed. There follows a comic scene in which the hand takes on a life of its own before being retrieved and reattached. Jones, Davis and Bartalos' radio-controlled appendage run through the scene on the farmhouse's front porch before attempting a take. At the director's signal, Davis rushes the last few feet to the door, which slams on his hand. He yells in pain. The door opens a crack, and the hand runs out, playing momentary tag with its owner before the Leprechaun picks it up, growls at it and into the camera before running off. Timing is everything on this shot, and the timing is clearly off.

"Gabe, we've got to get the door open a beat quicker and the hand out a bit faster," instructs Jones. Bartalos, who's controlling the beast with a handheld joystick, gets set up again and the scene is repeated. Endlessly. But the hand-severing ultimately works, and the cameras turn around to record some inserts of the Leprechaun hiding in the engine housing of the truck and, as the sun offers some early warning rays, a shot of the pickup being knocked into a deep ravine.

The dust is just beginning to settle on that last scene and Davis, finished for the night, gets ready for the van ride back to the trailer and the transformation from legendary creature back to hard-working actor. Before he leaves, however, Davis expresses the one fear he's had about doing this film.

"I'm not Chucky," he cautions, "and because of that, I'm worried that when I die at the end I'm going to be too likable. I'd feel much better if they hate me."