SyFy's the Leprechaun's Revenge

The Leprechaun's Revenge is a made-for-SyFy movie that I recorded and watched over the weekend after St. Patrick's Day. Apparently, there is a dearth of St. Patrick's Day-themed monster movies. This is not a good movie, but there is a funny moment near the end.

Here's a plot summary. The background is that a leprechaun was used by Irish immigrants in order to acquire lots of gold (apparently having a leprechaun lets you discover gold), so the leprechaun was enraged by this misuse. Since the leprechaun had become dangerous, the locals imprisoned him. The movie begins with the main character releasing the leprechaun from this century-long bondage. The leprechaun is understandably rather cheesed off and goes on the standard leprechaun-on-the-loose killing spree except without any bad puns. Eventually the main character's grandfather, the only one who knows how to imprison the leprechaun, reveals the truth and gives the main character the tools to survive in the end. Predictably, after everyone else dies, she survives the climactic final battle and reimprisons the evil fairy.

Predictable plot aside, the great moment in the movie occurs about seven minutes before the end when the protagonist's father, the town sheriff (played by Billy Zane), reveals the darkest secrets of his past about the loss of his wife. The movie is not a comedy; it's not even one of those new action-comedies that's supposed to be funny because of the absurdly-overdone violence. It's just a pedestrian gore-fest with no particularly inventive or original ideas. Here is the dialog (Research!):

"Before we go out there, I just wanted you to know that you demonstrated incredible moral fiber and great courage and I'm proud a' ya [of you]. And I know I've treated you like a little girl and have been way too overprotective since we lost your mother. I just wanted you to know that you'll always be my baby, but you are no little girl."

"Tell me what happened to her--to Mom. You said it yourself, I'm not a little girl anymore. What happened to her?"

"Honey, you were very young and . . . it was Black Friday, the busiest shopping day of the year. We left you with Pop so your mother and I could buy you a game console below retail cost. It was an incredible value."

"Dad, what happened to her?"

"Honey, there were just so many people and I was fighting a woman and her son for the last unit and the crowd surged and . . . I lost her."

"You what?"

"I couldn't find her. I went to the lost and found and there was nothing. I paged her every day for a year. What good am I? I am a . . . I'm a terrible husband, and I'm an awful father, and I'm a really bad sheriff. I mean the whole town is dead, and I can't even find my wife, let alone catch a leprechaun. And a letter on my name-tag is missing. [Demonstrates name-tag "Coner O'Ha--] Who's Coner [pronounced "Cone-er"]? I'm Conner. How's that happen?"

"I don't know, Dad."

"If anyone should be dead out there right now--" The leprechaun interrupts by reaching in his open window and yanking him under the car. The sheriff gets his wish and is torn in half by the crazed leprechaun.

I would like to add something funny about this speech, but I cannot. I have no idea how this speech got included in the movie. My theory is that Billy Zane ad-libbed one take and then refused to do another one or deliberately screwed up all the other takes. He probably hoped in vain that they wouldn't dare include this speech and would have to remove him entirely from the movie. Nonetheless, he is in the movie, and so is this speech, so I'm guessing the directors/producers decided that no one would watch that much of the movie.