With St. Patrick’s Day upon us, you might be tempted to sit inside and take in one of the horror-comedy “Leprechaun” films for a laugh. Well, I watched all eight of them, back-to-back, over two days.

I highly recommend that others don’t attempt to binge-watch 12 straight hours of this stuff, because, by the end of it, I was seeing little green men in every corner of my home. So, purely as a public service, here’s a ranking of the films — from most awful to most enjoyable — to help capture the franchise’s spirit of Irish mayhem and spare you from having to watch them all.

All are available to rent on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and Vudu.

8. ‘Leprechaun: Origins’ (2014)

WWE Studios tried to reboot the film series with Dylan “Hornswoggle” Postl in the title role, and the result is perplexing. In this version, the leprechauns are mindless cannibals, which the residents of a small Irish village feed tourists to as reparations for stealing the creatures’ gold. Postl has no lines, and every time he is onscreen, the footage intentionally blurs to obscure his low-budget monster costume.

There are no comedy elements at all, and the horror is blander than Irish cuisine. Don’t watch this one.

7. ‘Leprechaun 4 in Space’ (1997)

This was actually my favorite “Leprechaun” movie for a long time, because I first saw it when I was 16. At that age, it’s easy to be impressed by a lawn gnome bursting out of a space marine’s privates, or an alien played by “Baywatch” star Rebekah Carlton. In the film’s one instance of gratuitous nudity, she exposes her breasts because it’s how royalty pronounces a death sentence on her planet.

看到它作为一个成年人,它只是一个廉价的parody of the “Alien” movies with a humorless script. It has little to offer besides the novelty of a leprechaun that kills people while on a quest to get married and become king of the galaxy. Also, scenes of the leprechaun exploding are one of the hallmark tropes of the series. He didn’t blow up in the third film, so to make up for it, he explodes three times in this one.

6. ‘Leprechaun Returns’ (2018)

There is no canon order to the “Leprechaun” films, and it’s debatable whether it’s even the same leprechaun in each movie. The sole exception is “Returns,” a direct sequel to the original film set 25 years later. Warwick Davis declined to come back to the horror role he is most famous for, so he is replaced with Linden Porco, who is fine.

It is set in the same house as the first film, which four sorority sisters are trying to turn into an eco-friendly home project when the leprechaun resurrects and starts killing people to retrieve his gold. If you view it as a meta-textual commentary on horror films in general, it’s kind of an interesting movie, as the leading ladies often subvert horror tropes with almost radical common sense. One highlight scene shows one of the girls’ boyfriends (played by Ben McGregor) being bisected by a solar panel, and one of them, Katie (Pepi Sonuga), says, “Do you think he’s still alive? I don’t think it crossed the cardinal plane!”

That is delightfully nerdy and self-aware, especially in this series.

5. ‘Leprechaun’ (1993)

The first film in the series is mostly famous for the novelty of its premise, the fact that it has one of the best posters of the ’90s and because it starred Jennifer Aniston before she became a household name on “Friends.” Nonetheless, it established the iconic franchise, and Warwick Davis leaves absolutely nothing on the table as he hunts down a small group of victims to retrieve his stolen gold.

Despite being rated R, the horror is tame enough that you could easily watch it with a middle-schooler. The movie certainly suffers from an identity crisis, never really figuring out if it’s meant to be taken seriously or not.

4. ‘Leprechaun: Back to tha Hood’ (2003)

In the second of the leprechaun’s adventures in an urban setting (and the third film set in Los Angeles), he resurrects after being sent to hell by a local pastor who stole his gold to build a youth center. A year later, four friends stumble across the wealth and attempt to finally escape the poverty and gang violence of their home, only to find the leprechaun in a vengeful mood.

This film is Warwick Davis’ best performance in the role. He no longer speaks in rhyme, and his costume gets a more refined and gentlemanly makeover. In fact, he more resembles the traditional description of Mr. Hyde than the leprechaun. The movie explores the cost of greed on humans, and Davis gets a short but powerful monologue about how he has watched people steal for millennia while never learning anything. There is real heart to this movie, on top of some stellar horror acting.

3. ‘Leprechaun 3’ (1995)

The leprechaun is loose in Las Vegas, hanging with Elvis impersonators and making women’s breasts enlarge until they explode. One coin of his gold grants people a single wish, and the movie is mostly about how people misuse that gift until it backfires horribly at the leprechaun’s hands.

有一个笨拙地推动全民他补充道lth care in the film. Two mafia goons bring it up as something the country needs without any relevant context, and there’s a sequence when the film’s hero (John Gatins) is in a hospital and a doctor refuses to treat him until he shows proof of insurance. Leprechauns also take a page from the vampire playbook here, as victims bitten by a leprechaun slowly become one themselves, which the movie illustrates with a bad Irish accent and an insatiable craving for potatoes.

2. ‘Leprechaun in the Hood’ (2000)

Ice-T stars in this wild sequel as a young man who steals a golden flute from the leprechaun, which makes every rap group he produced into stars. Three aspiring rappers plan a heist to launch their own careers with it, resurrecting the leprechaun and making them targets for both the demon and the mogul.

Despite some terrible editing, the film has a compelling story. The three rappers, particularly Postmaster P (Anthony Montgomery), dream of spreading positive messages through their music, but as they have to fight to survive, their morals fade until they become the rap stereotypes they hope to change. The leprechaun is a darker, more truly menacing figure in this story, and having him speak in rhyme actually makes sense in the context of the plot for a change. This is arguably the only film in the franchise that really nails the themes of greed and the violence it begets present in most of the entries.

1. ‘Leprechaun 2’ (1994)

This is one of the rare movies where the leprechaun’s motivation isn’t in retrieving his wealth. Instead, he lusts after the descendant of one of his servants, a man whose daughter was promised to the leprechaun as a bride centuries before. Fast-forward to modern-day Hollywood, and the only thing standing in the way of his carnal quest is the girl’s boyfriend (Charlie Heath), a ne’er-do-well who runs a scam ghost tour.

Everything comes together for this film to make it the apex of “Leprechaun” horror comedy. Shevonne Durkin is the best of the vaguely Celtic, blond leading ladies who dominate the early entries of the franchise, and her love story with Heath’s character is the only believable one in the entire series. It’s got gore galore, like when the leprechaun tricks a man into kissing a running lawnmower or when he teleports his pot of gold into the stomach of a con man. If you only watch one on St. Patrick’s Day, this is it.