Product Details

• Actors: Misato Hirata
• Directors: Tomoo Haraguchi
• Format: Color, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: Japanese
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: Unrated
• Studio: Tokyo Shock
• DVD Release Date: September 28, 2010
• Run Time: 79 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00393SFQ6
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #74,679 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Death Kappa" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

DEATH KAPPA - DVD Movie

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very dissapointing., October 6, 2010

By 

The Internet Vigilante "It's easy. Just close... (?) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Death Kappa (DVD)

In the convoluted story for "Death Kappa", a young woman makes a promise to her dying grandmother to look after a kappa, a mischevious Japanese water goblin. Things go badly when the girl and the kappa are kidnapped by insane secret agents and a trio of deadly aquatic mutants. Things become worse still when an atomic bomb is set off and the kappa and a remaining water mutant mutates in the giant monsters Death Kappa and Hangyolas...

I was highly, highly dissapointed by this movie. As one who has watched Godzilla and Gamera films since he was about five, I was a bit amped up for a brand new Japanese kaiju flick coming straight to America so fast, especially since movies like "Deepsea Monster Reigo vs The Battleship Yamamoto" and "Deepsea Monster Reiga" don't seem to be showing up anytime soon; likewise with the Godzilla and Gamera franchises. I just have to ask: Why the childish, self-aware parody atmosphere? This isn't a loving homage as was implied by the director; it's more like if some prick saw two or three Godzilla movies and managed to round up $2 million just to sarcastically poke fun at all things kaiju and sci-fi-related. We have characters mugging at the camera, laughing at the top of their lungs, mutant ninja fishmen, inbreds, jet pilots wearing eyeliner, and characters literally just tossed aside, forgotten. NONE of this ever happened in the classics, so why all this idiodic parody?! Why make fun of something you supposedly admire? What ticked me off the worst were the special FX; wires are clearly (on purpose) holding the monsters' tails and the model jets and the like. This was always proffesionally handeled; rarely would the wires ever be visible!

Having ranted, there were a few minor details about this film I did enjoy. The kappa and Hangyolas suits were memorable and well-designed, and their fight scene in the city, though occasionally a bit too silly as well as anitclimactic, was still pretty entertaining. Then we have the sound effects. A great deal of what we hear are old-school Toho-style sound FX, from the sizzling ray of the much-welcomed death cannon to the footstomps of the monsters, from the Godzilla-styled sound of the kappa spitting his BLUE atomic breath to the whirring of a helicoptor's engine, it all managed to bring a smirk to my face. Lastly, I'd like to mention a running joke in which everytime someone dies horribly, they tend to yell "Mommy!". I don't know why, but I just got a kick out of that.

Overall, despite a few fun and nostalgic moments here and there, I was sorely dissapointed by this movie's goofy, odd, self-aware, and sometimes just plain idiotic parody atmosphere, all of this coming from a guy who proudly owns all the Godzilla movies.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible, December 8, 2010

By 

Bill F. Armitage (Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Death Kappa - Blu-ray / DVD Combo (Blu-ray)

The only thing good about this flick is the cover art. It was all down hill once the turtle like monster started dancing in the back yard with the kids... and it was a short hill to begin with.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Re: A Mean-Spirited and Vicious Parody, January 16, 2012

By 

Matthew Posner ""The Dean"" (Queens, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Death Kappa (DVD)

I bought this movie in a store. It was advertised as a straight kaiju eiga (monster movie) but it absolutely is not that. Rather, it takes all the qualities of the Godzilla and Gamera movies of the 60s and 70s and either mocks them or subverts them. Plus it adds in a dose of mockery for 50's American monster movies, splashes in some mock John Woo gore, and adds a bunch of cackling villains whom the heroine reacts to by shouting "You're insane" about a hundred times (as if that would help).

The first half of the movie is goofy but not funny. It opens with a bald white guy sitting at a desk labeled, if I remember right, "Dr. Serizawa" (he's the scientist who killed Gojira) lecturing the audience about the penalties of ignoring mythical monsters. We then meet the heroine, a former pop singer returning to her home village because she has realized that she has "absolutely no talent." She is played by Misato Hirata, who, judging from a Google image search, is primarily an underwear model. She is really very cute and plays the role straight. In a scene of mock pathos, her grandmother is killed by a group of youths riding around in a convertible shouting incoherently. About forty minutes in, the heroine is kidnapped and gets into the hands of the wack villains, who range from a bitter parody of the late insane ultranationalist Yukio Mishima to an insane mad scientist's granddaughter who pushes her grandfather's mummy around in a wheelchair in a way that I personally found revolting. The kappa, which earlier was dancing about as badly as a child in a heavy padded suit can dance, arrives and starts with the sumotori and other martial arts. trying to save the day.

Then an atomic bomb goes off with some ludicrous, ludicrous, LUDICROUS special effects.

Then any attempt at plot consistency is discarded as a dumb-looking suitmation monster called Hangyolas rampages through a city. Here the movie comments on the Toho tradition in various ways that, although clever, seem like a series of slaps to someone like me who likes the older movies despite their known faults. I won't list all the jokes or the mockery, but there is a lot of it, focused partly on exposing the cheesy model work and the wires, partly on making fun of the Japanese Self-Defense Force, partly on making fun of the older movies. I'm not sure exactly how funny it is in Japan to have a whole unit of soldiers holding up their rifles but unable to fire at the monster because they are all too afraid, or how funny it is to have a jet pilot wearing eye shadow, or how funny it is repeatedly to show an officer with a severe overbite who looks like a bad stereotype of a mentally retarded person. I was stunned, but I didn't laugh. I felt that this humor was nasty and vicious all the way through.

Other reviewers have complained in their Death Kappa reviews about Dai Nipponjin/Big Man Japan. I don't get all the topical Japanese-culture reference in that movie, but it is subtle and character-driven and has plot consistently up until the last fifteen minutes. I didn't find it mean-spirited like Death Kappa.