Death Kappa (2010)
Director: Tomoo Haraguchi
So, Monster X Strikes Back was more or less a sequel-cum-remake-cum-parody from the start. Big Man Japan was something of a satire of both the genre and Japanese society until the final reel, at which point it became an outright parody. Death Kappa, which came out two years after Monster X Strikes Back, sort of straddles the line between "affectionate homage" and "genre parody", with some of the human scenes being played more or less seriously, others not, some of the FX being good (by suitmation standards), and some of them almost looking intentionally fake.
The film stars Misato
Hirata (of the Ultraman Mebius series) as Kanako, a woman
hailing from a small village in Northern(?) Japan who is returning
home after a disastrously failed bid to become an idol. As soon as
she returns home, her grandmother is killed in front of her by
reckless, drunken youth. Kanako takes it upon herself to continue her
grandmother's legacy and become a miko (or shrine maiden)
and tend to the local kami, a kappa. Thanks to the
the aforementioned youth, one of the kappa idols is knocked
into sea, which awakens into a real kappa. Funnily enough,
the creature is enamored by the stupid pop single that Kanako
released--lyrics like "I'm wearing panties again today" and
"I promise I'll bleed for you as I wait on the beach"
suggest that Kanako was the Japanese equivalent to Rebecca
Black.
Anyway, there is an evil outfit known as the National
Guard operating inside the same village. They are creating a race of
evil fish men in order to restore Japan to its Nationalists,
militaristic roots--watch for Shin Godzilla director Hideaki
Anno as the director of the Guard. The evil scientist is a black-clad
lady (Mika, of Abashiri Ikka: The Movie) who sometimes
dresses as a witch, and sometimes as a dominatrix. She is the
granddaughter of a WW2-era scientist who had started the fish man
project and wants to continue his legacy. We are meant to draw
parallels between the two women with regards to continuing their
grandparents' legacy: one good, one evil.
Anyway, Kanako is
kidnapped by the National Guard, who try to transform her into fish
girl. She is rescued by the kappa, who sumo wrestles the guards into
submission. Evil Scientist Girl goes insane and shoots
everyone--including her grandfather's dessicated corpse--with a
machine gun before detonating a nuclear weapon inside the base. The
explosion mutates one of the fishmen into a Godzilla-esque monster
called Hangyolas, who attacks "the city". After all the
military hardware fails to destroy it, a kaiju-sized Kappa shows up.
Let the monster wrestling begin...
On one hand, the monster
suits are really detailed and look great on screen. There are some
good miniatures and old school kaiju fans may enjoy the old
school effects (tanks, maser cannons, jets, etc.). The monster
wrestling is also more entertaining than the Guilala-vs-Take-Majin
fight in Monster X Strikes Back. And the first half is
strange enough that some might find it entertaining. The monster
Hangyolas is very reminiscent of Titanosaurus from Terror of
Mechagodzilla--and Kappa's entrance into the final fight by
blasting Hangyolas from offscreen with a blue-colored blast is a
callback to that movie. Director Tomoo Haraguchi, who did creature
design on the Heisei Gamera films and directed Sakuya,
Slayer of Demons, really knows his way around the genre.
The
problem is the rest. The human element disappears almost entirely
from the second half of the movie, except for the nameless military
brass. There is a running joke of the soldiers being asked to shoot
the monster with their standard-issue assault rifles, only to get
scared and scream out for their mothers. The movie ends with Kanako
reappearing out of nowhere to charm and calm down an angry Kappa,
which begs the question: "Wasn't she killed in the atomic
explosion?" And the early scenes of the fishmen killing youth
are rather graphic for an otherwise cheesy, goofy film. And speaking
of goofy, as good as the miniatures are, the scenes of fighter jets
attacking Hangyolas show the piano wire suspending them, which makes
me wonder if it was intentional (making it a parody) or something
they just didn't know how to hide (which just makes it bad).
In
the end, this movie is a lot like how I view Eight-Legged Freaks,
which didn't know if it wanted to be Tremors (an update of
50s, desert-set sci-fi) or a spoof. Although both types of films can
have humor, the humor of each is of a different sort. And that is how
I felt about Death Kappa. It needed a clearer idea of its
own identity.
