Death Kappa

Director: Tomo’o Haraguchi
Writer: Masakazu Migita (screenplay)
Starring: Daniel Aguilar Gutiérrez, Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi
Country: Japan/USA
Running Time: 90 min
Year: 2010

The producers of Machine Girl and Tokyo Gore Police and the creator of Gamera have come together to give life to another crazy Japanese monster movie. Death Kappa is a somewhat bargain basement love letter to all those giant monster movies of the past and if you like seeing men dressed in dodgy looking monster suits rolling around on cardboard buildings then this film is for you.

When military experiments go wrong and trigger a nuclear fallout mankind’s only saviour is an irradiated water goblin from Japanese folklore, the ‘Death Kappa’.

I have to admit the first 30 minutes of this film were very disappointing and it felt like a really low rent Troma film, which, let’s face it, is REALLY low rent! However, once the monsters become giant sized and the film’s meagre budget wades into view, then the film becomes a lot of fun and you can’t help grinning at it – or is that just me? Coming in at around 80 minutes it certainly doesn’t outstay its welcome and is sure to provide fans of Godzilla movies with their monster mayhem fix until the next time an atomic bomb goes off somewhere near Tokyo.

Review by Justin Richards