Cast & Crew
C
Carl Stone
Music
J
Jim Shaw
Animation
Movie Details
Theatrical Release:June 17th, 1986
Original Language:English
Production Companies:KYO-DAI
Kappa on the Web:Official Website
Predator: Badlands
Monster: The Ed Gein Story
Words of War
Ballad of a Small Player
IT: Welcome to Derry
Mercy
The Friend
Dead Man's Wire
Stick
Predator: Badlands
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Wicked: For Good
The Roses
Frankenstein
Kappa (1986)
Deconstructing the myth of Oedipus within the framework of an ancient Japanese folk story, the Yonemotos craft a highly charged discourse of loss and desire. Quoting from Bunuel, Freud, pop media and art, they place the symbology of Western psychosexual analytical theory into a cross-cultural context, juxtaposing the Oedipal and Kappa myths in a delirious collusion of form and content. The Kappa, a malevolent Japanese water imp, is played with eerie intensity by artist Mike Kelley; actress Mary Woronov plays Jocasta as a vamp from a Hollywood exploitation film. Steeped in perversions and violent longings, both the Kappa and Oedipus legends are presented in highly stylized, purposefully "degraded" forms, reflecting their media-exploitative cultural contexts. In this ironic yet oddly poignant essay of psychosexual compulsion and catharsis, the Yonemotos demonstrate that even in debased forms, cultural archetypes hold the power to move and manipulate.
