Beetle, the Horn King (2005)

Would it be cheesy of me to call this film bugfuck? It may be a cheap pun, but that's the only word that really captures the lunacy exemplified within Minoru Kawasaki's insect-happy wrestling romp. It's about Beetle, a sort of intergalactic half-man, half-beetle wrestling superhero, and it's also about his various enemies, all of whom also are part insect, and it's also about a young cub reporter who gets tangled up in the body-slam shenanigans... but mostly, it's about how much goofy, weird shit Kawasaki and Co. can cram into seventy minutes of psychosis. Bizarre humor abounds, both on the large scale (the plot has been set in motion by an alien worm who, essentially, has created the rival wrestlers as part of a universal toy-tie-in scheme) and the small (one guy shouts "Kafka!" when transforming). Dizzy, energetic and quotable for days (best in-context-only line: "These are nerds. I found them on the Internet."); if it's not exactly 'good' in an objective sense, it's still a blast. Nacho Libre wishes it was this film.

Grade: B