First published as part of EyeforFilm’s Undistributed Gems
Gregg Golding’s truly out-there, no-budget debut Struggled Reagans – now rather prosaically renamed Cosplay Fetish Battle Drones – overcomes its cheap and nasty production values with a lysergic mix of ambitious ideas and jaw-dropping offensiveness. Suddenly granted Power Rangers-like abilities and lurid spandex costumes, six sexed-up young adults must do battle with a giant tumour born of their collective unconscious, in a CG-inflected conflict that simultaneously reaches the lows of trashy perversion and the highs of Hindu allegory. Definitely not for everyone, but guaranteed to elicit more WTFs than any other release from the last year.
Would appeal to people who like: the tokusatsu genre; Eighties sit-coms; hard drugs.
© Anton Bitel