“Cocaine Bear” (2023)
Fantastically surprising comedy horror.
After seeing the trailer for this “based on true events” tale from 1985 on every trip to my local cinema during the past few months I didn’t hold out much hope of enjoying this bizarre romp into a surreal past, but I’m allowed to be wrong on occasion. From the 1980’s inspired musical soundtrack and a beginning dripping with TV news segments, stock footage of the day and the laughable adverts of the day featuring either Nancy Reagan and her “Just Say No” campaign or the “This is your brain on drugs” comparison to an egg (yes, an egg!) that so inspired the mighty Bill Hicks in his comedy routines of the early 1990’s, I was in from the beginning to the very end, and an end credits brilliantly accompanied by a remix of “White Lines” (Don’t Do it) by Melle Mel.
Are you the hunted or the hunter?
That particular rhetorical question is especially apt as Cocaine Bear has both, and on either side of the white dividing line, as the hunters and the hunted go in search of 70Ibs of football sized packages of cocaine dropped from an aeroplane over Knoxville, Georgia, and scattered all across the appropriately named “Blood Mountain”. Almost immediately you have two tourists, two children, two hapless drug smuggling hoodlums and one very amorous Park Ranger caught up, whether they wish to be or not, in the finding and hunting of the illegal treasure and, naturally, a giant black bear with a taste for cocaine as well as human blood.
Written by Jimmy Warden (The Babysitter: Killer Queen) and directed by Elizabeth Banks (Charlie’s Angels), “It’s like Coke Christmas!” apparently, and whether the presents are delivered or not, what does arrive is a surprisingly fun, Jurassic Park tinged hour and a half of jokes that almost entirely land amongst the blood and gore of a b-movie horror that was far bloodier and scarier than I anticipated. There are jump scares galore amid the scattergun performances of Keri Russell, Alden Ehrenreich, O’Shea Jackson and Jesse Tyler Ferguson, with special praise reserved for the youngest members of the cast Brooklyn Prince and Christian Convery, Margo Martindale for her hilariously lovelorn take on a Park Ranger, and of course Ray Liotta in one of his final ever appearances on the big screen he graced so magnificently in his four decade long cinematic career.
Rest in Peace Shoeless Joe.
Rest in Peace Henry Hill.
And thanks for the memories Ray.
Thanks for reading. Just for larks as always, and always a human reaction rather than spoilers galore. My three most recently published film articles are linked below or there’s well over 250 blog articles (with 500+ individual film reviews) within my film library from which to choose:
