Cinema Saturday: Cocaine Bear

The theme for Weekend Movies this time around is "Creatures on the Loose!"  

And for this edition of Cinema Saturday, the creature on the loose is a BEAR!

On COCAINE!!! 

Yep, it's Cocaine Bear from early last year, a mixture of horror AND comedy directed by Elizabeth Banks. 

In 1985, a plane full of cocaine is flying into Georgia. 

A whole bunch of shit goes wrong and a whole fuck ton of cocaine falls out of the plane into the Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest. 

A black bear eats some of the cocaine with two results:

• The bear wants to kill everybody!
• And the bear wants MORE COCAINE!!

And lo, Cocaine Bear is born!!!

OK, so here's the deal. There's a bunch of people wandering around the Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest. 

• A couple of kids who have skipped school to hang out in a national forest... you know, like kids do.
• A mom who is tracking down those kids. 
• A trio of dumb ass dudes who hang out in the forest committing random acts of vandalism and petty theft from the park tourist center. 
• A park ranger who just wants to keep a quiet and tidy national forest and bust those vandalizing punks. 
• Another park ranger who knows about nature 'n' stuff.
• A couple of thugs sent by a drug kingpin to find and bring back his missing cocaine. 
• The drug kingpin who doesn't trust the two thugs to do the job right.
• A police detective looking for the missing cocaine and ready to bust any criminals dumb enough to come after the coke and get in his way. 
• A couple of Swedish hikers. 

"Ja, det är bra att vara i Amerika och vandra i sina skogar och... Å NEJ! Varför är den där björnen täckt av vitt pulver? Björnen, den attackerar... ARRRRRRGH!!!" 

Oh yeah, and Cocaine Bear!   

How much does Cocaine Bear want cocaine? 

There's a sequence when one of the kids and the nature expert park ranger have each been chased up a pair of trees. Somehow, a cocaine brick exploded covering the ranger in white powder. 

The bear is climbing the tree with the kid when the bear stops, sniffs the air, then focuses like a laser on the hapless ranger in the other tree. 

So the bear lets the kid go, drops to the forest floor, zips over to and up the other tree and...

Alas, one dead ranger but one more taste of that sweet, sweet cocaine!

Yes, cocaine! 

A lot of people die in this movie.

Some of whom are killed by the bear.

Others are killed by gun fire or incredibly stupid accidents.  

Let's just save some time and assume everybody dies.

OK, spoiler: the mom and the two kids do not die. 

And a couple of others but let's leave you pleasantly surprised when they make it to the end still alive.  

Cocaine Bear is pretty much what you think it will be: funny, scary, gruesome, bizarre, weird and just plain fucking crazy. 

It is a great film? No. And it's not for everyone. (For the record, I watched this one on my own without Andrea. When Cocaine Bear rips out a victims of intestines like a string of sausages, I figured I made the right call.) 

Weekend Movies' "Creatures on the Loose!"  continues tomorrow with a Cinema Sunday post about an Alfred Hitchcock horror classic, The Birds.