Cocaine Bear
Cocaine Bear
By Quinn McClurg
Released on Valentine's Day, “Cocaine Bear” is a video game featuring a six-second guitar loop and fart noises, where you, a bear, consume cocaine, eat people, and even devour ambulances. My high score is 17,930, and I highly recommend you play it.
“Cocaine Bear” is also a movie inspired by real events in 1985, when a black bear consumed roughly 75 pounds (2 million dollars) of cocaine following a cocaine shipment gone wrong. As suggested by a meme posted in 2018*, before the bear died of an overdose, he could be thought of as “the most dangerous apex predator on any fucking continent.” However, there is no evidence that the cocaine bear actually killed anyone during his pre-overdose frenzy.
This is not the case for the movie. Sticking true to its initial marketing as a horror comedy, “Cocaine Bear” offers gratuitous amounts of both gore and satire, effectively recapturing the infamous camp of the horror movies of the 80s. As the plot progresses, five different groups of people find themselves drawn into the Chattahoochee–Oconee National Forest. Little do they know (but quickly do they find out) that this is where the titular cocaine bear is on the prowl.
Much like the real-life bear who was stuffed and is currently displayed in a mall in Lexington, Kentucky, you too can see “Cocaine Bear” in public, as it is showing in theaters at the time of writing. This may not be an actual, factual history lesson regarding the rise and fall of the cocaine bear, but watching this movie is a great way to spend an evening. Bring some friends, lose your mind, and try not to jump at too many of the jumpscares.