2023   Universal Pictures

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  35min

Comedy ~ Horror

Directed by:  Elizabeth Banks

Starring:  Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Ray Liotta.

“It’s like cocaine Christmas, and the bear……..it loves, I mean LOVES cocaine!”

I’ve been bypassing this movie for awhile now. I thought it looked like it might be a little too silly for me to watch. But I kept seeing it listed lately and saw that Elizabeth Banks directed it, so I gave it a go. I am a big Elizabeth Banks fan and when I saw it was based on a True Story that clinched it. I love the True Story movies and this is based on a real bizarre True Story, so bizarre you wouldn’t believe it could be true.

In a nutshell, A Lawyer turned drug smuggler dropped a bunch of duffel bags of cocaine out of a plane into the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia. He then jumped out of the plane but his parachute malfunctioned and he splat landed on an old-timers driveway in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Three months later they found a dead black bear with a million dollars of cocaine in his system next to one of the duffel bags in The Chattahoochee National Forest. The rest of the cocaine was never found. The bear has been nicknamed Pablo Escobear and Cokey The Bear by KENTUCKY FOR KENTUCKY, the bear’s new home. The write-up on their website tells the bizarre tale and I couldn’t have told it any better:

If you’re into urban legends, chances are you’ve heard about the Cocaine Bear. He was an American Black Bear who happened upon a ton of cocaine that was jettisoned from an airplane — and not only did he find it, he ate it. Lots of it. It’s a tale too wild to be fake, and we’ve got the full story of how exactly Cocaine Bear came to be. There’s even a movie about Cocaine Bear.

But we’ve got the real Cocaine Bear. We here at the Kentucky Fun Mall obtained the actual Cocaine Bear taxidermy and have put it on display for everyone to enjoy. You can come to see him, take some pics, and grab your very own Cocaine Bear merch while you’re here. Read on to learn more about the bear, his story, the movie, and all the sweet Cocaine Bear merch you can handle.

Where did Cocaine Bear come from?

To truly understand Cocaine Bear, you need to know his whole story. Here’s a quick summary:

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, a man named Andrew Thornton II was practicing law in Kentucky. But he wasn’t just a lawyer — he used his knowledge to begin stealing weapons and smuggling drugs. In 1985, Thornton died while on a coke-smuggling run when he jumped out of his plane and became entangled in his parachute. When he was found, he was wearing body armor and night vision goggles. He was carrying cash, knives, guns…and a duffel bag with 75 pounds of cocaine in it.

Now, here’s where it gets even better (yes, it gets better): Three months later, a dead bear was found in Georgia’s Chattahoochee National Forest. The bear had overdosed on cocaine that Thornton had dropped from his airplane. In fact, he had eaten enough of it that its stomach was “packed to the brim” with cocaine. 

After the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s medical examiner had performed a necropsy, he contacted a friend who did taxidermy. He had the bear’s body stuffed and gave it to the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area, where the Cocaine Bear taxidermy stood in the visitors’ center into the early 1990s. 

Sometime in the early ‘90s, the park and its facilities were evacuated ahead of an approaching wildfire. The employees took the artifacts with them and put them in temporary storage in a nearby town. Of course…they went missing. 

The Cocaine Bear surfaced next in, appropriately enough, Las Vegas. Country star Waylon Jennings had found it, bought it, and gifted it to his friend Ron Thompson as an inside joke. When Thompson died in 2009, his estate went to auction and the bear was sold.

When we got wind of this, we contacted Nellis Auction House on the off chance we’d be able to figure something out. And we did. We found out who (and where) the bear had been sold to…and we contacted him. Sadly, he had passed away, but we were able to speak to his wife, who told us we were free to take Cocaine Bear off her hands for the low, low price of zero dollars (plus shipping). So we brought him home to the Kentucky Fun Mall. 

And now you know.

Is the movie Cocaine Bear based on a real story?

Well, yes and no. The movie Cocaine Bear is loosely based on the true Cocaine Bear tale, but it takes a few liberties to tell a dramatized version. Directed by Elizabeth Banks, the movie follows a group of people who find themselves in the path of a 500-pound bear who had just ingested a full duffel bag of cocaine, leaving the creature to complete a cocaine-fueled rampage across the forest. Locals and tourists find themselves joining together to survive the bear’s attack.

The film’s cast includes Keri Russell from the hit TV drama Felicity, who takes on the role of Colette Matthews. Actor and rapper O’Shea Jackson, Jr. (we like to call him “Lil’ Ice Cube”) is playing a character named Howard. Other featured actors include Christian Convery-Jennings of Netflix’s Sweet Tooth, Alden Ehrenreich from Supernatural, and Jesse Tyler Ferguson from Modern Family.

Whether or not you decide to take in the movie, you can make a trip today to visit the Cocaine Bear back at the Kentucky Fun Mall. Here, you can see the animal in its full glory and learn more about his long, strange tale.

And there you have it courtesy of Kentucky For Kentucky

Did I like the movie? Yes I did. It is bizarre, funny and horrifying all at the same time. I even jumped a few times as I was surprised by events that happened, just like a true horror movie would do ya. I think Elizabeth Banks did an excellent job with the movie. This was also Ray Liotta’s last movie filmed before he passed away and the movie is dedicated to Ray. There are a few bonus scenes as the credits roll so stick around for them.

Yes, give it a go, watch it.

Two Thumbs Up!