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Released by: Cleopatra Entertainment
Released on: August 13th, 2024.
Director: Mark Polonia
Cast: Brice Kennedy, Yolie Canales, James Carolus
Year: 2024
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Cocaine Werewolf –Movie Review:
Who knew the forests of Pennsylvania had so much cocaine?
Mark Polonia’s Cocaine Bear knock off, that being 2024’s Cocaine Werewolf, opens with a curvy blonde in a Little Red Riding Hood outfit posing for a dude a in a Yankees hoodie. She’s a model and he’s taking shots for her Only Fans account. When they start to get a little frisky feeling, he heads outside to get his big bad wolf mask, neither of them aware of the fact that a werewolf is outside watching. A few minutes later he’s missing his head and she’s being chased through the woods.
That same werewolf winds up in a warehouse, the same warehouse where and Uber driver stops to use the bathroom. When the driver doesn’t return, the passenger in the back, a Wall Street jerk (Brice Kennedy) named Jack, decides to go in and find out what happened. Said Wall Street jerk is then attacked by the werewolf, but not before finding a few bags of cocaine, left over from a drug deal gone bad just a short time prior.
Now, somehow, through reasons never especially well-explained, anytime Wall Street jerk does some blow, he turns into a werewolf. This isn’t good news for the hunters in the area or the local sheriff (Ken Van Sant) trying to find out where all of these dead bodies are coming from. It’s also bad news for the two person film crew and the three actors all working on a film shoot nearby, something about a movie with a killer clown terrorizing two buxom young women (Jamie Morgan and Greta Volkova). When the two actresses, who are into each other more than their job, decide to go for a stroll, they find Wall Street jerk laying in a pile of wood and wake him up, trying to help him out.
This proves to be a very bad idea.
You’ve gotta love the fact that, for almost forty years, Mark Polonia has been pumping out low budget movies like this, not because they make him rich, but because he has a lot of fun doing that. This is evident in Cocaine Werewolf – everyone on camera seems to be having a good time and that makes it easy to forgive some of the frequent and obvious blunders made along the way. The CGI in this movie is terrible, particularly when it comes to blood spray, the depiction of cold breath outside in the winter and fog and the werewolf is literally someone (often times Mark’s son, according to the commentary) in a rubber mark, chest piece and Halloween prop gloves running around with LED lights in the eyes. Then again, you don’t (or at least, shouldn’t) go into a movie like this expecting much in the way of production values – you go into it for goofy characters, hokey effects and silliness, three qualities that Cocaine Werewolf offer up in very heavy doses.
The acting, much of which is delivered by Polonia regulars like Ken Van Sant, Jeff Kirkendall, Yolie Canales, Marie DeLorenzo, Jamie Morgan and Greta Volkova, aren’t going to knock you out of your seat but, again, everyone seems to be enjoying themselves and it’s clear that we’re never once meant to take any of this seriously. As to the production values, they’re on par with most of Polonia’s recent output, shot on decent quality high definition digital video with some better than average, by low budget standards, cinematography and sound work. This time around, he obviously had access to some of Cleopatra’s music library, and as such we get musical contributions from bands like 69 Eyes, Pink Fairies and even Front Line Assembly, which adds to the overall wonkiness of the production.
Cocaine Werewolf – Blu-ray Review:
Cocaine Werewolf arrives on region free Blu-ray in an AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.78.1 widescreen on a 25GB disc. The transfer quality on the disc is solid. Shot on digital video, the image is spotless and colors look really good. This obviously doesn’t have the same level of polish as the latest blockbuster but given the film’s micro-budget origins, it looks just fine. Compression isn’t ever problematic and detail is pretty nice throughout most of the movie.
The only audio option for the feature is a 16-bit LPCM 2.0 Stereo track in English. There are no alternate language options for subtitles provided for this feature. The audio quality is also fine, with the dialogue coming through cleanly and clearly. The score has decent depth and range to it and there are no issues with any hiss or distortion to note. There are a few bits where some of the dialogue is slightly muffled but overall, this sounds pretty good.
The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary with Mark Polonia who talks about who did what on the production, working with Cleopatra Entertainment and how much he appreciates them as well as David Sterling, the film's quick shooting schedule, shooting on location in a very cold Pennsylvania in December of 2023, details on the cast members that worked on the production, working with Cleopatra to get access to the different musical pieces that are used throughout the movie instead of stock library music, not trying to do anything but entertain his audience with the movie, how some of the camera setups were accomplished, who wore the werewolf costume in each scene, the use of digital effects in the movie, the difficulties of working with actors who can't see out of the werewolf mask, locations that were used in the movie, the decision to use a low budget film crew as characters in the movie, the sound design in the movie and how it ties into the post production process, adding the nude scene even though it wasn't originally in the movie, his thoughts on shooting nudity in general and why he still enjoys toiling away in the trenches of low budget cinema decades after getting his start as a kid.
We also get a trailer for the feature, a still gallery, trailers for a few other Cleopatra Entertainment releases, menus and chapter selection options.
Cocaine Werewolf – The Final Word:
Is Cocaine Werewolf a high point in Mark Polonia’s filmography? Nope. There’s a bit too much padding and too many janky digital effects, but whenever there’s someone in a rubber werewolf mask running around wreaking havoc, this one is good, dumb fun. The Blu-ray release from Cleopatra Entertainment looks and sounds pretty good considering this was made for peanuts, and the commentary from Polonia is a pretty interesting listen.