Cleopatra Entertainment: Cocaine Werewolf (2024) - Reviewed

Images courtesy of Cleopatra Entertainment

“Cult” independent filmmaker-actor-editor Mark Polonia has directed almost 90 straight-to-video films you’ve never heard of outside of perhaps Feeders, Land Shark, Saurians, and Cocaine Shark.  Very much a bottom feeder backyard do-it-yourself huckster by way of Asylum Entertainment or Uncorked Entertainment, Polonia has made a whole filmography out of these no-budget quickies and with Cleopatra Entertainment’s release of his latest endeavor Cocaine Werewolf, the director serves up yet another “hilarious” riff on Elizabeth Banks’ surprise hit Cocaine Bear.  A ‘beer-and-pizza’ movie without the resources or sense of humor where you don’t need much more than a guy running around in the woods in a rubber werewolf costume and a bag of cocaine for supposed laughs, its a D- film playing to God knows who outside of renters, streamers and poor saps stuck with reviewing it.

 
A movie-within-a movie sort of thing where a cocaine addict who picks up on a drug bust gone awry transforms into a werewolf anytime he snorts a line, Cocaine Werewolf posits itself in the Pennsylvania woods and farmland and to the filmmakers’ credit the cast and crew seem to be wading through inclement dreary weather for most of it.  When a film crew making a low-budget horror film is interrupted by the arrival of a very literal werewolf who brutally kills people in a succession of digital blood and obvious ketchup finger painted on victims’ faces, the movie and its werewolf sort of saunter along through random encounters before a female extra takes a shower just so the camera can ogle her naked body.  There’s a gothic industrial soundtrack featuring needle drops from independent acts sponsored by Cleopatra Records including bands like The 69 Cats, Front Line Assembly and Pink Fairies, but all of this slick artless 4K digital photography really doesn’t amount to much in the way of rocking-and-rolling laughs let alone entertainment value.

 
Featuring a wealth of actors who only ever do other movies like these such as Marie DeLorenzo, Jeff Kirkendall, Timus Himmelberger of Cocaine Shark and Sharkenstein, Ken Van Sant, Brice Kennedy as the Cocaine Werewolf, Yolie Canales and Noyes Lawton, you would expect this to be some backyard cheapie fun intending to play at local festivals.  But like the titular werewolf itself, this thing with cheaply rendered CG effects interspersed with a rubber latex werewolf costume by Josh Wasylink just kinda drags his feet until it arrives on some sort of ending.  As a fan of regional Vinegar Syndrome or Visual Vengeance lo-fi releases of nonsensical cheapies to take shots or bong rips in between junk food consumption while watching, Cocaine Werewolf is more of a slog than silly distraction.  Despite running a mere eighty minutes and doing a goofy spin on the werewolf myth, this felt oddly arduous to wade through and solely rests on the premise and title card rather than simply being a movie.

 
While I’m sure there is an audience for these sort of things and Mark Polonia will inevitably continue on this path of lo-fi cheesiness and hilarity, you kinda get the sense they’re not really even halfheartedly trying here.  Troma Films and Asylum Entertainment, bad as some of them can be, have a lot more imagination bubbling around upstairs than this or most other Cleopatra Entertainment original productions ever will.  Sometimes they do well with their documentary releases on music like Mean Man or the French female electronic musician expression The Shock of the Future.  Their pickup of the mean but nevertheless curious Argentinian horror film What the Waters Left Behind – Scars displayed a step in the right direction.  And then there are releases like these that test my faith in them completely.  Cleopatra Entertainment is still new to the independent boutique releasing label world and there’s still time to revive their image, but for now I’m hard pressed to take them seriously.

--Andrew Kotwicki