Cocaine Bear      3 ½ stars

The title of the hit horror “Cocaine Bear” tells just about everything you can imagine about this movie. “Inspired by true events”, in 1985 the body of a drug dealer with a failed parachute Is discovered in Tennessee, accompanied by a duffle bag of cocaine. Somewhere in a forest in Georgia the rest of the plane load of cocaine was dumped leading to a trio of the dead man’s drug dealer colleagues going in search of the missing drugs. Unfortunately, for them and the rest of the characters in this comical and bloody situation, a 500 pound bear has discovered the drugs first, getting stoned out of its mind after eating at least one brick of cocaine. What follows for the next hour and a half are some of the most hilarious encounters between said bear and the humans unlucky enough to cross paths with the ravenous animal. Besides the drug dealers (including the late Ray Liotta) there are the two teenage kids, Dee Dee and Henry, Dee Dee’s mom (Keri Russell), the local park ranger (Margo Martindale) who has gotten a raw deal on recent mishaps in the park, her activist friend, Peter (Jesse Tyler Ferguson), a trio of teenage boys who get their kicks out of attacking park visitors and a local cop (Isiah Whitlock, Jr.) who aims to get to the bottom of the bizarre happenings in his jurisdiction. All find their way to the woods where the insane bear is hunting its prey. Although it is a comedy, Cocaine Bear deserves its R rating since there is no shortage of blood and gore as one person after another meets their fate at the claws and teeth of the angry bear that includes some missing limbs and at least one disembowelment. There also may be some valuable lessons to be learned when confronted by a bear in the woods, though I wouldn’t be real sure about that. The movie is directed by longtime actor and occasional director Elizabeth Banks known mainly as Effie Trinket in The Hunger Games movie series and is much in the tradition of recent horror comedy movies Werewolves Within and Shadow in the Clouds.