The trailers for “Cocaine Bear” make the crazy movie about a drug-filled bear look like the craziest spectacle of the year. But it’s also a fact, as strange as it may sound: “Cocaine Bear” is loosely based on a true story.
Life itself writes the best stories – but apparently also the craziest. From April 13, “Cocaine Bear”, which has already caused a stir in the USA, will be shown in German cinemas together with its trailers Trash fun par excellence promises. As the title suggests, it’s about a bear who accidentally swallows a large load of cocaine and then – now intoxicated – attacks a bunch of people.
As you can see in the preview, director Elizabeth Banks (“Pitch Perfect 2”, “Charlie’s Angels”) has come up with a number of things to take this already absurd premise to the extreme, for example when the cocaine bear super sprint after an ambulance. But the most absurd thing about the film is its origin: The idea of the story does not come from Hollywood, but from real life.
A cocaine bear: it really existed
Universal Pictures
“Cocaine Bear” is actually based on true events.
The story of the Cocaine Bear (often called Pablo Escobear) is well known in the US Southeast. On September 11, 1985, a man named Andrew C. Thornton II smuggled a batch of cocaine into the United States from Colombia. Together with an accomplice, they transported it by plane, but it crashed. To save the cocaine, Thornton threw up forty plastic containers filled with drugs over the Tennessee wilderness away. He jumped out of the plane himself, but his parachute failed to deploy, killing him on impact. The FBI later determined that the small smuggling plane was over-loaded, which is probably why it skidded.
Three months later one was found in the woods of Georgia 79 kg dead black bear. He had found the containers of cocaine and eaten most of them, up to 70 pounds of cocaine, worth $20 million at the time. The coroner at the scene said the bear’s stomach was filled to the brim with cocaine. The prepared bear carcass is now in a shopping center in Kentucky and can still be viewed there today.
Of course, the film takes a lot of liberties for showing on the big screen. In “Cocaine Bear” the animal, drunk on drugs, kills several people, for example shows supernatural abilities – none of this happened in reality. There hasn’t been a single confirmed death linked to the Coke Bear. However, the story is well known in the USA and has therefore led to some modern legends. A film adaptation was probably inevitable.
