The film opens with a cam girl openly professing her love of money. Horny + greedy = Not a great situation to be in for a movie called Cocaine Werewolf. Before you know it, her cameraman is killed off as her screams pierce the night. Then we jump to a drug deal gone awry… Ah ha! The cocaine! Zip…Scottie…Florida Snow…as hip cats like to call it. Oh and then this dude gets attacked by a werewolf and discovers that he becomes one with a little help from that sweet, sweet Big C. Meanwhile a group of inept filmmakers are shooting a horror movie in the same woods that our blow-addicted wolfen friend happens to wander into. Cue coke snortin’, rubber mask transformations and lots of dumb film crew slaughter. Welcome friends to Cocaine Werewolf.

Director Mark Polonia, of nearly a hundred movies just about all of which are extremely low budget and campy, delivers a very Polonia-riffic film with Cocaine Werewolf. While no one will be confusing this with a slick Hollywood production, Mark’s films have a kind of “let’s make a movie” enthusiasm to them with a brisk pacing that you can’t help but smile at occasionally. Plus Polonia actually uses some nice garish lighting to enhance the campiness of the picture, giving it an almost comic-book vibe at times. Having said that, it goes without saying that the visual effects are terrible, the acting wooden and the script makes no sense, but we’re basically talking about a movie almost certainly devised in the Roger Corman style of starting with a title and then backing into the shooting of the film itself from there. “We need a movie where a werewolf snorts coke. GO!” One nice bonus to this film in particular is Polonia’s collaboration with Cleopatra distributing the movie which allowed him access to several darkwave, gothic and industrial bands affiliated with Cleopatra Records like Switchblade Symphony and Front Line Assembly which certainly helps elevate the film a little in terms of actually coming across as a legitimate movie. Plus I went through a big industrial/darkwave phase in my college days, so it was cool to dive back into that pool for a little bit while watching a cheesy ass werewolf kill people.

The transfer here looks quite nice and clean. The film was shot on modern digital video, and the scan is reflective of that. The saturated lighting looks particularly nice against the black levels. The audio somewhat disappointingly only comes in 2.0 stereo. It would’ve been cool to get the industrial/darkwave soundtrack in 5.1 surround, plus the film itself has lots of snorting, crunching and slurping that could’ve benefitted from surround. The main extra on the disc is an audio commentary with director Mark Polonia and is actually quite informative. Mark is very candid with anecdotes and info on the shoot and is under no illusions about the kind of film he has made here. He basically just wants audiences to have a good time for a little while with no pretensions to art. We also have a image slideshow and a trailer to put a cap on the extras.

Fans of Mark Polonia will find lots of lo-fi campy schlock to dig into with this ludicrous film, and the groovy soundtrack could be enough to pull in some Cleopatra acolytes as well. The Polonia-verse is definitely not for everyone though, so if you are expecting top notch, Hollywood-level production values, be forewarned.