Universal’s Cocaine Bear from director Elizabeth Banks (Charlie’s Angels) arrives in theaters this Friday, February 24, 2023.
In the film, a 500-pound apex predator ingests a staggering amount of cocaine, sparking a coke-fueled rampage that’ll end in a lot of bloodshed. While it appears poised to deliver a raucously entertaining time at the movies, Cocaine Bear isn’t the first horror-comedy or horror movie to feature a drug or serum-enhanced animal on a violent warpath.
This week’s streaming picks highlight five entertaining creature features centered on rampaging animals of all varieties. As always, here’s where to stream them this week.
For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.
Alligator – AMC+, freevee, Roku Channel, Shout TV, Shudder
The plot, borrowing from a popular urban legend, follows a baby alligator flushed down the toilet. It winds up in the sewer, a local laboratory’s precise spot used as a dumping ground for growth hormones and waste. That cute baby alligator grows into a monstrous beast and wreaks havoc on the town. Only Robert Forster’s Officer David can stop it. From director Lewis Teague (Cujo, Cat’s Eye), Alligator is legitimately good. It also earns major points for having the gall to kill a child in a suspenseful scene. And nothing beats the climactic wedding with a rampaging reptile.
Black Sheep – freevee, Plex, Tubi, Vudu
You don’t mess with mother nature. That rule gets broken in this New Zealand horror comedy when a farmer’s son conducts genetic experiments with the farm’s sheep, transforming them from docile animals to carnivorous beasts whose bite turns humans into rabid sheep monsters. Oh yeah. It’s that kind of movie. Taking it a step further, the protagonist, the mad scientist’s brother, has a profound sheep phobia to overcome if he hopes to survive. It’s as gory as it is silly, making for a highly entertaining watch.
Eight Legged Freaks – HBO Max
Arachnophobia proved that venomous, normal-sized spiders are terrifying. Throw toxic waste into the mix, creating gigantic killer arachnids, and the temptation to nuke the planet to eradicate all things arachnid becomes very tempting. Luckily, Eight Legged Freaks takes a comedic approach in this love letter to the atomic ’50s. Giant spiders become slightly less scary when they chirp at each other in a cute gremlin-like language. It’s a fun, campy feature, but that won’t make it any easier if you’re an arachnophobe.
Shakma – AMC+, Shudder, Tubi
An experimental drug meant to inhibit aggression has the opposite effect on its test subject, a baboon named Shakma. When it goes berserk, Professor Sorenson (Roddy McDowall) orders his med student to euthanize the animal, but it instead escapes and embarks on a rampage through the facility. That’s terrible news for Sorenson and the students assembled for a live-action role-playing game. Chris Atkins and A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Amanda Wyss round out the cast, but really, the star here is the ferocious baboon with a ruthless, mean streak. Being trapped anywhere with Shakma is a nightmare.
Ticks – freevee, Night Flight+, Pluto TV, Roku Channel, Tubi, Vudu
Common blood-sucking ticks become abnormally large and aggressive thanks to getting mixed up in a drug dealer’s quest to make his marijuana plants larger with steroids. The teens enrolled in an inner-city wilderness project find themselves in the path of these massive ticks when they set up camp in their territory. It’s goopy, gory, and cringe-inducing. The highlight of the film is the violent climax that goes full-blown creature feature.
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