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"Cocaine Shark" (2023) - Not since "Suburban Sasquatch" ...

Mark Polonia has made almost 80 films since 1985. That is 2+ per year. There was a 3 year pause in his proliferation after his twin brother & production partner John died in 2008. If you consider that he (they) didn’t really start cranking out this entertainment until 2000 - it is more like 3 per year. If he keeps at it as long as they did, he will pass Richard Thorpe and William Beaudine (credited as directing ~180 each). Wowzers.

His particular craft is low-low budget. Lower than Roger Corman or Lloyd Kaufman even. Polonia’s production values are limited. You get 2 or 3 sets with plenty of establishing shots to fill the transition. You get special effects and creatures which look like they were assembled by a junior high art class. You will see the same actor playing multiple parts, married couples acting together, and a lot of the same names showing up in multiple different releases. You will see the same people + sets in 2 or 4 of these movies in a room; I assume many of them are shot contemporaneously.


What you also get is an earnest piece of entertainment. Polonia (or Corman / Kaufman for that matter) is not trying to impress you with a visual spectacle or award worthy performances. They are making a living and providing work for people telling a story that entertains. And they do that over and over again.


“Cocaine Shark” is marketed as a sci-fi horror film but is more like a double episode of “Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer”. At 70 minutes, it is mostly a tale about an undercover cop infiltrating and trying to disrupt a new drug ring taking over the US from Atlantic City, NJ. A ton of self-referential voice over narration by the ¿main? Character. I think most of the movie is being told as a flashback; it doesn’t really matter. I fast-forwarded through the dramatic scene between ‘Mike Hammer’ and the femme fatale, but the dialog was just what you might think it was if you were to write a scene after reading the Wikipedia article on the character.


There is of course a cocaine shark. Actually, there are three different hybrid, blood crazed creatures who were formed because of their exposure to the designer drug in the movie. None of them look much like the cover art. None of them are really consequential to the story.


One of the things I like to do when I watch these films is to make up famous(ish) actor names for the actors that are there. The first guy you meet is a hybrid of Jon Lovitz+Michael Peña. The ¿main? character is a garage-sale Oscar Issacs. You can play along at home.

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