Roar

Roar is a film curiosity shrouded in so many crazy stories that I just had to watch it. The film was supposedly 11 years in the making. Actress Tippi Hedren (who apparently didn’t have enough with the grueling filming of the horror film The Birds) declared that it was probably the most dangerous shoot of all time and wrote a book about it. Reportedly, 70 crew members were injured during the filming of this animal “horror” movie. Why so many? Because when someone got hurt, they didn't see them on set the next day, so they had to replace them with someone else. All this was used to promote the film (whose trailer, for example, boasts about how many stitches and fractures the various actors sustained on set), but it didn't help its success and it was completely forgotten for many years. Now, distributor Drafthouse Films has rediscovered it and will release it on Blu-ray in the fall, and word is starting to get around again. This is not a good film by any means. The script has makes no sense, and the direction is rather chaotic. It's basically a high-budget, homemade amateur dream project by Hollywood agent Noel Marshall, who dragged (and nearly killed) his entire family (including wife Tippi Hedren and his stepdaughter, a then-unknown Melanie Griffith) into it. At the center of the simple story is a family that returns to Africa to visit the head of the family, a zookeeper (played by Noel Marshall himself) who lives in a wooden house with dozens of lions, tigers, panthers, and cheetahs that like to pounce on people for fun. The family arrives just as the father is gone, and the entire film is practically about the other family members running and hiding from his pets, because (until the end of the film) they have no idea that they're actually cute animals who just want to play. The film was made in support of African wildlife and is apparently meant to show how animals can coexist (despite, for example, scalping cinematographer Jan de Bont). The whole thing comes across as an incredibly bizarre amalgamation of grotesque action scenes, with actors and animals running around uncontrollably and getting into wild confrontations. At the same time, it's not entirely clear whether this is supposed to be slapstick or horror. And we are not worried about the characters, but rather the actors who play them, since what takes place in the film looks really VERY dangerous (the animals were not trained) and it's a wonder they all survived. For example, you'll see a huge number of lions jumping on a man, a tiger sinking a boat, while another boat gets crushed by an elephant and then Tippi Hedren sent flying (really) and breaks her leg – nothing was staged. It’s hard to know how many stars to give it. In any case, it's a fascinating spectacle that I'll happily repeat when I want to show something wonderfully obscure to a visitor. (11.07.2015)

Roar has been described as ‘the most dangerous film ever made’ (in terms of production) and is a bizarre freak of a film written, produced, and directed by Noel Marshall, who together with Tippi Hedren wanted to draw attention to the violation of animal rights concerning majestic African beasts and their boundless hunting. However, Marshall’s approach and determination to shoot this work were almost manic – the production was so dangerous that only his family members could be persuaded to act in the film – and they, including other members of the crew, suffered multiple injuries during filming and it is surprising that none of them died. The plot is basically irrelevant and it is clear in every shot that the beasts didn’t behave as expected and no real directing was possible, so the plot is sporadic, the shots are often unsuccessful and the editing is intrusive. Even so, the viewer has to devour the whole film from beginning to end with their mouth open and perceive every physical and mental tremor of the actors on the screen, because they really couldn’t be sure of anything and their fear is real. A bizarre and nerve-racking spectacle from a time when health and safety at work were not yet taken so seriously. (06.01.2019)