Roar: A historic piece of wtf filmmaking

Roar is a truly stupefying movie. It was released in 1981 to what I assume was little fanfare—I was born a year later, so I wouldn’t really know, but it’s not like it won awards or anything—starring Tippi Hedren, Noel Marshall, Melanie Griffith, and Melanie’s two brothers. That this was basically a home movie produced by the Marshall family is strange, and that they had to sell assets, like their Beverly Hills mansion, to make this film is outright bizarre. Go to Roar’s IMDB page and you’ll find an unending supply of interesting tidbits. It gives a pretty complete breakdown of the injuries suffered by the cast and crew, though it somehow doesn’t say that anyone died during filming. This is odd because so many of the people who worked on this movie, including almost every member of the Marshall family, were severely attacked by giant felines.

You would think this would stop people from making such a dangerous movie. You would also be wrong! The Marshall family had the idea to make a film about a father, living in Africa, who is not home when his family visits him unexpectedly. Unbeknownst to them, their father resides with around 50 full-grown lions and tigers, without fencing or any sort of barriers between himself and the animals. It would make a great CGI-animated movie except that there was no CGI or any effects whatsoever. They all went to Africa and played with 50+ carnivorous felines for a few years. I saw this at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, and the reaction of the crowd within the first 10 minutes was just laughter. It continued until the rest of the movie, but those first 10 minutes were shocking, as the Noel Marshall doesn’t really act as much as he shows himself living with lions. Entering the house, they pin him up against the wall playfully—I guess? Still not sure they really wanted to eat him—and he continues about his business as if there’s nothing abnormal about getting pushed around by a lion. He ups his game after by interfering with a lion fight between the good lion and some bad lion that wants to claim the territory as his own. That they tried to make a plot within this movie about some lion that’s trying to take over is absurd on its own. I mean…it’s like watching a comedy—a fail video that you can’t possibly believe someone actually tried because it’s so stupid and why are they honestly trying to kill themselves oh god I can’t watch.

It’s an unbelievable movie just because of the animals. There’s nothing worth saying about the plot, other than the family spends time running away from lions, tigers, and an elephant, which also tries to kill them in real time. I don’t know that they bothered even trying to act for this movie since there must have been so much distraction, what with lions potentially mauling you to death in every scene. The more you keep trying to wind your brain around it, the more it sees this movie as a surrealistic portrait of insanity, something so rare and weird that the fact that it was made almost 40 years ago seems trivial. There are older movies who pushed limits, like cannibal holocaust did when they decided to kill real animals on-screen or films like I Spit on Your Grave, which bath in depravity. Most had the intention of horrifying you, as you witnessed something disturbing and shocking. But Roar goes into another realm directly, telling you that the thing you’re seeing that is outright shocking is totally normal and something to be celebrated. You just find yourself so awe struck that you can’t help but laugh while the cast are filmed being attacked.   

The greatest achievement this movie makes is ultimately getting an entire family to sleep with lions comfortably, as if they’re cuddly pets. I don’t think anyone could pull it off today, let alone on film (the fact that a film like this has zero chance of being made nowadays not withstanding). If my child decided that he wanted to make a movie like this, I would barricade him in his room forever. What the hell people?! Anyway, I highly recommend watching this piece of remarkable history. It’s an experience unlike any other, something that will never occur ever again. It’s also batshit insane and I’m nearly positive that someone HAD to have died while filming, but the Marshall family covered it up so they could release this ridiculous piece of film history.