ROAR (1981) – MARCH COMES IN LIKE A LION

ROAR (1981) – This was one of the first bad/ weird movies I planned to review when I started writing Balladeer’s Blog back in 2010, but like Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky it kept falling by the wayside. This film is no longer as unknown as it was in 2010 and has even been the subject of a documentary about its making, called The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made.

Even making jokes about this flick feels played out for everyone except people who haven’t seen or heard of it yet. Let me give it a try, though. “Roar: It’s not just the title – it’s the script!” or “You’ll believe people are stupid enough to make a drama using dozens of UNTRAINED jungle animals.”

Yes, untrained. The original movie advertisements for Roar boasted that “No animals were harmed in the making of this film. 70 cast and crew members were.” The end result is not something any human or animal should have been put at risk over, believe me.

Roar is such a bizarre product. Part “animals strike back” film, part Mondo Cane flirtation, part Golden Turkey, part vanity project, part home movie, part masochistic family production, part stunt-casting orgy, I could go on and on.

First up, the general story: A naturalist lives in Africa in a large, sprawling home with dozens of lions, tigers, leopards, panthers, jaguars, etc. His marriage is in trouble (of course) and he’s in danger of losing his grant money.

His estranged wife plus his two sons and a daughter come to visit but a mix-up causes them to arrive at the naturalist’s home while he is trying to pick them up at the airport. This strands the family with a houseful of wild and very dangerous jungle cats.

The stunt-casting: Noel Marshall plays the unhinged naturalist Hank (but we’re supposed to like him). THE Tippi Hedren, Noel’s real-life wife at the time, plays the naturalist’s wife Madeleine. Melanie Griffith, Tippi’s real-life daughter, plays the couple’s daughter Melanie. Marshall’s sons John and Jerry portray the couple’s sons John and Jerry. I guess the family that gets mauled together, stays together.  

Some critics express how creepy it is when Tippi and Melanie’s characters discuss the mother and father’s sex life. Well, if you’ll recall, Hedren and her daughter Griffith also costarred in The Harrad Experiment, the infamous 1970s movie about “free love and free sex”. In that same film, Tippi had a kinky sex scene with one Don Johnson, who would marry Melanie Griffith.

For all I know, the clan is contemplating a movie starring Dakota Johnson plus Don and Melanie in God knows what kind of storyline. Maybe Roar 2: Roar Harder. (I’m kidding!)

The Psychotronic Appeal is off the charts in Roar. Early on, Noel Marshall’s Chicago accent as his character Hank delivers a virtual monologue about wildlife and humans makes it even more laughable than it would be under normal circumstances. Another bit is when one character moronically hides from some of the lions by locking himself in a refrigeration unit. (!)

The shrieking Hank isn’t so much devoted to his work as he is pathologically callous toward the suffering of those around him. He treats his best friend Mativo (Kyalo Mativo) as a virtual practice dummy for all his lions, destroys another friend’s car, and nearly gets several members of the grant committee killed through his carelessness.

Even worse, his disorganized nature and disdain for safety spawn the crossed wires that cause his wife and children to arrive at his lion-riddled home while he and Mativo are looking for them at the airport. Why are we supposed to like Hank again?

The idiot even costs the grant committee one of their boats and then costs Mativo another by letting several of his tigers climb into boats that cannot handle their weight. I was soon rooting for Hank to get torn limb from limb by his own animals while Mativo stood by and laughed.

The animals are the REAL directors of this film, as will be apparent when or if you watch it. The actors are left to basically ad-lib while the lions do what they please to the cast members in each scene, so the dialogue can’t help but sound hilariously bad.

I don’t want to spoil all the laughs in this notorious train wreck but let me point out one of the few intentional laughs in Roar. Soon after the wife and children arrive at Hank’s home, a bird starts to attack Tippi Hedren but she quickly shuts the door on it. Okay, cute joke and they didn’t milk it, it was kept brief and funny. 

Despite what I’ve written so far, I would call Roar a must-see movie. It is truly one of a kind and knowing the constant danger that the cast and crew were facing while this flick was being made add immensely to a viewer’s fascination as the lions and other jungle cats go at the actors. An elephant even manhandles Tippi Hedren with its trunk! 

Due to its reputation plus the use AND misuse of animals in the making of Roar, it was not released in the U.S. or Canada until several years after its 1981 worldwide release. There was a time when obtaining copies of the movie was an adventure in itself. It’s readily available here in 2024, though.

Adding to the mind-blowing trivia behind this flick, Ted “Lurch” Cassidy co-wrote Roar, just like he co-wrote The Harrad Experiment. And the lion Togar had once been the pet of Satanist Anton LaVey.  

I am intentionally refraining from most spoilers in hopes of encouraging more people to seek out this bizarre experiment. If you’re wary about watching Roar out of concern for the naturalist and his family, the only characters who get killed are two gun-crazy men who show up hoping to slaughter all of Hank’s jungle cats.

So, by all means watch this flick and enjoy speculating on which scenes resulted in horrific injuries during filming while you simultaneously soak in the genuinely beautiful cinematography and the grandeur of all the African jungle animals on screen.