Roar (1981)

Spooky Season was fun again this year, we covered a Haunting of a Manor House, Post-Decapitation revival, a love spurned Warlock enacting his revenge, and trifling with demonic possession. But I don't think any of them really compare in terms of outright scariness to: filming a movie with actual live lions and tigers. Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren, a married couple who were very passionate about the conservation and protection of animal species, formulated an idea for a movie that would, in the simplest of terms; involve a family arriving at a house habituated by big cats and hijinks ensue. That movie became Roar and I could write an entire blog post on the history leading up to, and the development of, this movie but to give you a severely abridged version: the movie essentially stars Noel, Tippi and their family mixing it up with their home reared and "tame" animal pets comprising of some of the most dangerous creatures on the planet. Owing to the dangerous and unpredictable nature of the animal supporting cast there was many, many injuries to cast and crew during the filming process - a process that took 5 years to complete I might add - and as a result the movie garnered a reputation for being the "most dangerous movie ever made". People got hurt making this. Some of them severely so. But incredibly, nobody died? Regrettably though, the movie performed fairly poorly at the box office, recouping a underwhelming $2 Million to offset against it's final budget of $17 Million and it also caused Noel and Tippi to eventually split. Roar is one of those curiosity movies that only surfaces every so often. When a set of circumstances all comes together and you find yourself thinking: "why the fuck did they think this was a good idea!?" Doesn't happen very often. But when it does, it makes for some really intriguing watching. I'm looking forward to this. Even with the foresight that all the blood, all the injuries, all the maulings are genuinely 100% REAL.

In the opening scene we see Hank (Noel Marshall) hanging out in his cabin essentially surrounded by big cats, get a visit from his friend Mativo (Kyalo Mativo) who seems decidedly reluctant to get out of his speedboat and wade into the gathering of lions, tigers, pumas, panthers, a lynx, and other big furry animals with decidedly sharp teeth. Hank tries to explain that they are mostly harmless as he gets tackled to the ground by a squad of about 5 lionesses... Mativo explains that "the committee" is coming to review his grant, Hank is using the house and the plot of land to study big cats, and members of the committee appear to disprove of his gathering of ferocious beasts. His pride of lions is also under threat from a wild outsider; Togar, and Hank - mid way through the meeting - charges into a fight between Togar his lions which results in his hand getting bitten. Aggravated by the commotion, the tigers turn their attention to the committee and attack, resulting in 3 or 4 of the members being left with bloodied faces and limbs, when Hank manages to settle everything down they speed away in their boats, clearly unimpressed...Back inside Hank opines to Mativo that Togar could be related to Robbie - his pack leader and that being a loner, Togar is becoming increasingly desperate for food. As they try and clean the place up for... some reason... literally about 30 or 40 lions and lionesses start rampaging around the house. Mativo asks Hank, sarcastically, if he is "running a country club for lions" and if he "wants to bring Madeline and the children to this?" Having witnessed the past 25 minutes being nothing more than what I can only describe as absolute chaos, Mativo makes an excellent point. Hank and Mativo then head out on a boat down the river for... some reason... (it's later established they were on their way to the airport to collect Hank's family.) but they hit something causing their boat to capsize. Meanwhile Madeline (Tippi Hedren) and the kids; Melanie (Melanie Griffith), John (John Marshall) and Jerry (Jerry Marshall) arrive at Hank's place and after exploring everywhere and opening every single window they get their first experience with the local fauna when the lions drag in the bloody carcass of some former animal and smear animal blood all over the place. The family take refuge in various lockable cupboard based furniture items... as the lions basically rampage around the house tearing shit up. The family regroup after the lions eventually all head back outside and begin to make a plan until the pride is attacked again by Togar, forcing all the lions back in doors. As Togar chases the lions and with them, the family around the house, they end up barricaded inside a room with Togar smashing his way inside until Robbie appears, the pair fight and Togar is eventually frightened off. Meanwhile Hank and Mativo, stranded in the middle of nowhere, steal some bicycles but can't seem to shake the attention of 2 of Hanks tigers that have been following them, which obviously can't follow Hank into the airport. Hank convinces Mativo to climb a tree and distract them by waving his shirt around whilst Hank speeds away. He arrives at the airport and learns that his family caught the bus to his place. Borrowing the pilots car, he speeds back to rescue Mativo from the tree who has seemingly spent the whole night there. He invites Mativo to climb into the car that he currently shares with two massive tigers and Mativo says "this is madness" before explaining to Hank that his 'friends' have probably eaten his family by now. On the way to the house Hank hits a stone in the road puncturing the tyre on the car. Back at the house and the family emerge from their shelter in the morning to discover various wild cats going through and slowly wrecking everything the brought with them in their luggage. They seize the opportunity to escape whilst the animals are distracted by commandeering a row boat and paddling down the river, all the time stalked by a pride of lionesses as they do, until they accidentally row into the territory of a massive elephant who plucks the boat from underneath them and tears it to pieces. After getting finished with the boat it also has a go with Madeline suspending her in the air and forcing her to wriggle and wrestle her way free before dropping her. Boatless and defeated the family begin to retreat back into the water and swim back to the house for 'safety'. Back with Hank and Mativo and with Hank unable to fix the car he decides he has to run on foot to make it back to his place, and leaves Mativo with an umbrella to fend off his tiger friends. 2 of the 'committee' members from earlier take it upon themselves to exterminate the out of control pack of wild animals that Hank calls his friends and set out armed to the back teeth with machine guns on horseback to track down some big cats, shooting one "right in the neck." as they patrol towards Hank's place. Back at the house John decides to take it upon himself to go and get help, and borrows his dad's motorbike, speeding away with a gang of animals in hot pursuit, he eventually shakes them off only to get charged at by an angry elephant, which leads to him u-turning and winding up back at the house being chased by a pack of lionesses only to eventually career of the end of a balcony and into the river. The rest of the family continue to fight a futile battle for survival against marauding packs of deadly natural killing machines by hiding in barrels and jumping from the roof into the river e.t.c until eventually all four of them escape to stable building on the other side of the river. It doesn't take the lions long to figure out how to cross the water though and as the family try to get some rest they are soon joined by a handful of curious wild animals. Meanwhile, the 2 rogue committee members make their way to the ranch shooting any of the animals they come across as they do until they are spotted and attacked by Togar. Making his way to the ranch, Hank discovers the dead body of one of his lions, and discovers Togar attacking the 2 men. He tries to scare him off but he is too late and both men are mauled to death. Waking up from their nap and discovering themselves surrounded by a pride of napping and playful lions, the family come to realise that the animals aren't trying to ruthlessly slaughter them after all and start to become more familiar and understanding with them, discovering that actually most of them are just really friendly. And when Togar arrives on the scene, the lions rush to protect the family from him. Robbie eventually shouts him down and Togar submits just as Hank is reunited with his family. He introduces them to Mativo and they agree to stay for the rest of the week as a montage of the family living and bonding with the animals plays us out.

This was supposed to be a comedy, but to be honest I found most if not all of the movie pretty distressing as you watch a family of human beings fight to survive being mauled and chewed to death by a gang of massive cats. There is no doubt in my mind after watching it that Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren obviously cared deeply about the subject matter - the protection and preservation of wild animals, but I'm not entirely sure this was the best use of that subject matter in order to communicate a wider, broader message. It mostly just painted the animals as chaotic, dangerous and untamed wrecking machines with little regard for human safety... there is a kind of half baked message about the animals actually being harmless at the end of it but I wasn't really convinced by that. I didn't watch this and think: "oh I can roll around with a tiger after all!" I watched this and thought: "I don't really want to be trapped in a bedroom with three bloodthirsty lionesses."

I can understand the creative vision and I have a degree of respect for the execution. You will certainly almost likely never see another movie like Roar, before '81 or after it! That has such lifelike and natural interaction with wild animals. Because of how dangerous it is to actually shoot under conditions like that. But to it's credit mixing it up with gangs of lions and tigers does give the movie a certain authenticity that would be difficult to artificially recreate. Regrettably though it also plays massively to it's detriment.

The cinematography for example bounces all over the place. There are scenes that are shot creatively and interestingly and produced very well. But to counter balance that, a good portion of the movie is a confusing and unclear mess because alot of the scenes were so dangerous to shoot that they had one take and had to go with the footage, whether it worked or not. And this is all kind of spliced together to produce the movie which creates a very jarring aesthetic. Where it can relax and take time to compose a shot, the movie does, and there was a lot of nicely framed compositions but there was also a lot of speedy and rushed scenes owing to the scenario that one of the family members was currently involved in.

It also felt quite choppily and roughly edited. There are a number of abrupt transitions and I spotted a number of occasions where the background music score didn't quite flow seamlessly where part of the movie had potentially been cut post process but the music not quite sequenced properly. Don't know if that's reflective of the finished product or just the edit I watched but it was definitely noticeable and it does serve to downgrade the professionalism of the production to a degree. I felt like there was some difficult decisions made to either salvage the footage they have or remove a section entirely and you can still feel the residuals of those editing decisions in the final production.

In terms of the plot, it's keep incredibly simplistic and most of the movies runtime is padded out with the family just trying to survive wave after wave of animal attacks. There's little in the way of a storyline progression, although there is a narrative, and the movie is mostly just relying on the incredible realistic nature of the interactions with the animals in order to build it's picture. Which to be honest for the first 30 - 35 minutes is actually impressive enough but by sort of hour, hour 10 in you become desensitized to it and just kinda start to wish the movie would hurry up and build to a conclusion. The sub-plot with the 2 committee members (who go unnamed for most of the film save for a brisk dialogue sequence right at the end of the movie) patrolling the grounds and shooting Hank's animals did feel kind of sandwiched in as well and isn't really given much build, much back story and much really in the way of execution.

Similarly on an acting front, whilst I felt like most of the family did a pretty decent job of portraying their... err... "characters."... whoever they were, they did get a little bit cheesy and little bit corny at times. I was entirely unconvinced by Noel Marshall as Hank. He wasn't an actor and it showed. A nod of respect for deciding to put himself through what he did, prepared to mix it up with animals twice his size, and in doing so looking fairly confident in it, but when it came to delivering his dialogue pieces and pretending to be a... vet? An scientist? It's not really elaborated on... he just looks a bit out of his depth.

I think the biggest problem with Roar is that whilst it was impressive for it's use of wild animals and portraying those interactions with them throughout the movie it unfortunately lacked in substance in every other department. The storyline was very barebones, elements are not really elaborated on or explained, and it relies very much on the "hijinks" of the family being terrorised by lions and tigers with nothing else really available after that. As a result it quickly got a little bit boring to be honest and for the most part was just a bit uncomfortable and bit distressing to watch rather than genuinely amusing. I came into it with a kind of morbid and macabre curiosity and feel like I've came away from it with something having just watched potentially the most dangerous movie ever filmed, but I'm not quite sure what that something was. It wasn't necessarily a bad movie. It just felt really lacking, and really basic, and very much had vanity project written through it which was difficult to ignore. I'd encourage anybody to at least give it a watch just out of curiosity I think more than anything but it would come with the caveat that it's not necessarily the most exciting and interesting movie I've ever watched. 2 out of 5, extra star for having cool animals.