Review: Roar

Hank (Noel Marshall) loves wild animals so much that he’s moved away from his family to live in Africa in a home inhabited by dozens and dozens of lions, tigers, leopards, cheetahs etc. With plenty of other wild animals just outside as well. When his family (played by Marshall’s real-life sons, as well as his then-wife Tippi Hedren and her daughter Melanie Griffith) come for a visit from America, let’s just say that the animals aren’t quite welcoming to the interlopers. And they don’t seem to much like Hank either. Kyalo Mativo plays a native friend of Hank’s who seems to be the only character in the film with enough smarts to be wary of the beasts before they even attack.

 

1981 unofficial family vacation footage from director/producer/star/co-writer/idiot/arsehole Noel Marshall is now largely forgotten. Even those who do know about it only do so for the non-fictional story of its making, not for it’s fictional movie plot. For something that doesn’t seem to have had a lot of mainstream viewers eyes on it over the years, this is one of the most notorious, jaw-dropping movies ever made. You see, Marshall and his then wife Tippi Hedren were an animal-loving couple, and they rehomed many a lion at their own personal properties with the best of intentions. After a trip to Zimbabwe, the idea of a fictional film started to percolate inside Marshall’s head as a way to raise awareness for the preservation of big cats. At least that’s what the film was intended to have as its lasting legacy/message. Shot at the Marshall/Hedren family estate in California playing the role of Africa, the resulting film was shot over a period of ten years (!) and would amass a total of at least 70 cast and crew injuries on set. This includes a young Melanie Griffith having her face mauled, and the film’s cinematographer Jan de Bont being scalped! Thankfully we don’t see all of the actual attacks on screen, but some of it is definitely still in the film. You see, these animals might’ve been ‘domesticated’ to some extent but they were dangerous animals who weren’t trained in the art of performing for the cameras. And that’s kind of a big frigging problem that Marshall in his singular vision overlooked. The animals largely did what the fuck they wanted and often that resulted in attacking the humans who were annoying the shit out of them. Despite the disclaimer at the outset saying otherwise, the animals didn’t come out of the experience unscathed either. There were numerous casualties among them (disease ran rampant through the shoot, for one thing), though thankfully no human fatalities. Welcome to the most dangerous, reckless, and utterly foolish cinematic endeavour ever carried out.

 

Scripted by Marshall and TV’s Lurch (actor Ted Cassidy), the knowledge of off-screen events for me made it damn near impossible to focus on the fictional story being told. For 90 minutes I was watching a cast being legitimately terrified and terrorised by wild animals, far too many of them housed in an enclosed space for much of the film. It’s certainly a scary experience, but not because of any intended reason. You care about the safety of the cast and crew, not the fictional characters. This is a deeply uncomfortable film to watch, to the point where I couldn’t even get any ‘So bad it’s funny’ levity from it. I’m sorry, but Marshall is a total jerk who had to hire his own family members to appear in the film because likely almost anyone else would have the good sense – and no sense of loyalty to Marshall – to turn the project down. As far as I’m concerned, if someone wanted to argue that this was Marshall basically abusing/torturing his family, it’s not an argument I’d terribly disagree with. It doesn’t surprise me that Ms. Hedren spent much of her life, especially after this film working on behalf of the protection of animals. Some atonement was probably necessary for this ordeal. She later regretted putting the animals through this (getting manhandled by an elephant will do that to you I guess), and at least she divorced Marshall a short time later. I find it weird that she would often talk about having a hard time with Hitchcock on “The Birds”, but has largely stayed silent on this even more potentially psychologically damaging experience with a single-minded male filmmaker, one she was even married to for a time.

 

Perhaps the most infuriating thing here is that for all the distress Marshall likely put these poor animals through – they’re wild animals and mostly predators, I don’t blame them for attacking anyone – the resulting film just isn’t well-made enough to be even close to worth it. Sure, Mr. de Bont films the very lovely scenery just fine. However, Mr. Marshall isn’t good enough of a director, writer, or actor to be a success in any of the capacities he took on here. As an actor especially, his performance is quite irritating, his voice is like a mixture of Walter Brennan and a chainsaw about to run out of juice. Given that Tippi Hedren is a mediocre talent and Melanie Griffith doesn’t have even a quarter of that talent, you won’t find good acting here. You will however find people looking genuinely terrified on camera (Mativo in particular looks absolutely petrified, and understandably so). It’s sheer luck that none of the human cast died here. Perhaps they should’ve used flamingos and capybaras instead of big cats and elephants.

 

This film should never have been made. A horror film in the truest sense, this is Hollywood ego without restraint, and while it’s effectively terrifying it’s not effective in the manner intended. Up to a point it’s kinda morbidly fascinating from a car crash POV. As uncomfortable as it’ll make you, you won’t be able to quite look away from it. However, this is an experience I don’t ever want to subject myself to more than once. It feels like a display of animal and human abuse. That dreadful, inappropriately happy ending is the final nail in the coffin. Nothing gets resolved. I suppose one could argue that it deserves to be seen once so that nothing like it is surely ever attempted again. These animals were on a mission to teach people a bloody harsh lesson. Perhaps the most fascinating movie that I’ve ever hated. Oh, and pay no attention to IMDb labelling this film a comedy, there is nothing funny about watching a pre-“Body Double” Melanie Griffith sustaining facial injuries that required plastic surgery because her stepfather at the time was a complete arsehole.

 

Rating: C-