ROAR

There has never been, and will likely never be, another film like Roar. It’s a piece of cinema almost as astonishing on the screen as in the behind-the scenes-detail. Shot on location in Africa, it tells the story of Hank (Noel Marshall), a beardy weird-y conservationist with an open-door policy with regards to wildlife, who just so happens to be away from the lodge when his family turn up; his family who don’t seem to have been apprised of the lion situation. 

For there are lions, and not just lions – panthers, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, jaguars – roughly 110 of them in all, and an elephant perhaps best described as a bit of a prima donna.1 One of the key conflicts in fiction is, of course, man versus nature, but you’ve never seen it like this.2 A large portion of the plot involves Madeleine (Marshall’s wife and Hitchcock blonde, Tippi Hedren3), Melanie (Hedren’s daughter, Melanie Griffith), Jerry (Marshall’s son Jerry), and John (Marshall’s son John) being chased around the Swiss Family Robinson-style lodge by big game cats, taking cover beneath upturned furniture – or else furniture that is soon upturned – and being repeatedly thrown from the roof of the lodge into the reservoir that surrounds it.4 You’ve heard of nature documentary but this is nature drama: even as they’re hiding out in barrels, one full of water,5 or making an escape in a boat, you fully expect the actors to be mauled at any moment – and some of them are! 

Roar’s publicity sensationally declares that while no lions were harmed in the making of the film over 70 members of cast and crew were. Tippi Hedren fractured her leg when she was thrown by the elephant and Director of Photography Jan de Bont, who went on to direct Speed, required 220 stitches when a lion tore his scalp off. This sense of peril adds to the mounting hysteria and with it the film’s comedy. When the pride decides to mark the family’s arrival by dragging a freshly killed zebra into the lobby, Madeleine fitfully declares, “Look what the cat dragged in”.6 The whole production plays like a work of comic melodrama, as if The Towering Inferno had really been shot inside a burning skyscraper or The Poseidon Adventure aboard a genuinely sinking ship. 

Roar is nothing if not authentic: the main lions, including the heroic Robbie and villainous bloody-mawed Togar,7 are credited as performers and an opening inter-title informs us that their behaviour largely dictated the plot.8 They even have distinct personalities, like the mopey Gary who refuses to leave the lodge to “go and play”. They’re both playful, capricious,9 and deadly, commanding both love and respect. Hank/Noel is the only one that shows no fear in the face – and claws – of them;10 the fact of which his friend and companion Mativo (Kyalo Mativo) reacts with good-natured disbelief. Roar’s conservationist message, which is hammered home in the final reel11, almost feels like over-egging the (lion) pudding: the film is a testament to these amazing creatures and the commitment of the cast and crew on a shoot that would make even Francis Ford Coppola blanch. 

Roar spent eleven turbulent years in production, cost $17 million to make, saw dozens of people savaged by marauding lions, and ultimately bombed at the box office.12 Was it worth all the bloodshed? Probably not. Am I glad it exists? Hell yes. With scenes that play like the world’s greatest ever cat video13 and Robert Hawk’s cheesily earnest soundtrack14, the film is guaranteed to leave you glowing. As they say, home is where the pride is.

1 He crumples the escaping family’s boat like a tin can. And he’s not the only one to wreak havoc on watercraft.

2 Think Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man documentary if it had been shot as a drama.

3 There’s even a throwaway reference to the film that made/destroyed Hedren’s name and here she is disregarding W.C. Field’s famous edict again (the one about never working with children or animals).

4 There’s certainly  no perception that the cast are in any way “acting”. It’s also probably safe to assume that any injuries we see sustained were real.

5 In a wonderful shot we see the lions’ tongues lapping at the surface from below.

6 It’s like they’re the free-spirited, liberal family who’ve just moved to a new neighbourhood only to find themselves menaced by a street gang. And the street gang are lions.

7 Togar, the film’s Scar, was apparently later taken in by Hedren. She now lives at the Shambala Preserve in Acton, California, which she founded, and has basically devoted her life to the preservation of lions. What a lady.

8 What with the time jumps and that bike that vanishes from a car boot it definitely looks like the continuity guy was lying down on the job. Then again I wouldn’t want to be the guy to ask for another take.

9 The lions also display great comic timing, idly tugging the boat back to shore as the family try desperately to row away.

10 His interventions between the snarling, clawing males is out-and-out suicidal.  

11 There’s a ludicrously evil French hunter and his accomplice who – thanks to Liam Fleming for this comparison – looks a lot like Mr. Kidd from Diamonds Are Forever.

12 Which is inexplicable to me. Did they not see the publicity?!

13 The pile-on that occurs whenever Hank opens the front door is both adorable and ???.

14 The track that plays us out is called "Here We Are in Eden".