Disaster flick
Only humans were hurt in the making of cult film Roar,
“Why did you bring us here? We’re just gonna die!” a teenage Melanie Griffith wails in the trailer for Roar, called “the most dangerous movie ever made” by the film’s distributor. That was one line that came close to home for the
Working Girl star. Griffith needed facial reconstruction after being mauled by a lion in another scene while making what’s been called “the most terrifying and dangerous filmmaking ever committed to celluloid.” And now you can see it. Roar opens at The Royal cinema next month. Only humans were harmed in the making of the movie. The animals were unscathed, but more than 70 cast members and crew were injured in the five years spent shooting Roar, which also stars Tippi Hedren (star of Alfred Hitchcock’s
The Birds and Griffith’s mother) and more than 150 wild animals: lions, tigers, leopards, elephants and jaguars among them.
It’s enjoying a much-hyped North American release ahead of a Blu-ray issue this fall. The movie only played overseas during its initial run.
Imagine if Stephen King was running African Lion Safari and that comes close to what plays out in Roar’s trailer. No stunt performers, no CGI, just galloping great cats snarling and leaping on the cast, including members of Hedren’s family. Hedren ended up with a broken leg, courtesy of an elephant, and scalp wounds from one of the big cats. Her then-husband, Noel Marshall, Roar’s costar-director and producer of The Exor
cist, was hospitalized with gangrene after suffering puncture wounds, including having his hand bitten through by a lion, an event which appears in the film.
Cinematographer Jan de Bont (who went on to direct Speed) was nearly scalped by a lion and needed more than 200 stitches.
Griffith eventually quit the movie, telling her mother, “I don’t want to come out of this with half a face.”
“There’s so much curiosity about how a film like this could have been made,” said Lisa Dell, vice-president of marketing for Chicago’s Olive Films, which is handling the re-release along with Drafthouse Films.
“People want to see it. It’s the fun of riding a roller coaster you just want to get on,” Dell said.
And it’s just as terrifying, seeing lions tackle actors, swiping them with their paws, all while growling and roaring.
Born of probably the most hare-brained concept in moviemaking, Hedren and Marshall were inspired to make a fictional film to help encourage animal conservation after a trip to Mozambique. They discovered a pride of lions had taken over an abandoned house and the half-baked plot grew from that.
But when they got back to California, they were told by experts that the Hollywood lions they hoped to use wouldn’t work together in a big group due to territorial behaviour, so they decided to adopt and breed their own cast. In all, Roar took 11 years to complete.
Marshall, who died in 2010, plays an African-based animal preservationist in Roar who neglects to tell his wife and kids that he’s sharing his huge house with a wild menagerie. They arrive for a surprise visit when he’s not home and all hell breaks loose.
Griffith starred alongside two of Marshall’s sons, Jerry and John Marshall.
John Marshall was in his early 20s during filming. He ended up with 56 stitches after a 220-kilogram lion became “possessive” with him while on a walk, he said from L.A. The cameras weren’t rolling at the time. “This film should never have been made. It was dangerous, it was stupid, it was insanity,” said Marshall, now 61and a producer, adding a good day on the set was when nobody ended up in the hospital.
“In fairness to the animals, they’re getting a bad rap on this,” added Marshall, pointing out that the scripted running away and screaming among the cast as the story unfolds prompted the animals to react.
“I can say without question there have never been more injuries on a film,” he added of what was envisioned as a “cute family movie.”
Set in Africa, the movie was shot at what became Hedren’s Shambala Preserve north of Los Angeles, which is still operating today.
Among the residents is a tiger named for her granddaughter and Griffith’s daughter, Fifty Shades of Grey star Dakota Johnson.
Roar was a box-office bomb, going well over budget at $17 million — the costs escalated due to a host of disasters including floods, lost funding and wildfires — and making just $2 million. Variety called it the “most disaster-plagued film in the history of Hollywood.”
Dell thinks now, 34 years later, Roar could find its audience. “People love having fun while watching a movie. We all like to escape. Why not escape into someone else’s nightmare?”
Marshall said he’s delighted to see the movie on the big screen again and for it to find a domestic audience at last.
“I was very pleased. I was a good actor, a kid actor, and the plot isn’t brilliant because it was very complicated, and the lions and tigers share co-writing credits,” he laughed. “They kept changing the script.”