On the 30th of October, 1981, a film that had been eleven years in the making was finally released.
Roar – a comic adventure story set in an African nature reserve – was a commercial failure,
taking at the box office only a tiny fraction of what it had cost to make.
This incredible flop was a bitter pill to swallow for the film makers, who had not only
spent more than a decade of their lives working on Roar, but has also endured numerous injuries,
animal attacks and near-death moments during one of the most chaotic film shoots in history.
Roar was the brainchild of a married couple, Noel Marshall – an agent and director – and
Tippi Hedren – a model and actress. While Hedren was working in Africa the pair took a
trip to a game preserve in Mozambique, where they were shown an abandoned farmhouse into
which a pride of lions had moved. This extraordinary sight left a significant
impression on both of them. As Hedren later said: “It was an amazing thing to see: The lions were
sitting in the windows, they were going in and out of the doors, they were sitting on the verandas,
they were on the top of the Portuguese house, and they were in the front of the house. It was
such a unique thing to see and we thought, for a movie, let us use the great cats as our stars…”
This idea was one that stuck with them. Both were passionate about the preservation of wildlife,
and thought that a film which prominently featured big cats would not only be a hit
with audiences, but would also deliver an important message about conservation.
After discussing the idea with their family members, Marshall penned a script. The story
was relatively simple – a zoologist living on a wildlife reserve in Tanzania invites his
family to stay… but due to a misunderstanding they arrive while he is away, and experience
a series of close encounters with various wild animals. Marshall gave it the working title Lions,
Lions and More Lions. It was an accurate title, with the first draft featuring around 40 big cats.
This number of trained animals would be difficult to find, and so the couple began
secretly raising lion cubs at their home. As these cubs grew in size, they attracted
attention from neighbours, and the couple were soon ordered to remove them to a more
appropriate location. They purchased land in a desert-like area of Los Angeles County,
California, and paid for the construction of a house to be used as the set for their film,
as well as a small studio and facilities to care for the animals they intended to feature.
The initial estimate of 40 big cats was soon forgotten. Over the course of several years the
family adopted more than 100 big cats, including lions, tigers, panthers, cougars, jaguars and
leopards. They also took on two elephants and numerous birds. Given the varied menagerie they
had built up, the title of the film was changed from Lions, Lions and More Lions to simply Roar.
Housing, feeding and providing the high standard of care that both Marshall and
Hedren aspired to for all of these animals wasn’t cheap. Marshall had managed to attract a number
of foreign investors, but even so the family were forced to sell many of their properties,
land and possessions, and rely on relatives for much of the work involved in making the film.
No lead actor who was willing to work so closely with so many
dangerous animals could be found, and so Marshall took on the role himself.
Meanwhile, his production company went bankrupt, and both Marshall and
Hedren poured huge quantities of their own money into keeping the production afloat.
It wasn’t just the animals that were costly. Filming was also incredibly expensive. Multiple
cameras were used, with the crew sometimes filming all day in order to capture something that might
be usable in the finished film. Animals had to be trained for weeks or months before certain scenes,
and it was only possible to film for about half the year before the changing seasons made the set
unconvincing as a wildlife reserve in Africa. This shouldn’t have been a problem,
as production was originally slated to take just six months… but as time went on, the
production schedule stretched out to a year, then two years, then finally five years spent filming.
During this time, the cast and crew suffered numerous injuries – with, by
some estimates – half of all the people who worked on Roar sustaining some injury in the process.
Bites from the big cats were common. Though they had been trained, it was still difficult
to control a large number of lions and tigers – particularly when filming scenes where the animals
were supposed to appear aggressive or excited. Marshall was bitten so severely that it was
initially thought he would lose his arm, though later he made a full recovery.
A cinematographer was scalped by a lion, requiring over 200 stitches. Hedren's daughter,
Melanie Griffiths, was bitten on the head, and required extensive medical treatment to save her
injured eye. The assistant director was attacked by a lion, leaving him with injuries that were
described, at the time, as near-fatal - and which almost resulted in him losing an ear.
Meanwhile Hedren was injured while filming a scene with one of the elephants, which seized
her by the leg and then dropped her to the ground, fracturing her ankle. The same elephant had also,
earlier, knocked a trainer into a tree, resulting in a broken shoulder.
Both Marshall and Hedren also suffered blood poisoning and gangrene as a result of their
injuries, significantly lengthening their recovery process, and further
delaying the completion of the film. With the number of injuries mounting,
many crewmembers decided that they did not feel safe and left the production.
And then, on the 9th of February, 1978, heavy rain lead to a flood that destroyed most of the set,
stranded four crewmembers, destroyed much of the film and filmmaking equipment,
and also allowed fifteen animals to escape. Three of these animals were, unfortunately, shot by law
enforcement before they could be recaptured. The flood, the animal escape, and the multitude
of injuries added years to a production that should have taken only months.
At a total cost of almost $17 million, the film was finished and released worldwide in 1981.
Although there had been numerous close calls and many serious injuries,
no member of the cast or crew had been killed during production.
After more than a decade of hard work, the critical response to the film was lukewarm.
It performed well in Germany and Japan, but gained little traction elsewhere in the world. Critics
applauded the film’s message about conservation, but were unimpressed by the production values,
the confusing plot, and the uneven pacing of the finished product. One thing that the
film did have, however, was realism. Several sequences where actors had been injured were
included in the finished film, if only because it would have been too hazardous to re-shoot them.
All in all, the film made around $2 million – a problematically small sum, given that Marshall
and Hedren had been relying on the proceeds from the film to fund the retirement of their
hundreds of animals. Under immense strain, the pair soon divorced. Hedren founded an animal
sanctuary in the area where Roar had been filmed, rescuing and caring for hundreds of big cats.
Marshall helped to fund this work, but was not directly involved himself.
In the years following its initial underwhelming debut, Roar went on to become a cult classic. The
narrative of the film was somewhat overshadowed by the story of its long and tortured production,
with some referring to it as “the most dangerous film ever made”.
34 years after its original release, a film company bought the rights and re-released Roar,
relying heavily on its reputation as a bizarre and dangerous oddity in their promotion.
Roar remains, to this day, a strange curiosity in the history of film-making.
A marathon, eleven-year production process resulted in a film to which most were simply
indifferent. Though the stated goal of the filmmakers – to promote the conservation
of wildlife – was admirable, some questioned whether the number of injuries sustained by
the cast and crew were worth the end result. It is, in any event, unlikely that there will
ever be another film similar to Roar. Since its filming in the 1970s the rules for owning and
working with big cats have been further tightened, as have the requirements for cast and crew safety
on film sets. Whether or not the film deserves its title of “the most dangerous film ever made”
is uncertain… but it’s hard to envisage a scenario in which the production of a film
results in more animal-related accidents and injuries than the filming of Roar.