Roar is one of the most intense narrative films I have ever witnessed. It is a feature length test of your mental stamina, one which you may find quite difficult to pass while watching its amateur cast dangle helplessly above the very epitome of grave danger. Roar is an exploitation film, but it is the absolute best of its kind. It’s a film which truly embodies exploitation’s promise to show us something we have never seen before. All the fake blood and bouncing tits in the world could never match the excitement of watching over 100 untrained beasts roam the frame during Roar’s 102 minute running time.
In terms of plot, Roar is a largely tepid affair. It revolves around Hank, a man living in semi-seclusion and semi-harmony with what can only be properly described as an outright mob of wild lions. The big cats dominate his living space, coming and going as they please, but Hank seems to have developed a unique bond with the dangerous creatures that miraculously prevents them from devouring him alive. The page 17 moment occurs when Hank’s wife and children arrive at the compound to visit him, running into his unruly house guests without Hank there to properly introduce them. What follows is essentially a Scooby-Doo hallway chase sequence that sustains itself for about ninety minutes. The story admittedly leaves a lot to be desired, but fortunately this fact does little to diminish the overall impact of Roar.
Roar is one of the few films in existence which truly could not have been made today. It was released only a year before Vic Morrow was brutally and tragically decapitated while filming a scene for The Twilight Zone, and Roar is evidence of the kinds of outlandish risks actors and filmmakers took before the advent of digital special effects. There is no single moment of peak adrenaline in the film, but rather a sustained feeling of dread throughout, like watching the least coordinated person you know walk a tightrope between skyscrapers sans safety harness.
Most, if not all, of the lions in the film were adopted and raised in the Beverly Hills home of Noel Marshall, the film’s director and lead actor. Marshall’s performance as the devoted and occasionally manic main character is brilliant and the obvious comparison would be to Timothy Treadwell, the subject of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man. Like Treadwell, Noel Marshall carries himself with whimsy, even while suffering real injuries in the middle of a take, and makes easy work of his duty as ringleader of the film’s pervasive vibe of a circus gone horribly wrong. It’s hard to pinpoint how much of his performance was truly acting, as he and his wife/co-star Tippi Hedren were the full time caretakers of the big cats depicted in the film. They were even cavalier enough to cast Melanie Griffith, Hedren’s young daughter, as a supporting cast member. Griffith’s performance is a bit forgettable, but it’s interesting to watch in retrospect knowing that one errant swipe of a paw could have ended her prolific film career at a very young age. Those are the kinds of thoughts I had while watching Roar: awful, macabre fantasies about what could have happened if the cast and crew weren’t so lucky.
Roar is a no bullshit movie. The lions are real, the danger is real, and the injuries are real. Don’t believe it? Ask cinematographer Jan de Bont, whose scalp was nearly ripped off during shooting. The plot was clearly an afterthought, but I doubt anyone will find that its flimsiness distracts them from the film’s main attraction. You’re coming to see the lions, and you’ll see the lions, complexity of plot be damned.
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