Best Horror Movie You Never Saw: Roar (1981)

Welcome to Arrow in the Head's The Best Horror Movie You Never Saw, which will be dedicated to highlighting horror films that, for one reason or another, don't get as much love as we think they should. We know plenty of you horror hounds out there will have seen many of the movies we pick, but there will be plenty of you who have not. This column is for all of you!

This week we take a look at Noel Marshall's "most dangerous movie ever made," ROAR (WATCH IT HERE – OWN IT HERE), starring Marshall, Tippi Hedren and Melanie Griffith!

THE STORY: Hank is an eccentric scientist who lives in Africa on a compound overrun by lions, tigers, panthers and leopards. He's away when his wife and three children come to visit, and they soon find themselves unable to contend with the various animals swarming around them.

THE HISTORY: Legendary actress Tippi Hedren often found herself shooting movies in Africa, and considered herself a lover of big cats. One day, when her husband Noel Marshall was visiting her, they happened upon an abandoned game warden's house that had been taken over by a pride of lions. Hedren and Marshall agreed that a movie based on that lone visual would be worth making. So they spent the next 11 years trying to make ROAR.

Marshall, who had been an executive producer on The Exorcist, over a long period of time acquired somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 big cats from various sources, having them transported to land he and Hedren owned in California. Most of these animals were untrained, so Marshall and company often had to contend with bites, scratches, and other injuries sustained from the wild beasts. (One example: cinematographer Jan de bont was scalped by a lion and required over 120 stitches to have his head put back together.) Shooting took over four years, thanks in part to the big cats' unpredictable nature, but also due to floods and fires that ruined several sets and killed several animals.

To put it bluntly, this is probably one of the most foolhardy endeavors ever attempted on film… but the finished result is a fascinating spectacle, to say the least.

WHY IT'S GREAT: Some movies defy description, and ROAR is certainly among them. It's not that the plot is hard to describe – it barely has any plot at all – but the experience of watching the movie is so surreal that you'll often find yourself stunned into silence or prodded into uncontrollable fits of laughter. Certainly, knowing that what you're watching is real – that there's no CGI or fake animals or stunt performers involved – heightens the experience of having ROAR to play out in front of you, in all its batshit glory. It's one of the few movies where you can actually say about it, "I've never seen anything else like this," and rest assured you're being completely accurate.

The movie's first act really sets the tone for how bizarre the entire endeavor is. Watching Noel Marshall cavort, wrestle and play with dozens upon dozens of lions – sometimes in a house, sometimes in a field, sometimes in the water – is somehow both terrifying and hilarious. "This guy is out of his fucking mind," is a direct quote that came out of my mouth about ten minutes in, and I was never dissuaded from that thought at any point in the picture. Marshall not only puts himself in mortal danger, but the main cast is comprised of his family, wife Tippi Hedren and children Melanie (Griffith!), John and Jerry; they're all at various points pounced on and bitten by snarling lions, and though it's never really shown in the final product, they were all very badly injured during the production. (Melanie required plastic surgery on her face, Tippi was bitten on the back of her head by a lion and also tossed to the ground by an elephant.) There isn't a minute that goes by when you're not utterly glued to the screen, looking at these maniacs as they allow tigers and the like to jump on them as if they were trained dogs.

What cannot be denied is that the big cats and other animals in the film absolutely command the screen. They're funny when they're not being regal, seemingly playing up their silly tendencies for the cameras. One scene where the petrified family is trying to get away in a canoe and a bored lion keeps dragging the boat back to him is just tremendously entertaining, while another sequence where an elephant absolutely destroys that same boat is similarly incredible – and, yes, gut-bustingly funny. There's no doubt that the beasts are more compelling than Marshall's family: The characters in the movie are complete idiots, often provoking the animals into chasing them and making all the wrong decisions when it comes to actually avoiding them. I suppose that's necessary to keep the lunacy going, although a prolonged sequence where John tries to escape the compound on a motocycle and, somehow, someway, winds up on the roof of the house defies any rational explanation. 

At the center of this insanity is Marshall's completely unhinged performance, which is just as wild as anything displayed by the animals. In fact, it's hard to say if it is indeed a "performance" at all; both the character and, you would assume, Marshall himself are practically insane, screaming and throwing himself into the middle of lion fights with reckless abandon. ROAR didn't need much of anything to elevate its crazy factor, but Marshall certainly brings it to eleven. An innocuous but telling example of Marshall's tenuous grip on reality is the fact he gives co-writing and co-directing credits to three of the lions. There's no doubt the Marshall family loved these creatures – the end credit sequence contains several pleas for the audience to do everything it can to help save the animals – but ROAR is just too preposterous to be taken seriously. 

ROAR was mostly forgotten to time after it bombed at the box office, but in 2015 Drafthouse Films resurrected it with a new print and limited theatrical run. Now it's available for all to see, and trust me, you don't want to go to your grave not having experienced ROAR.

BEST SCENE: Frankly, any scene where Marshall is screaming his head off and running directly into a bevy of bloodthirsty lions is a thing of beauty, but I love the scene where an ornery elephant absolutely destroys the family's getaway canoe.

WHERE TO WATCH: ROAR can be streamed on Amazon Prime and bought on Blu-ray or DVD courtesy of Drafthouse Films.

PARTING SHOT: Part nature documentary, part insane family film/horror film, ROAR is one of the most bizarre, startling pictures you'll ever encounter, one that definitely earns its label as one of the most dangerous movies ever made.