AI Summary
5 min readIn 1981, a movie called Roar was released. It was a family adventure comedy about a scientist living in Tanzania with a pride of lions. It was also, by many accounts, the most dangerous film ever made. No one died during production, but seventy cast and crew members were injured, including the cinematographer who was scalped by a lion and required 220 stitches. The film was a catastrophic flop, lost $15 million, and was never released in the United States. The story of how it came to be is a strange, harrowing tale of ambition, naivety, and genuine peril.
The Idea and the Family
The film was the brainchild of Tippi Hedren, the actress best known for Hitchcock's The Birds, and her husband, Noel Marshall, a producer who had invested in The Exorcist. In 1969, while in Zimbabwe, they visited a game preserve and saw an abandoned house inhabited by a pride of lions. The image stuck with them. They also learned about the poaching crisis, and decided to make a movie that would show wild animals as nothing to fear, with proceeds going toward conservation.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:46) **Introducing Roar: The "Most Dangerous Film Ever Made"** - Josh and Chuck set up the episode about the legendary 1981 film Roar, which is nearly impossible to find and considered the most dangerous movie ever made.
- 2 (04:12) **Why Roar is Called the Most Dangerous Film** - The danger came from the premise itself: actors were purposefully put in peril by working with untrained wild animals.
- 3 (05:11) **The Origin: Tippi Hedren, Noel Marshall, and a Trip to Africa** - The idea was born from a 1969 trip to Mozambique, where the couple saw a pride of lions living in an abandoned house and learned about poaching.
- 4 (07:23) **The "Jungle Adventure" Trend and a Bad Idea** - The couple was influenced by the popularity of shows like *Daktari* and *Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom*.
- 5 (09:10) **Starting from Scratch: Neil the Lion in Sherman Oaks** - The Marshalls began by raising a lion cub named Neil in their suburban home, alongside Tippi's teenage daughter, Melanie Griffith.
- 6 (11:02) **Building the Ranch and the Movie Set** - Instead of giving up the animals, the family bought a ranch in Acton, California, and built a compound designed to double as a movie set for Africa.
- 7 (15:20) **The Chaotic Filming Process** - The film had no real script; the plot was reverse-engineered from whatever the animals happened to do on camera.
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Show Notes
Jump in today to hear all about the disaster that was the movie ROAR.
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