Roar: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made?

Jump in today to hear all about the disaster that was the movie ROAR. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:41Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:51Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too. And this is a good old Stuff You Should Know movie edition, which usually, I have to say, have generally been pretty good.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. Had you ever heard of this movie?

• 2:05Josh Clark?

  No, I haven't. Had you?

• 2:07Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. It's legendary.

• 2:09Josh Clark?

  Okay, you had. You had. I didn't know if that was right or not. I looked up to see if anybody had written in. And I guess somebody named Ian Tindall had recently.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 2:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So in case, that happens sometimes. People write in and be like, oh, thanks for doing the episode I suggested.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28Josh Clark?

  It's something that had been on our list already. So that happens sometimes.

• 2:33Speaker 02

  That just happened. Somebody wrote in and was like, hey, you didn't thank me for this one. And I was like, oh, sorry. I didn't, you know.

• 2:41Josh Clark?

  Well, that is what happens. So if we don't thank you, there's a 98% chance that we didn't, we already had it.

• 2:48Speaker 02

  That's right. But I already had this one. This is a legendary movie known as the most dangerous film ever made. From 1981, this, you know, big budget movie that was terrible and never shown in the United States much. So it's no wonder that you hadn't heard of it.

• 3:06Josh Clark?

  No, but I guess, yeah, being a movie dude, this is the kind of thing, it's like a legendary movie for sure.

• 3:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13Josh Clark?

  Especially, have you, have you seen it?

• 3:15Speaker 02

  That's a good. Oh, no, no, no.

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  No. Yeah, it's almost impossible to find. You could shell out, I think, a hundred bucks on Amazon to buy a DVD of it.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Don't do that.

• 3:26Josh Clark?

  Alamo Drafthouse re-released it in 2015, which generated a lot of buzz and interest in it. But they did it in such a way that people used to show the room, kinda.

• 3:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:39Josh Clark?

  And then it's just not anywhere. It's nowhere. You could see some trailers and clips and stuff like that, but the movie itself is nowhere. That's kind of a shame because from what I can tell from researching it, it would be something to see at least once.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I don't feel like I'm missing out having never seen it all because I've seen tons of clips and read about it and stuff. And it's kind of one of those that, to suffer through the entire thing. You know, I think that's the thing you should do with the room.

• 4:06Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  But not necessarily with Roar.

• 4:08Josh Clark?

  Okay, fair enough. Good. Well, then I feel a lot better.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, just my dumb opinion.

• 4:13Josh Clark?

  So, um, all right, Charles, let's tell everybody what we're talking about. It's a 1981 movie Roar. Like you said, a lot of people consider it the most dangerous film ever made. Why is it the most dangerous film ever made? Especially considering there's been plenty of movies where people have died making the movie. Like Noah's Ark from, I think, the 20s. Three people drowned during the real deluge that they filmed.

• 4:38Josh Clark?

  You know, there was the Twilight Zone movie. Like, people have died. No one died on this movie. So why do people call it the most dangerous film ever? Go.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, in other cases, there have been accidents on films that were all, you know, top quality productions where just something happened that was a big mistake. But in this case, the actors were purposely put in peril.

• 5:03Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  Because of just the whole idea of the film to begin with. And there's really no way to talk about it without just sort of telling the story, I guess, from inception, which was a married couple in Hollywood.

• 5:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  The great Tippi Hedren from, you probably know her from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, most famously.

• 5:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And her hubby, Noel Marshall, who was her agent and a movie producer, he was best known, probably still best known for The Exorcist and unfortunately Roar.

• 5:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  He kind of rewrote his legacy after The Exorcist, but they were a married couple who thought of this idea because of a trip they took.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah. So Roar is essentially like, it's meant to generate like goodwill and stuff among humans toward wild animals, right? To show them that wild animals are nothing to be afraid of. And Tippi Hedren and Noel Marshall had a shared love of animals and wildlife that dated all the way back to Marshall's youth, I think his teenage years, when he volunteered at the St. Louis Zoo. And I guess as he and Tippi Hedren got together, he kind of influenced her. She was already a champion of certain social causes, but she hadn't taken up animal welfare yet.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. You know, she had an activist heart, I guess, always did. And they were in Africa, they were in Zimbabwe filming, she was filming a movie, this is in 1969. It was a movie called Satan's Harvest.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  So, you know, her, her career wasn't at, at his zenith after the birds, I guess.

• 6:40Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Uh, but while they were there, they went to Mozambique and went to a game preserve there. And a couple of sort of key things came out of that game reserve, I guess, preserve, visit. I guess it's a reserve and a preserve, huh?

• 6:53Josh Clark?

  Sure. The P is in parentheses before.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  That's right. They saw an abandoned house that had a pride of 30 lions living in this home, sort of in and out. And they were like, huh, like what an interesting concept, you know, to be put on film. This looks really kind of strange seeing these big cats roaming around the home. Uh, and then the second thing is that their guide there kind of educated them on what was going on with the poaching conditions back then. And that really inspired them to do something to drive some sort of awareness about these beautiful big cats.

• 7:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And it was kind of in the air at the time, too. Like there was a big like jungle adventure in Africa. Like theme going on in a lot of movies and TV. There's a very popular TV show called Dr. Tari about a father and daughter veterinary team who worked with wildlife in East Africa. And get this Chuck, Dr. Tari, which is a drama, was based on a movie called Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Well, poor Clarence.

• 7:59Josh Clark?

  I know, but how do you get Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion to the serious, like animal medical drama Dr. Tari? That's a strange transition.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think probably a pretty smart one because Dr. Tari was on for a few seasons.

• 8:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  You know, other stuff like Mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom was big. And I think you're right. I think there was a general fascination with. With Africa and the United States at the time. So they were bitten by that bug. They get back to Hollywood and they said, hey, what if we do this movie? What if we do a movie about these big cats?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  And they they pushed the idea to some animal trainers and they said, that's a really bad idea. It's not practical and it's like super dangerous. And but caveat, I suppose if you raise them together and they all knew each other and they were raised with humans, then it might not be as dangerous or it's dumb of an idea.

• 8:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so this is the first step that is actually a step backward. Because I get the impression they came back from Africa and just assumed they were gonna get a bunch of like rent a bunch of lions and tigers and stuff. Put them together, you know, knock this movie out in a year or something at the most. That is not the case. This so they they actually started from scratch. They got their hands on a lion cub named Neil and they started raising him around the family in the house with their teenage children, one of whom was Melanie Griffith. She is Tippi Hedren's daughter. And she was like 13 or 14 when Neil came into the picture.

• 9:36Josh Clark?

  And they raised him from a cub into this this 400 pound family pet, fully grown male African lion, Maine and all, like sleeping in bed with Melanie Griffith at the time.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I mean, this wasn't they didn't have a ranch out in the middle of nowhere.

• 9:54Josh Clark?

  Right, good point.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  This was in the valley. This was in Sherman Oaks in their Spanish home in Sherman Oaks. So I'm not sure about the laws at the time. We'll see that they were ordered to get rid of them about a year later. In fact, it was about a year after Life Magazine in 1971 ran a big photographic feature that it was, you know, it was a very sensational thing. It showed all these amazing pictures of life with this 400 pound lion living in the home, like you were saying, you know, hanging out by the pool, the kids playing with them. And so about a year after that, I guess the city stepped in and said, you can't do that in Los Angeles even.

• 10:32Josh Clark?

  No, and in retrospect, I think in her autobiography, Tippi Hedren later wrote that she realized that this was stupid beyond belief to keep a 400-pound male lion in the house around her family. And like, there's pictures of her lounging around with her head on the lion's chest and everything. They're both laying on the ground together.

• 10:53Speaker 02

  It is. It's quite a photo spread. And it's also got that perfect, like, late 60s,

• 10:57Josh Clark?

  early 70s photo look that you just could not possibly recreate. It looks like that. It's really cool. But yeah, so they were ordered to get rid of the animals. By this time, they'd started collecting other lions and started raising them together, again, with the ultimate goal of filming them all together in this movie that they wanted to make, right? So instead of getting rid of their actors and pets, they bought like a ranch in Acton, which is in Solidad Canyon, I guess a little north of Los Angeles. I'm sure you know where that is, right?

• 11:33Speaker 02

  I had never heard of Acton, actually. It said it's 40 miles north, but I think I'd heard of Solidad Canyon, but Acton is new to me. I guess that's where you go when you want to raise lions.

• 11:43Josh Clark?

  Right. The locals leave you alone when you show up with a bunch of lions, right? And they did. They bought a bunch of acreage and created a compound. And even the compound was bought with an eye toward the ultimate goal of making this movie.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they wanted to film it like, you know, as lions who lived in a house. And so they created, everything was kind of built as a movie set to be. So they landscaped it with, you know, it was supposed to be in Africa, set in Africa. So they landscaped it with plants and architectural styles that might have mimicked Southern Africa. They put in an artificial pond. And then eventually, they would move there a few years later in 1976 and live on the property and kind of get to work on that movie.

• 12:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was about the year that they started was 76. I say we take a break and we'll get into actually making the film because this is about the point where things start to get a little bonkers.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  That's right. We'll be right back.

• 12:49Speaker 03

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• 16:05Josh Clark?

  Chuck, before we get back into it, I have a Tippi Hedren fact that I found. She is the only actress to be directed by Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and Edward Jr.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 16:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's quite a career.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like that Venn diagram.

• 16:21Josh Clark?

  So yeah, okay, so we're at the filming, the beginning of filming. The cameras are rolling, and the cameras just kept rolling.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, they kept rolling. You know, by this point, they had more animals. I believe you mentioned they started collecting more, but specifically, they had tigers by that point, they had leopards, they had panthers, they had cougars. Notably, they had, I mean, this was self-described by Tippi Hedren, those were just sort of the big cats. They also had flamingos and ostriches and storks and swans and sheep. And they even had an elephant, which made an appearance in the movie. And these are all pets living there together, again, with the aim that they would all know one another by that point and be, you know, docile enough to be... You know, animal actors.

• 17:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  But, uh, as you would imagine, they had a hard time raising money for the project because mainly they didn't have much of a project, except for a loose idea, I guess.

• 17:20Josh Clark?

  No, they had, um, a bunch of real estate. They ended up self-financing this thing mostly. So they sold a bunch of their real estate to put the cash into this film. Uh, I think Noel was one of the producers on The Exorcist and he made a bunch of money off of that. He was in essentially an investor in it. So he got an executive producer credit. And I guess some of the, um, back plum, is that what it's called?

• 17:47Speaker 02

  Back plum?

• 17:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Back end?

• 17:49Josh Clark?

  Sure, the back end, but it's plummy.

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 17:53Josh Clark?

  Anyway, he had a bunch of money from The Exorcist. They threw that into, and they were like, okay, this is going to be such a cool movie that no one's ever done anything like this before. We're just going to make our money back a million times over. And initially, the, the whole idea, remember they had seen that Pride of Lions living in this? And, and that was kind of what kicked this off. So the, the whole thing was very lion centric. But, um, I think the working titles were Lions or Lions, Lions and more Lions. Those are definitely working titles, I think.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it makes Roar look pretty great by comparison as a title.

• 18:27Josh Clark?

  It does. Um, yeah, you could see Noel like dropping his gin and tonic, thinking like, I got it.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:33Josh Clark?

  But you said they collected a bunch of other animals, some of which do not live in Africa, like Siberian tigers do not live in Africa, but that didn't stop them. So they expanded the scope even more because they wanted their whole family of big cats and animals to be able to star in this movie. So they ended up kind of expanding the focus of the whole thing.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Um, they didn't even have a script. Um, and you know, uh, Marshall was not a writer. You know, like, you know, like you said, he invested in The Exorcist. I don't think, um, anyone ever confused him with a, a creative in Hollywood.

• 19:06Josh Clark?

  Uh huh.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  But he did write the script. He got some ideas from Tippi. He wrote the script, um, said he was going to direct the film. And it was a family adventure. So he was going to have all of his family in it, which was, uh, you know, young Melanie. And then he had two sons from a previous marriage, uh, Jerry and John. And they were all going to be in it, but they were like, we need a real deal. Like regular lead actor for the male role to play like the patriarch of this family. But they could not get any actor to sign on because again, I don't think even people thought it would be that dangerous yet. They just knew it was not a good idea and it was bad. The script was terrible. So Marshall's like, you know what? I'll just do that, too.

• 19:46Josh Clark?

  Right. I'm sure they were like, what is wrong with everybody between not raising financing or getting a star?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:53Josh Clark?

  So Noel wrote, directed and starred in this movie, like you were saying, in that. From, from all of my experience, any movie that is written, directed and starred in is essentially going to be not as good as it would be if

• 20:09Josh Clark?

  any one of those were taken out of that equation.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Oh, you think?

• 20:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because there's no one there to tell the director or the writer or the, the lead actor, don't do this. Like those things are supposed to be checks and balances, like the three branches of government in the United States. So if you have all of them together as one, you got a big problem.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  All right. I disagree, but we'll just walk right past it.

• 20:36Josh Clark?

  All right. That's fine.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  I mean, I think if you're terrible, then it's a bad idea. But there have been plenty of examples of, of great writer, director, actors in great films.

• 20:45Josh Clark?

  Okay. Name one besides Herbie the Love Bug.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Like most anything Clint Eastwood's ever been in.

• 20:53Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 20:56Josh Clark?

  I don't fully agree with that, but okay.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. All right. I mean, that's fine. You can nitpick Clint Eastwood. Anyway, like I said, we don't need to debate this point.

• 21:04Josh Clark?

  Man, it's just similar, like the pot is just, just simmering almost over, but we're going to walk past it. Like you said.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think the point of why this is bad is because he was not a talented human being.

• 21:15Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  Early on though, Melanie Griffith is like, I don't want to be in this movie. I think the direct quote was to her mom was, I don't want to come out of here with half a face. So she backed out. They got her friend to, to star instead, her friend who was an actor, but eventually she was like, you know what? I guess I will be in the movie. So she came back on board and they completely reshot all the scenes. They're just burning through money at this point.

• 21:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 21:41Speaker 02

  But reshot the scene so Melanie could be back in the film.

• 21:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that friend was Patsy Ned, who went on to become an award winning foley artist.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 21:49Josh Clark?

  It's like you said, they're burning through money because there's something to remember here that I didn't think about until pretty far down the research. Like, they were not shooting video. They were not using SD cards. They were using actual film stock over and over, like all sorts of film stock. And that stuff was expensive, wasn't it?

• 22:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, they, you know, at one point, because they had to essentially just keep cameras rolling and wait for the animals to do something interesting.

• 22:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  They were shooting, you know, six, seven, eight cameras at a time sometimes. And this was, I mean, this is something you routinely see now. But back then, you didn't, you know, you maybe had three or four cameras max on like a huge, huge stunt.

• 22:34Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  But rolling that many cameras just wasn't what you did typically back then on films, especially films of this size. So that, they were just burning money on film stock.

• 22:45Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And, and like you said, the reason why they were just running all the times because the the cats had zero training. Like, you could not tell them, like, okay, we need you to jump at this person because in this scene, it calls for that. The, the cats would just look at you like I, I hear like, and that's it. Like, I don't know what you're saying. So occasionally they would do something interesting enough to use in the film. And then they reverse engineered it and wrote the plot around the stuff that they had filmed the cats doing.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, and all the animals. There was a scene where the elephant destroys a boat. And that scene is in there because the elephant destroyed a boat. It was not not planned, but they were like, hey, we got a little bit of production value out of the elephant wrecking that boat.

• 23:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  So we got to put it in the movie. The other thing was is these animals were, you know, they were raised in captivity and were used to laying around by the pool and laying in bed in a fairly sedate scene. So while they were pretty calm and chill as far as big cats go, in the movie, when the real human actors are instructed to like yell and scream or to run away or something, that would incite or excite rather these animals in ways, you know, that they weren't prepared for either.

• 24:03Josh Clark?

  I know. I felt bad about that. I confused them. And it's sad. They were like, why are our friends, you know, yelling?

• 24:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, you know, we're, we're going to get to some of the darker stuff later. This isn't all just like funny.

• 24:14Josh Clark?

  No, good point. So this whole thing, the entire film takes about five years to, to film. And not just because the animals weren't doing what you'd want them to almost all the time. There were some real catastrophes that they ran into that were just totally unavoidable. But this is a very dangerous set. Like that is the through line here. If you haven't picked up on that, people are interacting with, you know, domesticated to an extent, but they're still very much wild, fully grown lions, tigers, leopards. And that's what's going on. They're filming that. They're filming like the lions jumping on people and attacking people.

• 24:58Josh Clark?

  And so this is like a really dangerous set. At the same time, because they were using all this stuff, there's a strange realism to the whole thing, especially the violence that the animals inflict on the humans, because it actually was what was going on.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, they had a hard time sustaining funding because of this. They had a hard time sustaining a crew because of this. I think in total over the five years, they had about 140 different crew members. Because people, you know, they would get on set, they would work for a little while. Either there would be, you know, something terrible and horrifying would happen, or they would just realize like, you know, you know, when you get on one of those shows where you're just like, this is. Not a professional outfit.

• 25:39Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  So get out of there as quickly as I can get something else going.

• 25:43Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:44Speaker 02

  Um, they're shooting it all at this compound for Africa there, uh, sort of deep outside Los Angeles. And people started getting hurt. Uh, I think 70 cast and crew members ended up getting injuries. And in the, if you look at the Alamo Drafthouse trailer that they put out online, um, at the end, it'll show as they're announcing the cast, it would freeze frame on that cast member. And in parentheses, like give their name and then say kind of what their major, most major injury was on set.

• 26:14Josh Clark?

  Right. Probably the biggest one was, um, Jan de Bontz. Um, you probably recognize him from such films as Heart of a Champion, The Ray Mancini Story, or Roar, but he was the cinematographer for this movie and he took it like three weeks after this whole thing started. He got it bad where a lion essentially scalped him from the back half of his head backward.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, 220 stitches, uh, but he would complete the film. And before you start emailing us, I gotta stem the tide, Josh, unfortunately. Uh, Jan de Bontz is very much known for being a big time action movie director.

• 26:58Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, you were kidding, right?

• 27:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Okay. Just making sure. He, he directed Speed and Twister and some other, you know, very big movies later on. But this was his first, uh, film in the United States. And I think that's probably why he kept coming back because, uh, it was his first film in the States. And maybe he didn't think it would be such an idea to quit his first movie here.

• 27:19Josh Clark?

  Sure. Yeah. Because that's a really good point. He was a very, um, talented cinematographer by this time. Like that's one of the other things he's very well known for, not just directing. Um, so like this movie, this, like you said, completely like unprofessional outfit, where the writer, director and star has no experience in any of those fields, has a world-class cinematographer working for it, which makes the whole thing even that much more bizarre when you watch it apparently.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, so, you know, speaking of, um, John Marshall, I believe he was one of the sons, he got bit on the head. Uh, he tripped and fell during a scene. And of course, again, that's, you know, I don't think we mentioned that not only were the animals not prepared for some of this stuff, but they didn't have a full staff of animal wranglers on, on hand. Um, like anytime you have a, I mean, it really depends, but if it's like a big cat or something like this, you've got a team of people there for each one.

• 28:16Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  And, you know, they had some help, but not, they weren't staffed like they needed to be.

• 28:21Josh Clark?

  No, and I think those are also the same crew that kind of came and went over time. They're like, this, this is nuts, dude. I don't want to have anything to do with this.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. They didn't want their name on this thing because they saw where it was going.

• 28:32Josh Clark?

  So Melanie Griffith, who said that she didn't want to come out of this with half a face, um, came very close to that, actually. She got, um, clawed by her eye. She needed 50 stitches. She also had to undergo cosmetic surgery to kind of reconstruct that part of her face.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:50Josh Clark?

  That made it into the movie.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that scene, I mean, that was a very believable, uh, attack scene.

• 28:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So you got a clumsy, a clumsy plot and actors. You have a great cinematographer. And now also you have genuine terror and blood that shows up in this essentially what's supposed to be like a kind of wacky comedy family adventure.

• 29:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. There were two cases of gangrene, uh, from, you know, getting bitten by infected cat mouths. Uh, Tippi Hedren was one. She got a lion bite, um, got gangrene. Uh, I'm not sure where she got it, but she ended up getting skin grafts. Uh, there was also a scene, uh, where she was riding on, uh, Timbo the elephant and it, this animal wasn't used to being, uh, ridden and like had somebody like shouting and stuff like she was.

• 29:41Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  So it threw her off, fractured her ankle. And then Noel, the, the star and the director and madman behind all this, uh, he got the other case of gangrene.

• 29:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Tippi Hedren getting thrown from the elephant and breaking her ankle, that made it into the movie as well. I know Noel got a bite on the hand trying to break up a fight between lions and started bleeding. That made it into the movie as well. So all of this stuff is just showing up. Two crew members lost digits. Like, over a six-year period, people kept coming back. Like, the core people kept coming back and coming back and coming back. There's one other thing to keep in mind, too, Charles. This was supposed to take place, the action in the movie, takes place over, what, maybe like a few days, weeks, months, tops? The actors involved are all aging, like, over the course of several years.

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  Some of them teenagers, like, you really undergo some serious outward changes over like a few years in your teens. And they had to kind of like deal with that as well. This is like reverse boyhood, essentially.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. There was also a flash flood which damaged some fencing. This is in 1978, so this is like two and a half years into this thing. And it damaged some of the fencing such that some of these big cats escaped. This is some of the darker stuff as far as the animals are concerned, because they really played up the idea that, like, no animals were hurt in the filming of this, like, only humans. But they recovered most of those animals, but allegedly the deputies there ended up having to shoot and kill three lions.

• 31:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  And there was also a situation where the, I think there was a disease that spread through the cat community and some of them died. It's hard to get like good verification on that, but I see plenty of places that claim that happened.

• 31:37Josh Clark?

  Right. And technically, none of this happened during filming. But yeah, I think that's just part of a problem when you have... Hundreds of like big cats all living together. That's not how they live. That flood you mentioned, they had like 20 minutes of filming left. I think when there was a wildfire, they were down to like seven minutes, something like that. And it just kept getting set back and set back. That that flood was so destructive that it destroyed a lot of the vegetation and that made up the set. So they had to replant and then wait for it to grow back again. It just kept getting set back and set back. I have the impression, and I don't know if you got the same impression,

• 32:20Josh Clark?

  that Tippi Hedren and Noel Marshall were so deep into this financially that they couldn't walk away. They had to finish this because it was, it had to be a hit or else they were in serious financial trouble. Did you get that same impression?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, who knows what's going on? It's either that or just like the madman thing takes over.

• 32:42Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  But I, but I know that, you know, they certainly had no chance of recovering any money if they stopped. And they knew that too.

• 32:47Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 32:49Speaker 02

  And they were close to being done. Like you said, they did finally finish in the fall of 79. They had to shoot a little bit in Africa, but most everything was, was taking place there.

• 32:58Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  At their ranch. And they spent, and this was, you know, late seventies money, about $17 million, which is almost what Raiders of the Lost Ark cost. So they're, they're definitely not getting their production value. And I'm sure a lot of that 17 million was just, you know, wasted money, like film stock and rebuilding things and just waiting around and waiting around and paying crew while you're waiting around.

• 33:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I can't imagine that $17 million with a production value made it into Roar from everything I've seen, you know?

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I don't think $700,000 worth of production value, except I guess Yann DeBont shooting some nice looking stuff probably.

• 33:41Josh Clark?

  For sure. So they finally finished filming, they get it edited, it's all ready to go. They've like got their hands together, they're rubbing their hands, they're ready to start making some money back and they cannot find anyone in the United States to sign on as a distributor, which is a huge problem, especially back then, you had no streaming services whatsoever. Like the way you saw a movie was to go to a movie theater and the way you got your movie in movie theaters was by having a contract with the distributor to get that movie out to movie theaters so that you could have money coming back in. They did not have that in the United States, they never got it in the US.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  No, no release in the US.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  It was a non-union production, so that had something to do with it, but the really, the deal was it was just a really bad movie.

• 34:26Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  And nobody wanted to release it. I think even at the time, they didn't think, like if a distributor doesn't even think they can get it back based on how notorious you can trump up the advertising of like the most dangerous film ever made, like it was really that bad that they couldn't even get like cult B movie status going for it, you know?

• 34:46Josh Clark?

  No, and there was a lot of buzz too. I read some of the press tour that Tippi Hedren was doing in 1979 to help, you know, pump up the release of the movie and like it was widely discussed. Apparently it was, it was shown widely in the UK and Ireland, but even all of that, it was, I think it grossed $2 million worldwide.

• 35:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:08Josh Clark?

  So they lost $15 million just out of the gate and because it was never shown almost anywhere else, especially after its first run, they had like there's, that was it, that's all they ever made off of it. Like they haven't slowly been making their money back. It just ended its life right then and there after it limped out of the last theater in the UK.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  That's right. Let's take our second break, yeah?

• 35:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  All right, we'll be right back with a little bit more, believe it or not, about Roar, right after this.

• 35:52Josh Clark?

  If you own a home, you already know stuff breaks. It's not if, it's when. And somehow, it's always like the AC in July, or the fridge right after you go to the grocery store. That's why you always hear people say they don't make appliances like they used to, because it's kind of true.

• 36:07Speaker 02

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• 36:20Josh Clark?

  And that's huge, because fixing an AC can cost a lot. Like, hey, kids, our vacation is canceled a lot. Plus, as a benefit to select plans, you can get real-time video help from live repair experts to troubleshoot home hassles at no extra cost.

• 36:34Speaker 02

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• 37:01Josh Clark?

  World Mental Health Day takes place in October, and it's really meant to be more than just awareness. It's about actually taking the next step and getting support if you need it.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  But a lot of people still talk themselves out of therapy. They think it's too expensive. They're not sure if it'll actually work. They don't know how to find the right therapist, or they just get overwhelmed trying to navigate the whole system.

• 37:21Josh Clark?

  And that's exactly what Rula is built to fix. Rula makes therapy feel a lot more approachable, a lot more human. You can find a therapist who actually fits your needs, not just whoever's available. And with insurance, sessions average around $15 copay.

• 37:35Speaker 02

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• 37:40Josh Clark?

  And it's not just about starting. Rula helps you stay consistent and actually make progress, because taking care of your mental health isn't a one-time thing. So if you've been thinking about therapy, don't talk yourself out of it. This is a really easy way to take that first step.

• 37:52Speaker 02

  So turn off the talk track that's keeping you from progress and head to rula.com, that is R-U-L-A dot com, to find a therapist the easy way.

• 38:07Josh Clark?

  You know, eating is a huge part of our lives. It fuels us, it brings us together, and it's one of life's great pleasures. But once a meal's over, we don't think much about what happens next unless something starts to feel off, because what we eat and how our bodies respond to it is complicated.

• 38:23Speaker 02

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• 38:51Josh Clark?

  Through personal stories and expert insight, listen in to unpack what it means when your body doesn't always respond to food the way you expect, and what science is now revealing about why. Listen to Eating Interrupted on the iHeart app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 39:21Speaker 02

  All right, we're back. More about Roar, which by the way, was about 100 minutes long. Livia did the great service of trying to break down, even without seeing it, the plot of this whole movie. I don't think we should kind of go over that because maybe spoilers if people want to try and find this thing, but almost certainly more because it's not a very good movie at all. But just loosely, it was a plot about an eccentric American scientist who spent a few years living in Tanzania is where it was set, and then having his family come out there. And, you know, it was really about that simple. Like, these people, you know, there's a mistaken...

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Communication where the family comes right as the dad has gone to go to the airport. So they walk into the scene where all these lions and, and it's really that bad. Like, that's kind of the plot of the movie.

• 40:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and the overall theme of the movie is that this doctor, in the time that he's been living in Tanzania, started living among the wild animals he's studying and become like a family with them. Now his family who hasn't been living with these animals is showing up and this is, I think, what, what I understand is that you start to see the process of them kind of coming around through all the attacks and hijinks and all that stuff until the overall message is if you treat wild animals in a friendly manner, they're going to be friendly. If you are scared of them and you treat them hostilely, they're going to respond as such. The thing about this is, I think it was Richard Brody from The New Yorker, he points out

• 41:03Josh Clark?

  that just consistently throughout the movie, this message is contradicted time after time after time where people are being friendly to these animals and the animals are like drawing blood and attacking them on screen in the movie. So the message itself was flawed out of the gate, even though it was, you know, an admirable one.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, another big flaw was that it was sort of a genreless film.

• 41:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  Parts of it seem like home movies, parts of it seem like comedy, like a couple of the attacks are played as straight up comedic, parts of it are played up for the true terror. And the score even is all over the place. So the score sometimes feels like a horror movie and the score sometimes feels like a comedy. I think Tippi Hedren says they based some of this stuff on old slapstick silent comedies. So it was, it was completely rudderless. And that critic that you talked about, Richard Brody, one of his quotes was, kind of back this up, he said, Marshall doesn't quite seem aware of the forms he's using. So it was just a big mess.

• 42:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, big mess. I think that's, that should be like the tagline.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 42:16Josh Clark?

  So yeah, I guess if you if you're like, I gotta see this, there are stuff you there are things you can see on online, but you just unless you're going to shell out a hundred bucks, you're not going to see the whole movie. One of the cool things about this, though, is from the outset, Tibby Hedren and Noel Marshall were not just about like, let's just make a bunch of money exploiting animals. They one of their stated purposes of making Roar was to take some a significant amount of the proceeds and put it toward wild animal welfare. And they put their money where their mouth is, even though they lost a bunch of money. And they basically turned their compound into a place called the Cats of Shambala, which is like they presented as a place of peace between animals and humans where they

• 43:01Josh Clark?

  can come together in harmony. It's still around today, and it's the home of the Roar Foundation, which is also still around today, which is still promoting money and lobbying for legislation on behalf of animal welfare.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, that is one positive. They would get divorced about a year after this movie. And he continued to support the Shambala Project even after that, which was a good thing. But I don't want to paint Marshall as like some great dude, because, you know, reading some of the accounts, it seems like he had a definite anger problem, was possibly violent with his own family. Definitely, there were moments where his, you know, 14, 15 year old stepdaughter is like, really upset and crying and doesn't want to continue, and he's forcing her back into these scenes. So he was he was not a good dude. So I don't want to portray this as just like, sort of a fun family project gone wrong.

• 44:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's an interview with his son, John, around the time that this was re-released by Drafthouse Films in 2015, where John was like, you know, we all had safe words that we could use when we were filming, if we were uncomfortable, that we could get, you know, removed from that situation and filming would stop. And he said there was at least one time when Melanie used her safe word and Noel just ignored it and made everybody keep filming. So yeah, I think that was that's definitely worth pointing out for sure. But like you said, I mean, he's known for being an executive producer, investor on The Exorcist, and he's known for Roar, and he will always be known for Roar, from what I can tell.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. That's his legacy. In 1985, it got a little bit more attention because the Today Show had Tippi Hedren on because she had written a book, her autobiography, or at least about this, The Cats of Shambala. So she was on there promoting that. They showed clips from Roar, and so it got a little bit of attention in the United States at the time, and then was kind of not heard from again until Drafthouse Films came along, like you said, in 2015. And, you know, played it up for what it was, which is a pretty bad, I mean, B-movie at best. I think most B-movies usually even have more of a plot than this thing did.

• 45:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they, that's where the tagline "The Most Dangerous Film Ever Made" came from, which is very popular these days. And they also were the ones that came up with "No animals were harmed during the making of Roar, but 70 members of the cast and crew were." And Tippi Hedren apparently was not at all happy about the

• 45:40Speaker 02

  I'm sure.

• 45:41Josh Clark?

  portrayal. And the Roar Foundation asked her not to speak publicly about it. Apparently, she was that mad about it. There is an Animal Planet documentary, couldn't find that either, but it was called Roar: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made. It came out in 2017. And then there's been reviews, especially after Alamo or the Drafthouse released it in 2015. A lot of like those kind of online reviewers who just love like terrible movies really sank their teeth into this, if you'll excuse that.

• 46:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think my favorite one is from Under the Radar. It said, "Based on its reputation alone, 1981's Roar is the Citizen Kane of films where actors were mauled by lions." That's pretty good.

• 46:29Josh Clark?

  Drew McWeeny also had a pretty memorable quote. They said that "It feels like Walt Disney decided to make a snuff version of Swiss Family Robinson."

• 46:39Speaker 02

  That's kind of on point.

• 46:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I mean, if you are like, I don't care about any of this. I just want to help the big cats. Like I said, the Shambala Preserve is still around. Roar, the Roar Foundation is around and they're accepting donations. I think they're down to like nine big cats now. They've definitely whittled it down. I'm guessing that the other big cats kind of died of natural causes over time, hopefully. But yeah, there you go. And Tippi Hedren's still alive. She's coming up on her 100th birthday in 2030.

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Well, I hope she doesn't listen to this.

• 47:15Josh Clark?

  I feel like we did it justice.

• 47:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, which is exactly probably what she doesn't want to hear.

• 47:20Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's true. Well, if you're listening, Tippi, hats off to you. And since I did our annual hats off to Tippi Hedren, I just unlocked listener mail.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  For a second, I thought you were gonna say Tippi of the hat to you.

• 47:35Josh Clark?

  Hmm. After all the times we've done that to you, I can't believe we've never come up with that before.

• 47:41Speaker 02

  I'm gonna call this shouting out a good little thing that this company's doing because we heard from Robin about a company. Oh, let me just read it. Hey, guys, I listen to you from the mountains of western North Carolina near Asheville. And I just listened to the mangroves episode, notably, one of my favorite trees. And I wanted to share information. That's me talking about it. I wanted to share information on a company called Mangear, M-A-N-Gear. They make SPF shirts. And for every shirt they sell, they plant a mangrove tree. It's a nonprofit started by two brothers. And when you do this, they send you a certificate, the GPS coordinates of the location where your mangrove was planted. After listening to the episode,

• 48:23Speaker 02

  I couldn't help but share in case you wanted to show some support to their work. I listen all the time. Every episode is chock full of information, facts, and history. And let's not forget, you both are great hosts and make the show so interesting.

• 48:35Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 48:36Speaker 02

  And that is from Robin Matalik. And just go to mangear.com. That would be M-A-N-G-E-A-R.com. And check out those SPF shirts if you want to have a mangrove tree planted in your honor.

• 48:50Josh Clark?

  That was smart to add the extra G, or else they might not have gotten what they're doing across very well. If it was just Mangear.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  I'm sure there's a website called Mangear that sells pubic hair shavers and stuff like that.

• 49:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Who was that? Robin?

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:06Josh Clark?

  Okay. Thanks a lot, Robin. That was a great shout out. And thanks to the people at Mangear who are doing God's work and using GPS, which we did an episode on. And I guess if you want to get in touch with us like Robin did, you can send us an email to send it off to [email protected].

• 49:27Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, MyHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 49:43Josh Clark?

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• 50:48Josh Clark?

  Introducing Voices of VivGart. VivGart is also known as its generic name, Fgart Tigamod Alpha F-Cab. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease. Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of VivGart. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of VivGart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.