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Roar

One of the worst movies ever made but amusing for its ineptitude and sincerity.

Roar

Grade: C-

Director: Noel Marshall

Screenplay: Marshall. Ted Cassidy (Thunder County)

Cast: Tippi Hedren (The Birds), Melanie Griffith (Working Girl)

Rating: PG

Runtime: 102 min.

by John DeSando

“This is a madhouse.” Mativo (Kyalo Mativo)

Roar, an action film about a marauding gang of jungle beasts such as lions, tigers, jaguars, leopards, and cougars, is one of the worst movies I have ever seen, yet like an Ed Wood production, not without its amusements. While the animals appear to be real, the actors are mostly grade-school quality. Even the accomplished Tippi Hedren as Madelaine and her daughter, Melanie Griffith, as Melanie, come off as amateurish probably because of the ineptitude of the other actors; the script; and her husband, the writer-director of Roar, Noel Marshall (who plays Hank, the soul-mate of the animals).

While the core conflict is about poachers who are central-casting nasty, most of the story involves the loving animals chasing Hank’s hapless family until we realize the animals are not going to hurt them, in fact just long to hold and be held by the humans. Not so lucky are the poachers, whose sneers and overall seedy looks promise retribution. Not so lucky are some real production people, such a cinematographer Jan de Bont, who needed a scalp reattachment and Melanie Griffith, who had facial reconstruction after being mauled.

It’s a partly-true story of Marshall’s family, who lived among 100 beasts on their California estate. Although the pedestrian plot is obvious from the get-go, Roar is saved by the sincere intentions of Marshall and Hedren, who must have wanted to make some kind of conservation statement with the film.

Re-released from 1981, Roar did show me that tigers love to swim and lions not so much and that anyone with money can make a movie that eventually falls into the hands of discerning, unkind critics. Hank running around yelling in order to shepherd the animals is just one of many repeated scenes that lose impact the minute one realizes these are animals trained to love humans. Surprisingly, the animals are house-trained, or so it seems.

The film feels like a Jungle Jack Hanna production, spiced up from Born Free, and encouraged by former Keystone Cops, who also must be animal trainers.

John DeSando, a Los Angeles Press Club first-place winner for National Entertainment Journalism, hosts WCBE’s It’s Movie Time and co-hosts Cinema Classics. Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.rr.com

John DeSando holds a BA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. in English from The University of Arizona. He served several universities as a professor, dean, and academic vice president. He has been producing and broadcasting as a film critic on It’s Movie Time and Cinema Classics for more than two decades. DeSando received the Los Angeles Press Club's first-place honors for national entertainment journalism.