Roar (1981)
When it was finally released in the United States in 2015 — nearly 40 years after it began its five-year, accident-filled shoot — savvy distribution company Drafthouse Films used the tagline, “No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of This Film. Seventy Cast and Crew Members Were.”
Roar is the story of a family — including Tippi Hedren and real-life daughter Melanie Griffith — stalked by lions and tigers on an African nature preserve. It was supposed to be a comedy. Star Hedren and writer-director-star Noel Marshall — her then-husband — used animals from their own collection of big cats, which they began assembling in response to poaching and other threats to the animals in the wild.
The film eventually led to the creation of Hedren’s Roar Foundation and Shambala Preserve, dedicated to the preservation of big cats.
The making of Roar was the subject of a terrific episode of Dan Delgado’sThe Industry podcast, which featured the son of Noel Marshall and other Roar veterans who explained everything that went wild on the shoot. You can listen on Apple or Spotify.
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