Stuff You Should Know - Roar: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made?

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

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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. Yeah? Had you ever heard of this movie? No, I haven't. Had you? Oh, yeah.

It's legendary. 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 Tyndall had recently. Oh, really? All right.

So in case, that happens sometimes. People write in and be like, oh, thanks for doing the episode I suggested. Yeah. It's something that had been on our list already, so it happens sometimes. 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. Well, that is what happened.

So if we don't thank you, there's a 98% chance that we didn't. We already had it. 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. No. But I guess, yeah, being a movie, dude, this is the kind of thing. It's like a legendary movie for sure. Yeah. Especially, have you seen it? That's a guess. Oh, no, no, no.

No. Yeah, it's almost impossible to find. You could shell out, I think, $100 on Amazon to buy a DVD. of it. Don't do that. Alamo Draft House 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, kind of. Yeah. And then it's just not anywhere. It's nowhere. You can 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. 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. Sure. But not necessarily with Roar. Okay. Fair enough. Good. Well, then I feel a lot better.

Yeah, just my dumb opinion. So, all right, Charles. Let's tell everybody what we're talking about. It's the 1989 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. 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? 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 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. Yeah. The great Tippy Hedron from, you probably know her from Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, most famously. Yeah.

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. Yeah. He kind of rewrote his legacy after The Exorcist, but there were a married couple who thought of this idea because of a trip they took. 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 Tippiehedron 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 Tippyhedron 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. 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. There was in 1969. It was a movie called Satan's Harvest. Yep. So, you know, her career wasn't at zenith after the birds, I guess. Right, right. 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? Sure. The P is in parentheses before reserve. 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 a home. And then the second thing is that they're going to be.

guy 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. 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 Doc Tari about a father and daughter veterinary team who worked with wildlife in East Africa.

And get this, Chuck, Doctori, which is a drama, was based on a movie called Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion. Oh, poor Clarence. I know. But how do you get Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion to the serious, like, animal medical drama, Doctori? That's a strange transition.

Yeah, I think probably a pretty smart one because Doctari was on for a few seasons. Yeah. 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 Africa in 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? And 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. But caveat, I suppose if you raised 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. 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 going to 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. Yeah. That is not the case. So 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 Tippy Hadron's daughter. And she was like 13 or 14 when Neil came into the picture. And they raised him from a cub into this 400-pound family pet, fully grown male African lion, Maine and all, like sleeping in bed with Melanie Griffith at the time. Yeah.

And I mean, this wasn't, they didn't have a ranch out in the middle of nowhere. Right, good point. This was in the valley. This was in Sherman Oaks and 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. No, and in retrospect, I think in her autobiography, Tippy Hedron 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, like, lounging around with her head on the lion's, like, chest and everything. They're both laying on the ground together. It is.

It's quite a photo spread. And it's also got that perfect, like, late 60s, early 70s photo look that you just could not possibly recreate it. 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 Soledad Canyon, I guess a little north of Los Angeles. I'm sure you know where that is, right? I had never heard of Acton, actually. It said it's 40 miles north,

but I think I'd heard of Soledad Canyon, but Acton is new to me. guess that's where you go when you want to raise lions. 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.

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. They landscaped it with plants and architectural styles that might have mimic 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. 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. That's right. We'll be right back. Close your eyes. And you can hear the entire world come alive. 2026 FIFA World Cup is on. And you can stream it all live on TSN Radio. From the opening kickoff to the final celebration, every match, every moment. Listen to FIFA World Cup on TSN Radio.

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Apple Podcast, or Webster. wherever you get your podcast. Chuck, before we get back into it, I have a tippy-hedron fact that I found. She is the only actress to be directed by Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and Edward Jr. Nice. Yeah, that's quite a career.

Yeah, I like that Venn diagram. So, yeah, okay, so we're at the filming, the beginning of filming, the cameras are rolling, and the cameras just kept rolling. 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 Tippy Hedron. 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. Yeah. But, 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. No, they had 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.

I think Noel was one of the producers on The Exorcist, and he made a bunch of money off of that. He was essentially an investor in it, so he got an executive producer credit, and I guess some of the back plum, is that what it's called? Back plum? Yeah. Back end? Sure, the back end. But it's plummy. Okay.

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. done anything like this before, we're just going to make our money back a million times over. And initially, the whole idea, remember, they had seen that pride of lions living in this and that was kind of what kicked this off. So the whole thing was very lion-centric. But I think the working titles were lions or lions, lions, and more lions. Those are definitely working titles, I think. Yeah, it makes Roar look pretty great by comparison as a title.

It does. It does. Yeah, you could see Noel. dropping his gin and tonic thinking, like, I got it. Yeah. 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. Yeah, for sure.

They didn't even have a script. And, you know, Marshall was not a writer. Like, you know, like he said, he invested in The Exorcist. I don't think anyone ever confused him with a creative in Hollywood. But he did write the script. He got some ideas from Tippy. He wrote the script, 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, you know, young Melanie. And then he had two sons from a previous marriage, 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 was like, you know what, I'll just do that too. Right. I'm sure they were like, what is wrong with everybody between not raising financing or getting a star? Yeah. So Noel wrote, directed and starred in this movie like you were saying. And that, 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 any one of those were taken out of that equation. Oh, you think?

Yeah, because there's no one there to tell the director or the writer or 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've got a big problem. All right. I disagree, but we'll just walk right past it. All right, that's fine. I mean, I think if you're terrible, then it's a bad idea. But there have been plenty of examples of great writer-director actors and great films.

Okay, name one besides Herbie the Love Bug. Like most anything Clint Eastwood's ever been in. Okay. I don't fully agree with that, but okay. 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.

Man, it's just simmer. Like the pot is just, just simmering almost over. But we're going to walk past it, like you said. Yeah, I think the point of why this was bad is because he was not a talented human being. Right. 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. Yeah.

But reshot the scene so Melanie could be back in the film. Yeah, that friend was Patsy Ned, who went on and became an award-winning Foley artist. That's right. 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 sure. 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? 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. Yeah. 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. But rolling that many cameras just wasn't what you did typically back then on films,

especially films of this size. So they were just burning money on film stock. Yeah. And like you said, the reason why they were just running all the times because 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 cats would just look at you.

Like, I hear like, man, babe, bit, bit, 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. 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.

Right. It was not planned, but they were like, hey, we got a little bit of a little bit of a boat. production value out of the elephant wrecking that boat. So we got to put it in the movie. The other thing was, 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, or excite, rather, these animals in ways, you know, that they weren't prepared for either. I know. I felt bad about that. I confused them. And that's sad. They were like, why are our friends, you know, yelling?

Yeah. And, you know, we're going to get to some of the darker stuff later. This isn't all just, like, funny. No, good point. So this whole thing, the entire film takes about five years 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 catastrophe. 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.

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. 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. 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. Right. So get out of there as quickly as I can get something else going. They're shooting it all at this compound for Africa there, sort of deep outside Los Angeles, and people started getting hurt. I think 70 cast and crew members ended up getting injuries. And if you look at the Alamo draft house trailer that they put out online,

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 most major injury was on set. Right. Probably the biggest one was Jan de Bantz. 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. Yeah, 220 stitches, but he would complete the film. And before you start emailing us, I got to stem the tide, Josh, unfortunately. Yon DeBant is very much known for being a, a big-time action movie director.

Oh, yeah? Yeah. I mean, you were kidding, right? Yeah. Okay. Just making sure. He directed Speed and Twister and some other, you know, very big movies later on. But this was his first film in the United States.

And I think that's probably why he kept coming back because it was his first film in the States. And maybe he didn't think it would be such idea to quit his first movie here. Sure. Yeah, because that's a really good point. He was a very talented cinematographer by this time. Like, that's one of the other. other things he's very well known for, not just directing. 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. Yeah, for sure. So, you know, speaking of, John Marshall, I believe he was one of the sons. He got bit on the head. 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 hand 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 and you know they had some help but not they weren't staff like they needed to be no and I think those are also the same crew that kind of came and went Over time, they're like, this is nuts, dude. I don't want to have anything to do with this. Oh, yeah.

They didn't want their name on this thing because they saw where it was going. So Melanie Griffith, who said that she didn't want to come out of this with half a face, came very close to that, actually. She got clawed by her eye. She needed 50 stitches. She also had to undergo cosmetic surgery to kind of reconstruct that part of her face. Yeah. That made it into the movie.

Yeah, that scene. I mean, that was a very good. very believable attack scene. Yeah. So you got a clumsy plot in 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.

Yeah, for sure. There were two cases of gangrene from, you know, getting bitten by infected cat mouths. Tippy Hedron was one. She got a lion bite. got Gangreen. I'm not sure where she got it, but she ended up getting skin grafts. There was also a scene

where she was riding on Timbo the elephant, and this animal wasn't used to being ridden and had somebody shouting and stuff like she was. Right. So it threw her off, fractured her ankle. And then Noel, the star and the director, Madman behind all this, he got the other cases of gangrene.

Yeah, Tippy Hedron 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,

place over what maybe like a few days, weeks, months, tops, the actors involved are all aging like over the course of several years. Some of them teenagers, like you really undergo some serious like outward changes over the 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. 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. Yeah.

And there was also a situation where I think there was a disease that spread through the cat community and some of them died. It's hard to get good verification on that, but I see plenty of places that claim that happened. 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 flood was so destructive that it destroyed a lot of the vegetation 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. that Tippyhedron and Noel Marshall were so deep into this financially that they couldn't walk away. They had to finish this because it had to be a hit or else they were in serious financial trouble. Did you get that same impression?

Yeah, I mean, who knows what's going on? It's either that or just like the madman thing takes over. Right. But I know that they certainly had no chance of recovering any money if they stopped and they knew that too. Right. 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 taking place there at their ranch.

And they spent, and this was, you know, late 70s money, about $17 million, which is almost what Raiders of the Lost Ark cost. So 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. 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? I don't think $700,000 worth of production value, except I guess Yon DeBant shooting some nice-looking stuff, probably.

For sure. So they finally finish filming, they get it edited, it's all ready to go, they've 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 U.S. No, no release in the U.S. It was a non-union production,

so that had something to do with it, but really the deal was it was just a really bad movie. Sure. And nobody wanted to release it. I think even at the time, they didn't think, like 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? No, and there was a lot of buzz, too. I read some of the press tour that Tippy Hedron was doing in 1979 to help, you know, pump up the release of the movie. And like, it was widely discussed. Apparently it was shown widely in the UK and Ireland. But even all of that, it was, I think it grossed $2 million worldwide. Yeah.

So they lost $15 million just out of the game. gate. And because it was never shown almost anywhere else, especially after its first run, they had, like, 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. That's right. Let's take our second break, yeah? Yeah. All right. We'll be right back with a little bit more, believe it or not, about Roar right after this. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart.

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Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Joy is essential and it's also elusive. You can't order it, you can't borrow it or simply hope it into life. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby. Together, guys, we'll have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Entertainment legends, sports icons, wellness experts, and everyday people will share how they find allow and experience joy. And I'll offer some of my own tips and takes on seeking a more balanced and harmonious life. If you're craving inspiration, support, and useful tools to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Joy after a breakup. Joy is an empty nester.

Joy after a loss. Joy as a caretaker. This new podcast will speak to you. Listen to Joy 101 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do.

Like, Prince, he dropped, like, 30 albums. We dropped, like, five right now. Like, that's the rate we got to be going. Yeah, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddy. I directed when Naz's early videos. Which one? One love.

Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nans was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names

and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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. Sure. But just loosely, it was a plot about a... 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 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 it's really that bad. Like that's kind of the plot of the movie. 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 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 hostily, 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 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. Yeah, another big flaw was that it was sort of a genreless film. Parts of it seem like home movies. Parts of it seem like comedy. Like a couple of the attacks are played a 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 Tippy Hedridin says they base some of the stuff on old slapstick silent comedies. So 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. Yeah, big mess. I think that should be like the tagline. Right. So, yeah, I guess if you're like, I got to see this, there are things you can see online, but you're just, unless you're going to shell out $100, you're not going to see the whole movie.

One of the cool things about this, though, is from the outset, Tibbyhedron 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 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?

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,

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 not a good dude. So I don't want to portray this as just like sort of a fun family project gone wrong. Yeah, there was an interview with his son, John, around the time that this was re-released by Draft House 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 say for it 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. Yeah, for sure. That's his legacy. In 1985, it got a little bit more attention because the Today Show had Tippy Hedron 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 Draft House 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.

Yeah, 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 Tippihedron apparently was not at all happy about this 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.

I 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 Draft House, 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. 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. Drew Mcweeney also had a pretty memorable quote. They said that it feels like Walt Disney decided to make a snuff version of Swiss Family Robinson. That's kind of on point. 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. The Roar Foundation is around, and they're accepting donations. I think they're down to like nine big cats now. Yeah. 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 Tipihedron's still alive.

she's coming up on her 100th birthday in 2030. Well, I hope she doesn't listen to us. I feel like we did it justice. Yeah, which is exactly probably what she doesn't want to hear. Okay, that's true. Well, if you're listening Tippy Hats off to you, and since I did our annual Hats off to Tippy Hedron, I just unlocked listener mail.

For a second, I thought you were going to say Tippy of the hat to you. Mm, mm, after all the times we've done that to you, I can't believe we've never come up with that before. I'm going to call this shouting out a good little thing that this company's doing because we heard from Robin about a company. Let me just read it. Hey, guys, I listened 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 Mang Gear, M-A-N-G 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, it 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. Nice.

And that is from Robin Mottalick. 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 owner. That was smart to add the extra G, or else they might not have gotten what they were doing across very well. If it was just man-gear. I'm sure there's a website called Mangier that sells pubic hair shavers and stuff like that.

Right. Yeah. Who was that, Robin, Robin? Yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot, Robin. That was a great shout out. And thanks to the people at Mangir 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 Stuff Podcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

essential and it's also elusive. But now, there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by me, Hoda Kotby. If you're craving inspiration, support, and useful tools to maximize your joy, tune into these candid, uplifting, and moving on-air chats. Listen to Joy 101 on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone, this is Teddy Mellencamp. And Tamara Judge from Two T's in a Pod. There's been one scandal that's consumed our lives these last couple of months.

We're recapping the three parts Summer House reunion. And as always, we're being brutally honest. We're dissecting timelines, receipts, blind items, and previous episodes. Amanda and Wes, watch out. We're not getting to be easy on you. Listen to Two T's in a Pod on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Happy pride from the Outspoken Podcast Network.

All month long and all year round, we're celebrating being loud, proud, and always original. It's me, Brandon Kyle Goodman, host of the podcast, Tell Me Something Messy. Check out my show for unfiltered takes on dating, relationships, and adulting. Listen to High Key for the best pop culture takes, and there are no girls on the internet for all your tech news.

For your favorite celebrity key keys, check outlaws with T.S. Madison. Learn to love yourself unapologetically, with BFF, Black Fat Fem, and start your day with intention with waking up with Ryan coming in July. Celebrate Pride with the Outspoken Network. Open your free IHeart Radio app.

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