Roar (1981, dir. Noel Marshall, US) by Matt Olsen

At the time of its original release in 1981, there had never been a movie like Roar, which is an impressive feat considering the roughly eighty years of film history before it. Even more impressive is that there hasn’t been a movie like it since. Going further, there will never be another movie like it. (Discounting any descent into a Mad Max-like anarchic dystopia.)

The plot of the film, such as it is, is minimal and almost entirely unnecessary. Hank, an American big cat expert (?) lives on a compound in Tanzania tending to a massive collection of big cats. (When you read “massive collection of big cats”, whatever number you’re thinking of, it’s larger than that. There are lions everywhere. An initial title of the film was Lions, Lions, and More Lions. That was changed in order to better represent the tigers, panthers, jaguars, and at least one elephant eventually included in the cast list.) 

Hank’s semi-estranged wife and children arrive from America to visit him for the first time. The two parties cross paths on the way to and from the airport such that when the family reaches the property, Hank is neither there to greet them nor provide any warning. As the three young adults and their mother explore the house, they gradually become aware of another presence – lions. Lions, lions, and more lions. For approximately the next hour, the family is terrorized and the house is utterly destroyed by what must be at least a hundred big cats’ relentless assault. 

Relentless is the dominant motif here. It can’t be overstated just how exhaustingly non-stop and violent the lion attacks are. Whether it’s lion on human, lion on lion, lion on tiger, or lion on armoire, if a lion isn’t actively mauling then it’s stalking in preparation to maul. With the constant animal activity, one might reasonably assume that these animals are well-trained, seasoned “professionals” but, as has been written many times elsewhere, that’s not so. The film’s opening credits boast that all of the animals are untrained. 

So, how did such a thing ever get made? 

The story behind the film has been covered in countless other places and I invite curious readers to seek out that history for themselves as it’s much more detailed and, frankly, unbelievable than I could ever accurately represent here. In short, it’s why the abbreviation WTF was invented.

For fans of extreme cinema who think they’ve seen it all but haven’t seen Roar, you owe it not only to yourself to see this film but also to the seventy cast and crew members who were seriously injured during the production. Animal lovers, on the other hand, can rest easy knowing that the movie received the American Humane Association seal of approval certifying that no animals were harmed during the making. So, that’s nice.

Matt Olsen is a largely unemployed part-time writer and even more part-time commercial actor living once again in Seattle after escaping from Los Angeles like Kurt Russell in that movie about the guy who escapes from Los Angeles.