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Film Search
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Roar
Adventure
I feel bad for everyone involved in this patently ridiculous, fairly insane production that it ever happened, and yet I’m fairly certain that I will never forget it. The bizarre 1981 thriller/drama casts writer/director Noel Marshall as Hank, a wildlife conservationist living and researching in Africa with a house full of wild cats—lions, tigers, panthers—that he’s raised from cubs. Imagine the madness when his semi-estranged wife (Marshall’s real-life wife Tippi Hedren) and kids (including Hedren’s real-life daughter Melanie Griffith) come from Chicago to visit and find dozens of predators in the house! Never mind, because whatever you’re imagining couldn’t possibly match the situations that finds the terrified family members trying to stay alive while Hank is far afield, in scenarios that are like Jurassic Park if the actors were dodging real dinosaurs, and if it somehow tried to make John Hammond the hero, all scored to whimsical DisneyNature-esque music. Though the tatters of a plot barely matter, and Marshall tags a hilariously earnest environmental-themed song over the coda, this is the kind of awful filmmaking that simply must be seen to be believed.
Director: Noel Marshall
Cast: Tippi Hedren, Noel Marshall, Melanie Griffith, John Marshall, Jerry Marshall, Kyalo Mativo and Frank Tom
Cast: Tippi Hedren, Noel Marshall, Melanie Griffith, John Marshall, Jerry Marshall, Kyalo Mativo and Frank Tom
