Three laughs: Roar

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of the quality of the filmmaking. In fact, it might be even harder to create unique trash that keeps surprising you than most "quality" films with which you know what you are going to get. It certainly is an even better pleasure to watvh them. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you just can't believe what the film is showing to you, scene after scene. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

Three laughs case #14:
Roar (1981)
Director: Noel Marshall

Everyone is all about Tiger King these days. But the original morally dubious story of living with large cats is of course Noel Marshall's utterly bonkers Roar. It has the clean-cut outer image of a Disney-like adventure movie for the whole family, and a nice message is living in harmony with animals as well. But somehow, the movie had 48 crew members injured with over 70 injuries over the two-year (!) shooting period. And, boy, it shows!

Film stars Noel Marshall and Tippi Hedren used to have a wild cat sancturaty where they spent time with large lions. But there's a difference between having wild animals in safari parks and as housecats. In the film, Marshall himself plays a bit wacked-out hippyish dad in Africa, whose house is overrun by, not only lions, but also tigers and pumas (not native to Africa), leopards, and some rather nasty elephants.

It's one thing to risk one's own, or even your spouse's life in order to have them act in your crazy lion movie, but Marshall also cat his real-life sons and daughter Melanie Griffith to the film. Griffith needed facial reconstructive surgery due to her injuries on set. Photographer Jan DeBont lost his entire scalp. Marshall got the blunt of tooth and claws, and the film actually features footage where he gets wounded. It's a wonder a film like this got made, it's a wonder a film like this got lost in the streams of time, and it's a wonder a film like this can be watched and awed today. Nothing like this will never again get made.

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The first laugh comes from the opening credits of the film "Since the choice was made to use untrained animals and since for the most part they chose to do as they wished, it's only fair they share the writing and directing credits". As far as film plots go, this one is so disjointged and hard to grasp, it's no wonder it was co-written and directed by Robbie, Gary and Togar the lion.

2. The lions don't seem too happy to be kept inside a smallish farm, and especially the males keep fighting in rather brutal-looking fashion. Marshall should get a medal from outstanding stuntwork for seeing fights break out between lions and tigers and running to break it up as a referee. I can't make out if he's actually as mad as his character, but he can't be far off.

3. Marshall talks to the lions as if they are children, insisting they are just playing. That's why the film also has plenty of scenes where he's broken off between talking and run to the ground by lions. Most other movies would cut these kind of materials off, but in here, they're the bread and butter of the entire thing.