Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 323: Thu Nov 19

Roar (Marshall, 1981): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm


Chicago Reader review:
In the early 1970s, actress Tippi Hedren (Marnie, The Birds) and her then husband, Noel Marshall, started adopting lions, tigers, and other large animals from Africa to protect them from poachers, bringing them to a ranch 40 miles north of Los Angeles where they could roam free. The location would become the set of this 1981 adventure yarn about an American (Marshall) who journeys to Kenya to live among big cats and then tries to convince his family to follow suit. Variety called this "the most disaster-plagued film in the history of Hollywood," and that might be so: the untamed animals, about 150 in all, mauled more than 70 cast and crew members during production, which lasted almost five years due to various setbacks. All the humans onscreen are clearly cowering in terror; this is supposed to be a Disney-style tale of people bonding with animals, but it plays like a nonfiction horror film. Marshall directed his own script; with Hedren's daughter, Melanie Griffith.
Ben Sachs

Here (and above) is the trailer. 

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