Roar

Parfois décrit comme le film le plus dangereux de tous les temps (en ce qui concerne sa création), Roar est une drôlerie cinématographique confectionnée de A à Z par Noel Marshall qui, en collaboration avec Tippi Hedren, a voulu mettre en garde contre la violation des droits des grands félins d’Afrique et de leur chasse intempestive. Mais les moyens et la détermination mis en œuvre pour le tournage de ce film furent presque maniaques ; seuls des membres de la famille du créateur ont accepté de jouer un rôle, tant la production était dangereuse, et parmi eux, plusieurs ont été blessés, y compris des membres de l’équipe de tournage, et il est étonnant qu’il n’y ait pas eu de mort. L’intrigue a très peu d’importance et on voit bien, à travers chaque prise, que les félins ne se comportaient décidément pas selon les attentes et que leur mise en scène était impossible, d’où une intrigue sporadique, des prises ratées et un montage intrusif. Il n’empêche que le public doit avaler le tout en retenant son souffle et en percevant chaque tressaillement physique et mental des acteurs à l’écran, ces derniers n’étant jamais sûrs de rien et leur peur étant réelle. Un spectacle bizarre et crispant datant d’une ère où les mesures de santé et de sécurité au travail n’étaient pas encore prises au sérieux. (06/01/2019)

Roar is a film curiosity shrouded in so many crazy stories that I just had to watch it. The film was supposedly 11 years in the making. Actress Tippi Hedren (who apparently didn’t have enough with the grueling filming of the horror film The Birds) declared that it was probably the most dangerous shoot of all time and wrote a book about it. Reportedly, 70 crew members were injured during the filming of this animal “horror” movie. Why so many? Because when someone got hurt, they didn't see them on set the next day, so they had to replace them with someone else. All this was used to promote the film (whose trailer, for example, boasts about how many stitches and fractures the various actors sustained on set), but it didn't help its success and it was completely forgotten for many years. Now, distributor Drafthouse Films has rediscovered it and will release it on Blu-ray in the fall, and word is starting to get around again. This is not a good film by any means. The script has makes no sense, and the direction is rather chaotic. It's basically a high-budget, homemade amateur dream project by Hollywood agent Noel Marshall, who dragged (and nearly killed) his entire family (including wife Tippi Hedren and his stepdaughter, a then-unknown Melanie Griffith) into it. At the center of the simple story is a family that returns to Africa to visit the head of the family, a zookeeper (played by Noel Marshall himself) who lives in a wooden house with dozens of lions, tigers, panthers, and cheetahs that like to pounce on people for fun. The family arrives just as the father is gone, and the entire film is practically about the other family members running and hiding from his pets, because (until the end of the film) they have no idea that they're actually cute animals who just want to play. The film was made in support of African wildlife and is apparently meant to show how animals can coexist (despite, for example, scalping cinematographer Jan de Bont). The whole thing comes across as an incredibly bizarre amalgamation of grotesque action scenes, with actors and animals running around uncontrollably and getting into wild confrontations. At the same time, it's not entirely clear whether this is supposed to be slapstick or horror. And we are not worried about the characters, but rather the actors who play them, since what takes place in the film looks really VERY dangerous (the animals were not trained) and it's a wonder they all survived. For example, you'll see a huge number of lions jumping on a man, a tiger sinking a boat, while another boat gets crushed by an elephant and then Tippi Hedren sent flying (really) and breaks her leg – nothing was staged. It’s hard to know how many stars to give it. In any case, it's a fascinating spectacle that I'll happily repeat when I want to show something wonderfully obscure to a visitor. (10/07/2015)