There’s a persuasive case to be made that Roar is “the most dangerous movie ever made,” as this new trailer from Drafthouse Films boasts. Over the course of making the 1981 wild-animal thriller about a family’s close encounter with some serious feline predators, 70 cast and crew members were horrifically injured, including a young Melanie Griffith (who was mauled by lions and required facial reconstructive surgery), her mother Tippi Hedren (who broke a leg), and director Noel Marshall (whose many bloody injuries resulted in him being hospitalized for gangrene). Even more unbelievable is the fact that many of these near-death experiences appear in the final film, which features its cast fending off actual attacks from 150 untrained lions, cheetahs, elephants, and tigers.

How did this movie ever get made, let alone released? It’s a crazy story. Roar was the passion project of actress Hedren (star of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds) and her second husband Marshall, who were inspired to make the film after visiting Africa in 1969. Partially as a conservation effort and partially in preparation for their movie, the couple began secretly importing and breeding wild African animals at their home in Los Angeles. For more than a decade, Hedren, Griffith, and Marshall’s three sons lived with a growing menagerie of dangerous creatures. (A jaw-dropping Life magazine photo shoot from 1971 shows Griffith in bed and swimming in a pool with a lion named Neil.)

Watch Tippi Hedren describe her daughter Melanie Griffith being mauled, a scene that made the final cut of Roar:



Under first- and last-time director Marshall (whose claim to fame was producing The Exorcist), production on Roar took five years, during which time financing was lost, the family’s property was flooded, and of course, dozens of gory encounters threatened the lives of the cast and crew (including cinematographer and future Speed and Twister director Jan de Bont, who was basically scalped at one point.) The movie flopped when it was released in 1981, and Hedren and Marshall divorced soon after. However, Hedren stayed committed to those lions: She built a new home for them at an exotic animal sanctuary called the Shambala Preserve, where she now lives.



Roar will have a limited theatrical release in April, followed by a Blu-Ray, DVD, and VOD release this summer. For more on the film, check out this blog post from Drafthouse CEO and founder Tim League, where he writes: “The infamously disastrous production stories of Apocalypse Now and The Island Of Doctor Moreau pale in comparison to the danger and chaos that was overcome on the set of Roar.”

