“It’s just playing, I’m tellin’ ya!” We’re taking a walk on the wild side with Noel Marshall’s notorious big cat passion project Roar.
Marshall himself plays research scientist Hank, who lives in a gigantic compound somewhere in East Africa with an outrageous amount of lions, tigers and other assorted megapredators running rampant through and around his home. Distracted by a disastrous meeting with his funding committee, he forgets to pick up his visiting family – wife Madeleine (Tippi Hedren) and their three kids (Marshall’s sons John and Jerry, and Hedren’s daughter Melanie Griffith). When they family arrive at th cat house just as Hank has belatedly set off to retrieve them, they spend a nerve-shredding day alone with the massive creatures.
The film’s flimsy story often pales in comparison to the circumstances of its production – Marshall and Hedren assembling their enormous collection and housing them in a huge compound outside of Los Angeles, sinking over half a decade and most of their fortune into a film that sent scores of cast and crew to the hospital, only to see it barely scrape a few token international releases before sinking into obscurity for over 30 years. Patrick and Devlin are here to talk about a rare and memorable screening they went to a few months back, and gawp in disbelief at the carnage on display.
See the original Neil the Lion Photospread from Life Magazine here.
The Rewind Movie Podcast 
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