WHAT ROAR! ACTUALLY IS (AND WHY IT EXISTS)
Roar! is one of those movies where the story behind the film is not just more interesting than the movie itself—it almost completely replaces it.
This thing was written, directed, and starring Noel Marshall, who—importantly—was not just some random guy. He was the executive producer of The Exorcist, which, for my money, is one of the greatest films ever made.
And here’s the wild part: The success of The Exorcist is basically what funded Roar!.
So this isn’t some scrappy indie experiment. This is a passion project bankrolled by one of the biggest horror hits of all time… and it ballooned into a $17 million production that did not make its money back.
And the reason it exists at all is because Marshall had this very specific idea he wanted to prove—that humans and big cats could live together in harmony.
And instead of writing a tight script to explore that idea… he just went out and lived with lions and started filming.
JAN DE BONT – WHY THE MOVIE LOOKS WAY BETTER THAN IT SHOULD
And I think it’s really important to talk about Jan de Bont here, because he’s a huge part of why this movie is even watchable on a technical level.
Jan de Bont was the cinematographer on this film, and if that name sounds familiar, it should—he would go on to direct Speed and Twister, and shoot films like Die Hard.
And you can see that level of craftsmanship here.
Because somehow—despite the complete lack of control on set—the movie is often beautifully shot.
There are these wide, sun-drenched compositions of the preserve… dynamic handheld shots moving through the house as chaos unfolds… and, most impressively, he’s able to frame humans and big cats together in the same space in a way that feels immediate and immersive.
You’re not watching cuts cheat the geography—you’re watching real proximity.
And that’s what makes the footage so striking. It’s not just that lions are in the scene—it’s that they’re in the frame, interacting with the actors, and de Bont is right there capturing it.
But of course, that comes at a cost.
Because he’s not safely removed from the action—he’s in it.
And that’s how he ends up getting scalped during production, requiring over 200 stitches.
So when you’re watching these scenes and thinking, “How did they get that shot?”—
The answer is: “By putting the camera operator in real danger.”
And that’s kind of the paradox of Roar!.
The cinematography is legitimately impressive—sometimes even stunning—but it’s achieved in a way that feels completely reckless.
So you’re left admiring the images… while also questioning whether they were ever worth capturing in the first place.
REAL DANGER, NOT MOVIE DANGER
This is the part where the movie becomes less “entertaining curiosity” and more “what were they thinking?”
Because what you’re watching on screen is not staged danger—it’s real danger.
You’ve got:
- Tippi Hedren injured multiple times
- Melanie Griffith needing reconstructive surgery
- Jan de Bont getting scalped and requiring over 200 stitches
And that’s not background trivia—that’s baked into the movie. You can feel it in every scene.
The animals aren’t trained in the traditional sense. They’re not hitting marks. The actors aren’t “performing” with them—they’re reacting to them.
Sometimes panicking.
And what’s really unsettling is that the production seems far more concerned with protecting the animals than the humans. The people feel… expendable.
So instead of feeling like a controlled spectacle, the whole thing has this constant undercurrent of: “This probably shouldn’t be happening.”
TIPPY HEDREN, HITCHCOCK, AND HOW SHE ENDED UP HERE
And there’s an added layer to all of this that makes it even more uncomfortable.
Tippi Hedren, of course, worked with Alfred Hitchcock on The Birds and Marnie. And she’s spoken extensively about how Hitchcock became obsessive and controlling, and when she rejected him, he essentially derailed her career.
Now, how much of that is fully documented versus contested depends on who you ask—but what is clear is that her career cooled significantly after those films.
So here you have this actress who had been positioned as a major Hollywood star, suddenly in a very different place professionally…
…and she ends up in this.
Living among lions. Getting injured. Putting her daughter in harm’s way.
It’s one of those things where, in hindsight, you just want to go: “There had to be another path.”
Incredibly, after the end of this production, which took something like nine years, Hedren and Mashall split up and she became a true-to-life animal advocate, establishing a non-profit home for big cats called “Shambala.”
She also wrote a book of the same name about her adventures on the film and her life as a conservationist.
PLOT SUMMARY
So the plot of Roar!—and I use the word “plot” a little generously here—follows Hank, a wildlife naturalist from Chicago who is absolutely hell-bent on proving that humans and big cats can live together in harmony.
To do this, he’s moved to Tanzania and built a preserve where he literally lives alongside lions, tigers, cheetahs, cougars… basically anything that can maul you.
He’s somewhat estranged from his wife, played by Tippi Hedren, but he’s invited her and their kids to come live with him at the preserve… for reasons that are never entirely clear beyond they miss him.
While all of this is going on, Hank is visited by two groups: First, his friend Mativo, a local guide who takes one look at Hank’s setup and is basically like, “This is insane.” And second, a grant committee that’s funding Hank’s little experiment.
And predictably, things go sideways almost immediately.
A fight breaks out among the cats, two tigers injure members of the committee, and those guys storm off, vowing to come back and hunt the animals.
So now Hank and Mativo head out to the airport to pick up the family—but even that turns into chaos, because they’re constantly being delayed by the animals, including a rogue lion that’s clearly more aggressive than the others.
Meanwhile, Hank’s family arrives at the preserve on their own… and basically walks into a nightmare.
They’re trapped inside the house as lions and other cats swarm the place, knocking things over, chasing them from room to room, and at one point casually devouring a zebra carcass in the middle of the living room.
Eventually, Hank and Mativo make their way back and discover that animals in the area have been shot—presumably by the angry grant committee members—but before anything can really come of that, those same hunters are attacked and killed by the rogue lion.
And then… the movie just kind of resolves.
Hank reunites with his family, everyone suddenly seems comfortable with the animals, and it all wraps up with this oddly cheerful montage about humans and nature living together in harmony—like we didn’t just watch two hours of absolute chaos.
THIS IS NOT A STORY—IT’S AN AGENDA
This is, for me, the biggest issue with the movie.
Roar! doesn’t really have a story—it has an agenda.
The premise is simple: A man moves to Africa to prove humans and big cats can coexist.
But that’s not a plot—that’s a thesis statement.
And instead of building a narrative with structure, escalation, or character arcs, the movie just sort of… wanders from one chaotic encounter to another.
Scenes don’t build—they linger. Moments don’t resolve—they just end.
And everything feels like it exists to justify whatever insane footage they managed to capture.
MY OWN FILMMAKING
And honestly, this hit me in a very specific way.
Because it reminded me of my own early filmmaking days.
We’d get access to something cool—like filming in New York City, or maybe we had a car we could smash—and suddenly the movie would bend around that.
Instead of asking: “What does the story need?”
It became: “How do we justify using this thing we have?”
And Roar! feels exactly like that—just on an absolutely unhinged scale.
It constantly feels like: 👉 “We got a lion to do something wild—quick, build a scene around it.”
So instead of the story driving the action, the action is dragging the story behind it.
THE TONE IS BROKEN (AND THE SCORE MAKES IT WORSE)
This might be the most baffling part of the whole movie.
Because visually, a lot of this plays like horror.
People are being chased by full-grown lions. They’re hiding. They’re scrambling. There’s real fear on screen.
And then the score comes in like it’s a family comedy.
There’s that house sequence—where everyone’s hiding in closets, refrigerators, lockers—while lions are actively trying to get to them…
…and the music is basically going: 🎶 “Isn’t this fun?!” 🎶
And it completely undercuts everything.
Your brain is saying: “This is dangerous.”
The movie is saying: “This is wacky.”
And the result is just tonal chaos.
WHEN THE SPECTACLE WEARS OFF
At first, the movie is kind of incredible.
You’re watching it thinking: “How did they even film this?”
But after about 45 minutes, that feeling fades.
Because you’ve seen it.
You understand the gimmick.
And without a strong narrative to carry things forward, it just becomes repetitive.
Scenes drag. The chaos stops escalating. And instead of building tension, the movie becomes an endurance test.
FINAL TAKE
For me, Roar! is fascinating as a piece of film history—but it doesn’t work as a movie.
The production stories are unbelievable. The footage is unlike anything else ever captured.
But what you’re watching isn’t a cohesive film—it’s real danger, loosely stitched together into something resembling a narrative.
And once the shock wears off, there’s just not enough there to sustain it.
It ends up feeling less like a movie and more like a wildly misguided experiment—one where the safety of the people involved often seems like an afterthought.
And honestly, the most impressive thing about Roar!…
…is that they somehow survived making it at all.
BOTTOM FIVE CATS
5. D.C. – That Darn Cat! 1965
Disney presents a mystery where the key witness… is completely uninterested in helping.
D.C., the Siamese cat at the center of That Darn Cat!, accidentally becomes the link to a kidnapping case when he returns home wearing a wristwatch belonging to the victim—complete with a scratched-in message reading “HELP.” From there, the FBI—led by Dean Jones in full flustered Disney-dad mode—builds an entire investigation around tracking this one cat.
And what does D.C. do with this responsibility? Absolutely nothing useful.
He wanders. He gets distracted. He refuses to cooperate. He actively derails surveillance efforts, disappears when it matters most, and generally behaves like a cat who has no idea he’s the star of a crime procedural.
Directed by Robert Stevenson—who also gave Disney one of its most polished live-action hits in Mary Poppins—this is a slick production built around a protagonist who embodies pure feline indifference.
Bottom line: The case would’ve been solved faster if literally anyone else had found that watch.
4. Irena Gallier – Cat People 1982
In Cat People, being a cat isn’t a condition—it’s… sort of a metaphor? Maybe a curse? Possibly just an excuse?
This is a remake of the 1942 Val Lewton-produced classic, which relied on suggestion and psychological horror. By contrast, director Paul Schrader—fresh off writing Taxi Driver and directing American Gigolo—leans hard into eroticism, dream logic, and visual style.
The premise: certain people turn into large predatory cats when sexually aroused. Which is a sentence that raises more questions than the film ever answers.
The rules are unclear. The mythology is half-explained. The tone swings wildly between arthouse mood piece and late-night cable fever dream. And while Nastassja Kinski is fully committed, the film itself seems far more interested in atmosphere than coherence—complete with a Giorgio Moroder score and a David Bowie theme song that arguably outclasses the movie.
Bottom line: Less “cat person,” more “person in a movie that occasionally remembers it has cats in it.”
3. The Tsavo Lions – The Ghost and the Darkness 1996
Based on a true story, The Ghost and the Darkness features two lions that behave less like animals and more like supernatural slashers.
The film dramatizes the infamous Tsavo man-eaters of 1898, who reportedly killed dozens of railway workers in Kenya. But in the movie, these lions don’t just hunt—they stalk, they strategize, they appear and disappear with eerie precision, and they seem to understand human behavior in a way that feels almost paranormal.
At times, they’re less like wildlife and more like Michael Myers with fur.
The pedigree behind the camera is no joke: written by William Goldman (The Princess Bride), directed by Stephen Hopkins (Predator 2), and shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), the film is beautifully made. Which only makes it funnier that the lions feel like they wandered in from a horror franchise. Add Val Kimer and Michael Douglas in front of the camera and you do have to wonder how this thing managed to be as dumb as it is.
Bottom line: These are the cats Hank from Roar thinks he can coexist with.
2. The Alien Cat – The Cat 1992
At a certain point, you have to ask: is this still a cat?
The Cat is based on the long-running “Wisely” novels by Hong Kong sci-fi writer Ni Kuang, which follow an adventurer who regularly encounters aliens, ancient mysteries, and other high-concept weirdness. The films loosely adapt those stories, and this entry goes… all in.
The “cat” in question is an extraterrestrial entity with psychic abilities, superhuman agility, and a direct connection to a human ally as they battle another alien threat. What follows is a barrage of wire-fu action, glowing-eye standoffs, telekinetic chaos, and tonal whiplash—all centered around something that looks like a house cat but functions like a sci-fi superhero.
The movie plays it completely straight, which somehow makes it even more unhinged.
Bottom line: This isn’t a cat. This is an intergalactic entity that occasionally meows.
1. The Mutant Cat – Uninvited 1978
And finally… the king of chaos.
In Uninvited, a genetically engineered lab cat escapes captivity—only to reveal that inside this cat… is another, far more aggressive cat. Yes. A cat within a cat. A biological nesting doll of feline terror.
After fleeing the lab, it stows away on a yacht owned by a group of deeply unpleasant rich people, where it proceeds to pick them off one by one. The kills are interspersed with some of the most delightfully terrible animatronic effects of the era, as the inner cat repeatedly emerges in ways that defy both anatomy and common sense.
Directed by Greydon Clark—a veteran of low-budget exploitation cinema—the film leans into its absurdity with complete sincerity, which only enhances the madness.
Bottom line: Not just a bad movie cat—the most aggressively unnecessary cat ever put on film.