Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is a good
Speaker 2: old Stuff you Should Know movie edition, which usually I
Speaker 2: have to say, have generally been pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Had you ever heard of this movie? No?
Speaker 2: I haven't, had you.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's legendary.
Speaker 2: Okay, you had. I didn't know if that was right
Speaker 2: or not. I looked up to see if anybody had
Speaker 2: written in, and I guess somebody named Ian Tindall had recently.
Speaker 2: Oh really, right, So in case that happened. Sometimes people
Speaker 2: write in and be like, oh, thanks for doing the
Speaker 2: episode I suggested, and it's something that had been on
Speaker 2: our list already, So that happened.
Speaker 3: Sometimes that just happened.
Speaker 1: Somebody wrote in and was like, hey, you didn't thank
Speaker 1: me for this one, and I was like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't.
Speaker 2: You know, Well, that is what happens. So if we
Speaker 2: don't thank you, there's a ninety eight percent chance that
Speaker 2: we didn't.
Speaker 3: We already had it, that's right. But I already had
Speaker 3: this one.
Speaker 1: This is a legendary movie known as the most dangerous
Speaker 1: film ever made from nineteen eighty one. This you know,
Speaker 1: big budget movie that was terrible and never shown in
Speaker 1: the United States much so it's no wonder that you
Speaker 1: hadn't heard of it.
Speaker 2: No, but I guess yeah, being a movie dude, this
Speaker 2: is the kind of thing. It's like a legendary movie
Speaker 2: for sure. Yeah, especially have you have you seen it?
Speaker 2: That's a guest. Oh no, no, no, no, Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: almost impossible to find. You could shell out I think
Speaker 2: one hundred bucks on Amazon to buy a DVD of it.
Speaker 3: Don't do that.
Speaker 2: Alamo draft House re released it in twenty fifteen, which
Speaker 2: generated a lot of buzz and interest in it. But
Speaker 2: they did it in such a way that people used
Speaker 2: to show the room kind of yeah, and then it's
Speaker 2: just not anywhere. It's nowhere. You can see some trailers
Speaker 2: and clips and stuff like that, but the movie itself
Speaker 2: is nowhere. That's kind of a shame, because from what
Speaker 2: I can tell from researching it, it would be something
Speaker 2: to see at least once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I don't feel like I'm missing out
Speaker 1: having never seen it all because I've seen tons of
Speaker 1: clips and read about it and stuff, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of one of those that to suffer through the entire thing.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's the thing you should do
Speaker 1: with the room, sure, but not necessarily with roar.
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, good, Well then I feel a lot better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just my dumb opinion.
Speaker 2: So all right, Charles, let's tell everybody what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: It's a nineteen eighty one movie.
Speaker 3: Roar.
Speaker 2: Like you said, a lot of people consider it the
Speaker 2: most dangerous film ever made. Why is it the most
Speaker 2: dangerous film ever made? Especially considering there's been plenty of
Speaker 2: movies where people have died making the movie, like Noah's
Speaker 2: Ark from I think the twenties. Three people drowned during
Speaker 2: the real deluge that they filmed. You know, there was
Speaker 2: the Twilight movie, Like people have died. No one died
Speaker 2: on this movie, So why do people call it the
Speaker 2: most dangerous film ever go?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean, in other cases, there have been
Speaker 1: accidents on films that were all, you know, top quality productions,
Speaker 1: where just something happened that was a big mistake. But
Speaker 1: in this case, the actors were purposefully put in peril
Speaker 1: because of just the whole idea of the film to
Speaker 1: begin with. And there's really no way to talk about
Speaker 1: it without just sort of telling the story. I guess
Speaker 1: from inception, which was a married couple in Hollywood, the
Speaker 1: great Tippy Hedron from You probably know her from Alfred
Speaker 1: Hitchcock's The Birds most famously, Yeah, and her hubby, Noel Marshall,
Speaker 1: who was her agent and a movie producer. He was
Speaker 1: best known, probably still best known for the Exorcists and
Speaker 1: unfortunately roar. Yeah, he kind of rewrote his legacy after
Speaker 1: the Exorcists. But they were married couple who thought of
Speaker 1: this idea because of a trip they took.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So roar is essentially like it's meant to
Speaker 2: generate like good will and stuff among humans toward wild animals,
Speaker 2: right to show them that wild animals are nothing to
Speaker 2: be afraid of. And Tippy Hedron and Noel Marshall had
Speaker 2: a shared love of animals and wildlife that dated all
Speaker 2: the way back to Marshall's youth, I think his teenage
Speaker 2: yeers when he volunteered at the Saint Louis Zoo. And
Speaker 2: I guess as he and Tippy Hedron got together, he
Speaker 2: kind of influenced her. She was already a champion of
Speaker 2: certain social causes, but she hadn't taken up animal welfare yet.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. You know she had an activist heart.
Speaker 1: I guess always did. And they were in Africa. They
Speaker 1: were in Zimbabwe filming. She was filming a movie. This
Speaker 1: was in nineteen sixty nine. It was a movie called
Speaker 1: Satan's harvest YEP. So you know, her career wasn't at
Speaker 1: his zenith after the Birds. But while they were there,
Speaker 1: they went to Mozambique and went to a game preserve there,
Speaker 1: and a couple of sort of key things came out
Speaker 1: of that game reserve. I guess preserve visit. I guess
Speaker 1: it's the reserve and a preserve.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: Sure, the PA is in parentheses before this, right.
Speaker 1: They saw an abandoned house that had a pride of
Speaker 1: thirty lions living in this home sort of in and out,
Speaker 1: and they were like, huh, Like, what an interesting concept,
Speaker 1: you know, to be put on film. This looks really
Speaker 1: kind of strange seeing these big cats roaming around a home.
Speaker 1: And then the second thing is that their guide there
Speaker 1: kind of educated them on what was going on with
Speaker 1: the poaching conditions back then, and that really inspired them
Speaker 1: to do something to drive some sort of awareness about
Speaker 1: these beautiful big cats.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was kind of in the air at
Speaker 2: the time too, Like there was a big like jungle
Speaker 2: adventure in Africa like theme going on in a lot
Speaker 2: of movies and TV. There's a very popular TV show
Speaker 2: called Duct about a father and daughter veterinary team who
Speaker 2: worked with wildlife in East Africa. And get this, Chuck Daktari,
Speaker 2: which is if a drama was based on a movie
Speaker 2: called Clarence the Cross Eyed Lion.
Speaker 3: Oh, poor Clarence, I know, But how do you.
Speaker 2: Get Clarence the Cross Eyed Lion to the serious like
Speaker 2: animal medical drama Doctari. That's a strange transition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think probably a pretty smart one because Doctari
Speaker 1: was on for a few seasons. Yeah, you know, other
Speaker 1: stuff like Mutual Omaha's Wild Kingdom was big.
Speaker 3: And I think you're right.
Speaker 1: I think there was a general fascination with Africa in
Speaker 1: the United States at the time, so they were bitten
Speaker 1: by that bug. They get back to Hollywood and they said, hey,
Speaker 1: what if we do this movie? What if we do
Speaker 1: a movie about these big cats? And they pushed the
Speaker 1: idea to some animal trainers and they said, that's a
Speaker 1: really bad eye. It's not practical and it's like super
Speaker 1: dangerous and but caveat.
Speaker 3: I suppose if you raise.
Speaker 1: Them together and they all knew each other and they
Speaker 1: were raised with humans, then it might not be as
Speaker 1: dangerous or dumb of an idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so this is the first step that is
Speaker 2: actually a step backward, because I get the impression they
Speaker 2: came back from Africa and just assumed they were going
Speaker 2: to get a bunch of like rent a bunch of
Speaker 2: lions and tigers and stuff putting together, you know, knock
Speaker 2: this movie out in a year or something at the most. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's not the case. This so they actually started from scratch.
Speaker 2: They got their hands on a lion cub named Neil,
Speaker 2: and they started raising him around the family in the
Speaker 2: house with their teenage children, one of whom was Melanie Griffith.
Speaker 2: She is Tippy Hedron's daughter, and she was like thirteen
Speaker 2: or fourteen when Neil came into the picture and they
Speaker 2: raised him from a cub into this four hundred pound
Speaker 2: family pet, fully grown male African lion Maine and all
Speaker 2: like sleeping in bed with Melanie Griffith at the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean this wasn't they didn't have a
Speaker 1: ranch out in the middle of nowhere, right, This was
Speaker 1: in the valley. This is in Sherman Oaks, in their
Speaker 1: Spanish home in Sherman Oaks. So I'm not sure about
Speaker 1: the laws at the time. We'll see that they were
Speaker 1: ordered to get rid of them about a year later.
Speaker 1: In fact, it was about a year after Life magazine
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy one ran a big photographic feature that
Speaker 1: it was, you know, the very sensational thing. It showed
Speaker 1: all these amazing pictures of life with this four hundred
Speaker 1: pound lion living in the home, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, hanging out.
Speaker 3: By the pool, the kids playing with them.
Speaker 1: And so about a year after that, I guess the
Speaker 1: city stepped in and said, you can't do that in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles even.
Speaker 2: No, and in retrospect, I think in her autobiography, Tippy
Speaker 2: Hedrin later wrote that she realized that this was stupid
Speaker 2: on belief to keep a four hundred pound male lion
Speaker 2: in the house around her family. And like there's pictures
Speaker 2: of her like lounging around with her head on the
Speaker 2: lions like chests and everything. They're both laying on the
Speaker 2: ground together. It is. It's quite a photo spread. And
Speaker 2: it's also got that perfect like late sixties early seventies photo. Lookye,
Speaker 2: you just could not possibly recreate it looks like that.
Speaker 2: It's really cool. Yeah, but yeah, so they were ordered
Speaker 2: to get rid of the animals. By this time, they'd
Speaker 2: started collecting other lions and started raising them together again,
Speaker 2: with the ultimate goal of filming them all together in
Speaker 2: this movie that they wanted to make. Right, So, instead
Speaker 2: of getting rid of their actors and pets, they bought
Speaker 2: like a ranch in Actin, which is in Solidad Canyon.
Speaker 2: I guess a little north of Los Angeles. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you know where that is, right.
Speaker 1: I had never heard of Actin. Actually it said it
Speaker 1: is forty miles north, but I think I'd heard of
Speaker 1: solid Ad Canyon.
Speaker 3: But and it's new to me. I guess that's where
Speaker 3: you go when you want to raise lions, right.
Speaker 2: The locals leave you alone when you show up with
Speaker 2: a bunch of lions, right, And they did. They bought
Speaker 2: a bunch of acreage and created a compound. And even
Speaker 2: the compound was bought with an eye toward the ultimate
Speaker 2: goal of making this movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they wanted to film it like, you know,
Speaker 1: as lions who lived in a house. And so they
Speaker 1: created everything was kind of built as a movie set
Speaker 1: to be, so they landscaped it with you know, it
Speaker 1: was supposed to be an Africa set in Africa, so
Speaker 1: they landscaped it with plants and architectural styles that might
Speaker 1: have mimicked southern Africa. They put in an artificial pond,
Speaker 1: and then eventually they would move there a few years
Speaker 1: later in nineteen seventy six and live on the property
Speaker 1: and kind of get to work on that movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was about the year that they started with
Speaker 2: seventy six. I say we take a break and we'll
Speaker 2: get into actually making the film, because this is about
Speaker 2: the point where things start to get a little bonkers.
Speaker 3: That's right, we'll be right back, Chuck.
Speaker 2: Before we get back into it, I have a tippy
Speaker 2: hedron fact that I found. She is the only actress
Speaker 2: to be directed by Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin, and Edward Jr.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's quite a career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I like that Ben diagram.
Speaker 2: So yeah, okay, so we're at the filming, the beginning
Speaker 2: of filming. The cameras are rolling, and the cameras just
Speaker 2: kept rolling.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they kept rolling.
Speaker 1: You know, by this point they had more animals, I
Speaker 1: believe you mentioned they started collecting more, but specifically they
Speaker 1: had tigers by that point, they had leopards, they had panthers,
Speaker 1: they had cougars. Notably, they had I mean, this was
Speaker 1: self described by Tippy Hedron.
Speaker 3: Those were just sort of the big cats.
Speaker 1: They also had flamingos and ostriches and storks and swans
Speaker 1: and sheep, and they even had an elephant which made
Speaker 1: an appearance in the movie. And these are all pets
Speaker 1: living there together, again with the aim that they would
Speaker 1: all know one another by that point and be docile
Speaker 1: enough to be you know, animal actors.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But as you would imagine, they had a hard time
Speaker 1: raising money for the project because mainly they didn't have
Speaker 1: much of a project except for a loose idea.
Speaker 2: I guess no they had a bunch of real estate.
Speaker 2: They ended up self financing this thing mostly so they
Speaker 2: sold a bunch of their real estate to put the
Speaker 2: cash into this film. I think Noel was one of
Speaker 2: the producers on The Exorcists, and he made a bunch
Speaker 2: of money off of that. He was essentially an investor
Speaker 2: in it, so we got an executive producer credit. And
Speaker 2: I guess some of the back plum is that what
Speaker 2: it's called back plumb, Yeah, the back end. Sure, the
Speaker 2: back end, but it's plummy.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: Anyway, he had a bunch of money from the Exorcists.
Speaker 2: They threw that into and they're like, Okay, this is
Speaker 2: gonna be such a cool movie that no one's ever
Speaker 2: done anything like this before. We're just gonna make our
Speaker 2: money back a million times over. And initially the whole idea,
Speaker 2: remember they had seen that pride of lions living in
Speaker 2: this and that was kind of what kicked this off.
Speaker 2: So the whole thing was very lion centric. But I
Speaker 2: think the working titles were Lions or Lions, Lions and
Speaker 2: more Lions. Those are definitely working titles. I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes ror look pretty great by comparison it
Speaker 3: a title it does.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you could see Noel like dropping his gin and
Speaker 2: Tonic thinking like I got it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you said.
Speaker 2: They collected a bunch of other animals, some of which
Speaker 2: do not live in Africa, like Siberian tigers do not
Speaker 2: live in Africa. But that didn't stop them, so they
Speaker 2: expanded the scope even more because they wanted their whole
Speaker 2: face of big cats and animals to be able to
Speaker 2: star in this movie. So they ended up kind of
Speaker 2: expanding the focus of the whole thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. They didn't even have a script.
Speaker 1: And you know, Marshall was not a writer, like you know,
Speaker 1: like you said he invested in The Exorcist. I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone ever confused him with a creative in Hollywood, huh.
Speaker 1: But he did write the script. He got some ideas
Speaker 1: from Tippy. He wrote the script, said he was going
Speaker 1: to direct the film and it was a family adventure,
Speaker 1: so he was going to have all of his family
Speaker 1: in it, which was you know, young Melanie, and then
Speaker 1: he had two sons from a previous marriage, Jerry and.
Speaker 3: John, and they were all going to be in it.
Speaker 1: But they were like, we need a real deal, like
Speaker 1: regular lead actor for the male role to play like
Speaker 1: the patriarch of this family. But they could not get
Speaker 1: any actor to sign on because again I don't think
Speaker 1: even people thought it would be that dangerous. Yet they
Speaker 1: just knew it was not a good idea and it
Speaker 1: was bad. The script was terrible.
Speaker 3: So Marshall was like, you know what, I'll just do
Speaker 3: that too, right.
Speaker 2: I'm sure they were like what is wrong with everybody?
Speaker 2: Between not raising financing or getting a star yeah, so
Speaker 2: Noel wrote, directed, and starred in this movie, like you
Speaker 2: were saying, and that, from all of my experience, any
Speaker 2: movie that is written, directed, and starred in is essentially
Speaker 2: going to be not as good as it would be
Speaker 2: if any one of those were taken out of that equation.
Speaker 2: Oh you think, yeah, because there's no one there to
Speaker 2: tell the director or the writer or the lead actor
Speaker 2: don't do this. Like those things are supposed to be
Speaker 2: checks and balances, like the three branches of government in
Speaker 2: the United States. So if you have all of them
Speaker 2: together as one, you got a big problem.
Speaker 3: All Right, I disagree, but we'll just walk right past it.
Speaker 2: All right, that's fine.
Speaker 3: I mean I think if you're terrible, then it's a
Speaker 3: bad idea. But there have been plenty of examples of
Speaker 3: great writer, director, actors, and great films.
Speaker 2: Okay, name one besides Herbie the Lovebug.
Speaker 3: I like most anything clinice Wood's ever been in.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't fully agree with that, but okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, I mean that's fine. You can nitpick
Speaker 1: clinice Wood anyway. Like I said, we don't need to
Speaker 1: debate this point, man.
Speaker 2: It's just similar. Like the pot is just simmering almost over,
Speaker 2: but we're gonna walk past it, like you said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the point why this is bad is
Speaker 1: because he was not a talented human being. Early on, though,
Speaker 1: Melanie Griffith is like, I don't want to be in
Speaker 1: this movie. I think the direct quote was to her
Speaker 1: mom was I don't want to come out of here
Speaker 1: with half a face. So she backed out. They got
Speaker 1: her friend to star instead, or friend who was an actor.
Speaker 1: But eventually she was like, you know what, I guess
Speaker 1: I will be in the movie. So she came back
Speaker 1: on board and they completely reshot all the scenes. They're
Speaker 1: just burning through money at this point, ye, but reshot
Speaker 1: the scene so Melanie could be back in the film.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that friend ned who went on to become an
Speaker 2: award winning Folly artist. And that's right. It's like you said,
Speaker 2: they're burning through money. Because there's something to remember here
Speaker 2: that I didn't think about until pretty far down the research,
Speaker 2: Like they were not shooting video, they were not using
Speaker 2: SD cards. They were using actual film stock over and over,
Speaker 2: like all sorts of film stock. And that stuff was expensive,
Speaker 2: wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they you know at one point because
Speaker 1: they had to essentially just keep cameras rolling and wait
Speaker 1: for the animals to do something interesting. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: shooting you know, six seven, eight cameras at a time
Speaker 1: sometimes and this was I mean, this is something you
Speaker 1: routinely see now, but back then you didn't. You know,
Speaker 1: you maybe had three or four cameras max on like
Speaker 1: a huge, huge stunt, but rolling that many cameras just
Speaker 1: wasn't what you did typically back then on films, especially
Speaker 1: films of the size, so that they were just burning
Speaker 1: money on film stock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like you said, the reason why they were
Speaker 2: just running all the times because the cats had zero training,
Speaker 2: Like you could not tell them like, okay, we need
Speaker 2: you to jump at this person because in this scene
Speaker 2: it calls for that. The cats would just look at
Speaker 2: you like I hear like man b bae bit and
Speaker 2: that's it, Like I don't know what you're saying. So
Speaker 2: occasionally they would do something interesting enough to use in
Speaker 2: the film, and then they reverse engineered it and wrote
Speaker 2: the plot around the stuff that they had filmed the
Speaker 2: cats doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and all the animals.
Speaker 1: There was a scene where the elephant destroys a boat,
Speaker 1: and that scene is in there because the elephant destroyed
Speaker 1: a boat, right. It was not planned, but they were like, hey,
Speaker 1: we got a little bit of production value out of
Speaker 1: the elephant wrecking that boat, right, so we got to.
Speaker 3: Put it in the movie.
Speaker 1: The other thing was is these animals were you know,
Speaker 1: they were raised in captivity and were used to laying
Speaker 1: around by the pool and laying in bed in a
Speaker 1: fairly sedate scene. So while they were pretty calm and
Speaker 1: chill as far as big cats go in the movie,
Speaker 1: when the real human actors are instructed to like yell
Speaker 1: and scream or to run away or something that would
Speaker 1: incite or excite, rather these animals in ways you know
Speaker 1: that they weren't prepared for either.
Speaker 2: I know, I felt bad about that confused them, and
Speaker 2: that's said. They were like, why are friends you know yelling?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know we're we're going to get to
Speaker 1: some of the darker stuff later. This isn't all just
Speaker 1: like funny.
Speaker 2: No good point. So this whole thing, the entire film
Speaker 2: takes about five years to film, and not just because
Speaker 2: the animals weren't doing what you'd want them to almost
Speaker 2: all the time. There were some real catastrophes that they
Speaker 2: ran into that were just totally unavoidable. But this is
Speaker 2: a very dangerous set, Like that is the through line
Speaker 2: here if you haven't picked up on that. People are
Speaker 2: interacting with you know, domesticated to an extent, but there's
Speaker 2: still very much wild fully grown lions, tigers, leopards, and
Speaker 2: that's what's going on they're filming that. They're filming like
Speaker 2: the lions jumping on people and attacking people, and so
Speaker 2: this is like a really dangerous set at the same
Speaker 2: time because they were using all this stuff, there's a
Speaker 2: strange realism to the whole thing, especially the violence that
Speaker 2: the animals inflict on the humans, because it actually was
Speaker 2: what was going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean they had a hard time
Speaker 1: sustaining funding because of this. They had a hard time
Speaker 1: sustaining a crew because of this. I think in total
Speaker 1: over the five years they had about one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty different crew members because people, you know, they would
Speaker 1: get on set, they would work for a little while.
Speaker 1: Either there would be you know, something terrible and horrifying
Speaker 1: would happen, or they would just realize, like you know,
Speaker 1: you know when you get on one of those shows
Speaker 1: where you're just like this is not a professional outfit, right,
Speaker 1: So get out of there as quickly as I can
Speaker 1: get something else going. They're shooting it all at this
Speaker 1: compound for Africa there sort of deep outside Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: and people started getting hurt. I think seventy cast and
Speaker 1: crew members ended up getting injuries. And in the if
Speaker 1: you look at the Alamo Drafthouse trailer that they put
Speaker 1: out online, at the end, it'll show as they're announcing
Speaker 1: the cast, it would freeze frame on that cast member
Speaker 1: and in parentheses like give their name and then say
Speaker 1: kind of what their most major injury was on set.
Speaker 2: Right, Probably the biggest one was Yon Debance. You probably
Speaker 2: recognize him from such films as Heart of a Champion,
Speaker 2: The ray Mancini Story, or Roar. But he was the
Speaker 2: cinematographer for this movie and he took it like three
Speaker 2: weeks after this whole thing started. He got it bad
Speaker 2: where a lion essentially scalped him from the back half
Speaker 2: of his head backward.
Speaker 1: Yeah, two hundred and twenty stitches. But he would complete
Speaker 1: the film and before you start emailing us, I gotta
Speaker 1: stem the tide, Josh. Unfortunately, Yon Debant is very much
Speaker 1: known for being a big time action movie director. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you were kidding, right, yeah, okay, just making sure.
Speaker 1: He directed Speed and Twister and some other, you know,
Speaker 1: very big movies later on. But this was his first
Speaker 1: film in the United States, and I think that's probably
Speaker 1: why he kept coming back, because it was his first
Speaker 1: film in the States, and maybe he didn't think it
Speaker 1: would be such idea to quit his first movie here.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, because that's a really good point. He was
Speaker 2: a very talented cinematographer by this time. Like that's one
Speaker 2: of the other things he's very well known for, not
Speaker 2: just directing. So like this movie, this, like you said,
Speaker 2: completely like unprofessional outfit where the writer, director, and star
Speaker 2: has no experience in any of those fields, has a
Speaker 2: world class cinematographer working for it, which makes the whole
Speaker 2: thing even that much more bizarre when you watch it.
Speaker 3: Apparently, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1: So you know, speaking of John Marshall, I believe he
Speaker 1: was one of the sons. He got bit on the
Speaker 1: head he tripped and fell during a scene. And of
Speaker 1: course again this you know, I don't think we mentioned
Speaker 1: that not only were the animals not prepared for some
Speaker 1: of this stuff, but they didn't have a full staff
Speaker 1: of animal wranglers on hand, like anytime you have a
Speaker 1: I mean it really depends, but if it's like a
Speaker 1: big cat or something like this, you've got a team
Speaker 1: of people there for each one, right, and you know
Speaker 1: they had some help, but they weren't staff like they
Speaker 1: needed to be.
Speaker 2: No, And I think those are also the same crew
Speaker 2: that kind of came and went over time. They were
Speaker 2: like this, this is nutstude. I don't want to have
Speaker 2: anything to do with this.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, they didn't want their name on this thing
Speaker 3: because they saw where it was going.
Speaker 2: So Melanie Griffith, who said that she didn't want to
Speaker 2: come out of this with half a face, came very
Speaker 2: close to that. Actually, she got clawed by her eye.
Speaker 2: She needed fifty stitches. She also had to undergo cosmetic
Speaker 2: surgery to kind of reconstruct that part of her face. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that made it into the movie.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that scene, I mean that was a very believable
Speaker 3: tax scene.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So you got a clumsy plot and actors, you
Speaker 2: have a great cinematographer, and now also you have genuine
Speaker 2: terror and blood that shows up in this essentially what's
Speaker 2: supposed to be like a kind of wacky comedy family adventure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, there were two cases of Gangreen from
Speaker 1: you know, getting bitten by infected cat mouths. Tippy Hedron
Speaker 1: was one. She got a lion bite, got Gangreen. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure where she got it, but she ended up
Speaker 1: getting skin grass. There was also a scene where she
Speaker 1: was riding on Timbo the elephant, and this animal wasn't
Speaker 1: used to being ridden and like have somebody like shouting
Speaker 1: and stuff like she was, so it threw her off,
Speaker 1: fractured her ankle. And then Noel, the star and the
Speaker 1: director and madman behind all this, he got the other
Speaker 1: case of Gangreen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Tippy Hedron getting thrown from the elephant and breaking
Speaker 2: your ankle. That made it into the movie as well.
Speaker 2: I know Noel got a bite on the hand trying
Speaker 2: to break up a fight between lions and started bleeding.
Speaker 2: That made it into the movie as well. So all
Speaker 2: of this stuff is just showing up. Two crew members
Speaker 2: lost digits. Like over a six year period, people kept
Speaker 2: coming back, Like the core, people kept coming back and
Speaker 2: coming back and coming back. There's one other thing to
Speaker 2: keep in mind. To Charles, this was supposed to take place.
Speaker 2: The action in the movie takes place over what maybe
Speaker 2: like a few days, weeks, months tops. The actors involved
Speaker 2: are all aging, like over the course of several years,
Speaker 2: some of them teenagers under Like you really undergo some
Speaker 2: serious like outward changes over like a few years in
Speaker 2: your teens, and they had to kind of like deal
Speaker 2: with that as well. This is like reverse boyhood essentially.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. There was also a flash flood which
Speaker 1: damaged some fencing. This is nineteen seventy eight, so this
Speaker 1: is like two and a half years into this thing,
Speaker 1: and it damaged some of the fencing such that some
Speaker 1: of these big cats escaped.
Speaker 3: This is some of the darker stuff as far.
Speaker 1: As the animals are concerned, because they really played up
Speaker 1: the idea that no animals were hurt in the filming
Speaker 1: of this, like only humans. But they recovered most of
Speaker 1: those animals, but allegedly the deputies there ended up having
Speaker 1: to shoot and kill three lions. Yeah, and there was
Speaker 1: also a situation where I think there was a disease
Speaker 1: that spread through the.
Speaker 3: Cat community and some of them died.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get like good verification on that, but
Speaker 1: I see plenty of places that claim that happened.
Speaker 2: Right, And technically none of this happened during filming. But yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's just part of a problem. When you
Speaker 2: have hundreds of like big cats all living together, that's
Speaker 2: not how they live. That flood you mentioned they had
Speaker 2: like twenty minutes of filming left. I think when there
Speaker 2: was a wildfire they were down to like seven minutes
Speaker 2: something like that. And it just kept getting set back
Speaker 2: and set back. That flood was so destructive that it
Speaker 2: destroyed a lot of the vegetation and that made up
Speaker 2: the set, so they had to replant and then wait
Speaker 2: for it to grow back again. It just kept getting
Speaker 2: set back and set back. I have the impression, and
Speaker 2: I don't know if you got the same impression that
Speaker 2: Tippy Heeddron and Noel Marshall were so deep into this
Speaker 2: financially that they couldn't walk away. They had to finish
Speaker 2: this because it was it had to be a hit
Speaker 2: or else they were in serious financial trouble. Did you
Speaker 2: get that same impression?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, who knows what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's either that or just like the Madman thing takes over, right,
Speaker 1: But I bet I know that. You know, they certainly
Speaker 1: had no chance of recovering any money if they stopped,
Speaker 1: and they knew that too, and they were close to
Speaker 1: being done. Like you said, they did finally finish in
Speaker 1: the fall of seventy nine. They had to shoot a
Speaker 1: little bit in Africa, but most everything was taking place
Speaker 1: there at their ranch, and they spent and this was
Speaker 1: you know, late seventies money, about seventeen million dollars, which
Speaker 1: is almost what Raiders of the Lost Art cost. So
Speaker 1: they're definitely not getting their production value. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: a lot of that seventeen million was just you know,
Speaker 1: wasted money, like film stock and rebuilding things and just
Speaker 1: waiting around and waiting around and paying crew while you're
Speaker 1: waiting around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I can't imagine that seventeen million
Speaker 2: dollars worth of production value made it into Roar from
Speaker 2: everything I've seen, you.
Speaker 1: Know, I don't think seven hundred thousand dollars worth of
Speaker 1: production value except I guess Yandubont shooting some nice looking
Speaker 1: stuff probably for sure.
Speaker 2: So they finally finished filming, they get it edited, it's
Speaker 2: all ready to go. They've like got their hands together,
Speaker 2: they're rubbing their hands. They're ready to start making some
Speaker 2: money back. And they cannot find anyone in the United
Speaker 2: States to sign on as a distributor, which is a
Speaker 2: huge problem, especially back then you had no streaming services whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Like the way you saw a movie was to go
Speaker 2: to a movie theater, and the way you got your
Speaker 2: movie in movie theaters was by having a contract with
Speaker 2: the distributor to get that movie out to movie theaters
Speaker 2: so that you could have money coming back in. They
Speaker 2: did not have that in the United States. They never
Speaker 2: got it in the US.
Speaker 1: No, no release in the US.
Speaker 3: It was a non union production, so that had something
Speaker 3: to do with it.
Speaker 1: But really the deal was it was just a really
Speaker 1: bad movie, sure, and nobody wanted to release it. I
Speaker 1: think even at the time they didn't think like if
Speaker 1: a distributor doesn't even think they can get it back
Speaker 1: based on how notorious you can trump up the advertising
Speaker 1: of like the most dangerous film ever made. Like it
Speaker 1: was really that bad that they couldn't even get like
Speaker 1: cult B movie status going for it, you know.
Speaker 2: No, And there was a lot of buzz too. I
Speaker 2: read some of the press tour that Tippy Heedron was
Speaker 2: doing in nineteen seventy nine to help, you know, pump
Speaker 2: up the release of the movie, and like it was
Speaker 2: widely discussed. Apparently it was. It was shown widely in
Speaker 2: the UK and Ireland. But even all that, it was
Speaker 2: I think it grossed two million dollars worldwide. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: they lost fifteen million dollars just out of the gate.
Speaker 2: And because it was never shown almost anywhere else, especially
Speaker 2: after its first run, they had like there's that was it.
Speaker 2: That's all they ever made off of it, Like they
Speaker 2: haven't slowly been making their money back. It just ended
Speaker 2: its life right then and there after it limped out
Speaker 2: of the last theater in the UK.
Speaker 3: That's right, let's stick our second break.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, we'll be right back with a
Speaker 1: little bit more believe it or not about Roar right
Speaker 1: after this.
Speaker 3: All right, we're back.
Speaker 1: More about Roar, which by the way, was about one
Speaker 1: hundred minutes long. Livia did the great service of trying
Speaker 1: to break down, even without seeing it, the plot of
Speaker 1: this whole movie. I don't think we should kind of
Speaker 1: go over that because maybe spoilers if people want to
Speaker 1: try and find this thing, but almost certainly more because
Speaker 1: it's not a very good movie at all.
Speaker 3: Sure, but just loosely.
Speaker 1: It was a plot about an eccentric American scientist who
Speaker 1: spent a few years living in Tanzania's where it was
Speaker 1: set and then having his family come out there, and
Speaker 1: you know, it was really about that simple, like these people.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a mistaken communication where the family comes
Speaker 1: right as the dad has gone to go to the airport,
Speaker 1: so they walk into the scene where all these lions
Speaker 1: and it's really that bad.
Speaker 3: Like that's kind of the plot of the movie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the overall theme of the movie is that
Speaker 2: this doctor, in the time that he's been living in Tanzania,
Speaker 2: started living among the wild animals he's studying and become
Speaker 2: like a family with them. Now his family who hasn't
Speaker 2: been living with these animals is showing up, and this
Speaker 2: is I think what I understand is that you start
Speaker 2: to see the process of them kind of coming around
Speaker 2: through all the attacks and hijinks and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: until the overall message is if you treat wild animals
Speaker 2: in a friendly manner, they're going to be friendly. If
Speaker 2: you are scared of them and you treat them hostily,
Speaker 2: they're going to respond as such. The thing about this
Speaker 2: is I think it was Richard Brody from The New
Speaker 2: Yorker he points out that just consistently throughout the movie,
Speaker 2: this message is contradicted time after time after time where
Speaker 2: people are being friendly to these animals and the animals
Speaker 2: are like drawing blood and attacking them on screen in
Speaker 2: the movie. So the message itself was flawed out of
Speaker 2: the gate, even though it was an admirable one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another big flaw was that it was sort of a
Speaker 1: genre less film. Yeah, parts of it seem like home movies,
Speaker 1: parts of it seem like comedy, Like a couple of
Speaker 1: the attacks are played as straight up comedic, parts of
Speaker 1: it are played up for the true terror. And the
Speaker 1: score even is all over the place, So the score
Speaker 1: sometimes feels like a horror movie and the score sometimes
Speaker 1: feels like a comedy. I think Tippy Hendrid says they
Speaker 1: based some of the stuff on old slapstick silent comedies,
Speaker 1: so it was completely rudderless. And that critic that you
Speaker 1: talked about, Richard Brody, one of his quotes was kind
Speaker 1: of back this up. He said, Marshall doesn't quite seem
Speaker 1: aware of the forms he's using.
Speaker 3: So it was just a big mess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, big mess. I think that should be like the tagline, right,
Speaker 2: So yeah, I guess if you're like I got to
Speaker 2: see this, there are stuff, there are things you can
Speaker 2: see online, but you're just unless you're gonna show out
Speaker 2: a hundred bucks, you're not gonna see the whole movie.
Speaker 2: One of the cool things about this though, is from
Speaker 2: the outset, Tippy Heedron and Noel Marshall were not just
Speaker 2: about like, let's just make a bunch of money exploiting animals.
Speaker 2: They one of their stated purposes of making war was
Speaker 2: to take some a significant amount of the proceeds and
Speaker 2: put it toward wild animal welfare. And they put their
Speaker 2: money where their mouth is, even though they lost a
Speaker 2: bunch of money, and they basically turned their compound into
Speaker 2: a place called the Cats of Shambala, which is like
Speaker 2: they presented as a place of peace between animals and
Speaker 2: humans where they can come together in harmony. It's still
Speaker 2: around today, and it's the home of the Roar Foundation,
Speaker 2: which is also still around today, which is still promoting
Speaker 2: money and lobbying for legislation on behalf of animal welfare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I mean that is when positive. They
Speaker 1: would get divorced about a year after this movie, and
Speaker 1: he continued to support the Shambala project even after that,
Speaker 1: which was a good thing. But I don't want to
Speaker 1: paint Marshall is like some great dude because you know,
Speaker 1: reading some of the accounts, it seems like he had
Speaker 1: a definite anger problem, was possibly violent with his own family.
Speaker 1: Definitely there were moments where his you know, fourteen fifteen
Speaker 1: year old stepdaughter is like really upset and crying and
Speaker 1: doesn't want to continue, and he's forcing her back into
Speaker 1: these scenes.
Speaker 3: So he was not a good dude.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to portray this as just like
Speaker 1: sort of a fun family project gone wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah. There was an interview with his son John around
Speaker 2: the time that this was re released by draft House
Speaker 2: Films in twenty fifteen where John was like, you know,
Speaker 2: we all had safe words that we could use when
Speaker 2: we were filming if we were uncomfortable, that we could get,
Speaker 2: you know, removed from that situation and filming would stop.
Speaker 2: And he said there was at least one time when
Speaker 2: Melanie used her safe word and Noel just ignored it
Speaker 2: and made everybody keep filming. So yeah, I think that
Speaker 2: was that's definitely worth pointing out for sure. But like
Speaker 2: you said, I mean, he's known for being an executive
Speaker 2: producer investor on the Exorcist, and he's known for ror
Speaker 2: and he will always be known for Roor from what
Speaker 2: I can tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure, that's his legacy.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty five, it got a little bit more
Speaker 1: attention because the Today Show had Tippy Hedron on because
Speaker 1: she had written a book, her autobiography or at least
Speaker 1: about this, The Cats of Shambala, So she was on
Speaker 1: there promoting that, they showed clips from Roor and so
Speaker 1: it got a little bit of attention in the United
Speaker 1: States at the time and then was kind of not
Speaker 1: heard from again until Draft House Films. Yeah, came along,
Speaker 1: like you said, in twenty fifteen, and you know, played
Speaker 1: it up for what it was, which is a pretty.
Speaker 3: Bad, I mean B movie at best.
Speaker 1: I think most B movies usually even have more of
Speaker 1: a plot than this thing did.
Speaker 2: Yeah. They that's where the tagline the most dangerous film
Speaker 2: ever made came from, which is very popular these days.
Speaker 2: And they also were the ones that came up with
Speaker 2: No animals were harmed during the making of Roar, but
Speaker 2: seventy members of the cast and crew were, and Tippy
Speaker 2: Hedron apparently was not at all happy about the I'm
Speaker 2: sure this portrayal, and the Roor Foundation asked not to
Speaker 2: speak publicly about it. Apparently she was that mad about it.
Speaker 2: There is an Animal Planet documentary. I couldn't find that either,
Speaker 2: but it was called Roar, the Most Dangerous Movie ever made.
Speaker 2: It came out in twenty seventeen, and then there's been reviews,
Speaker 2: especially after Alamo or the Draft House released it in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. A lot of like those kind of online
Speaker 2: reviewers who just love like terrible movies, really sank their
Speaker 2: teeth into this, if you'll excuse that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think my favorite one is from Under the Radar,
Speaker 1: it said, based on his reputation alone, nineteen eighty one's
Speaker 1: Roar is the citizen Kane of films where actors were
Speaker 1: mauled by lions. That's pretty good.
Speaker 2: Drew mcweeney also had a pretty memorable quote. They said
Speaker 2: that it feels like Walt Disney decided to make a
Speaker 2: snuff version of Swiss Family Robinson.
Speaker 3: That's kind of on point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, if you are like, I don't
Speaker 2: care about any of this. I just want to help
Speaker 2: the big cats. Like I said, the Shambala Preserve is
Speaker 2: still around, The RAR Foundation is around, and they're accepting donations.
Speaker 2: I think they're down to like nine big cats now.
Speaker 2: They've definitely whittled it down I'm guessing that the other
Speaker 2: big cats kind of died of natural causes over time, hopefully.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there you go. And Tippy Hedron's still alive.
Speaker 2: She's coming up on her one hundredth birthday in twenty thirty.
Speaker 3: Well, I hope she doesn't listen to this.
Speaker 2: I feel like we did it justice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, which is exactly probably what she doesn't want to hear.
Speaker 2: Okay, it's true. Well, if you're listening, Tippy, hats off
Speaker 2: to you. And since I did our annual hats off
Speaker 2: to Tippy Hedron, I just unlocked blistener mail.
Speaker 3: For a second, I thought you're gonna say Tippy of
Speaker 3: the hat to you.
Speaker 2: After all the times we've done that too, I can't
Speaker 2: believe we've never come up with that before.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call this shouting out a good little
Speaker 1: thing that this company's doing because we heard from Robin
Speaker 1: about a company.
Speaker 3: Oh, let me just read it.
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, So listen to you from the mountains of
Speaker 1: western North Carolina near Asheville, and I just listened to
Speaker 1: the Mangroves episode, notably one of my favorite trees, and
Speaker 1: I wanted to share information that's me talking about, right.
Speaker 3: I wanted to share information on.
Speaker 1: A company called man mang Gear m A n G Gear.
Speaker 1: They make SPF shirts and for every shirt they sell,
Speaker 1: they plan a mangrove tree.
Speaker 2: Nice.
Speaker 1: It's a nonprofit started by two brothers. And when you
Speaker 1: do this they send you a certificate the GPS coordinates
Speaker 1: of the location cool where your mangrove was planted. After
Speaker 1: listening to the episode, it couldn't help it share in
Speaker 1: case you wanted to do show some support to their work.
Speaker 1: I listen all the time. Every episode is chock full
Speaker 1: of information, facts and history. And let's not forget you
Speaker 1: both are great hosts and make the show so interesting.
Speaker 1: Nice And that is from Robin maw to lick and
Speaker 1: just go to mang gear dot com. That would be
Speaker 1: m A n G g e r dot com and
Speaker 1: check out those SPF shirts if you want to have
Speaker 1: a mangrove tree planet in your honor.
Speaker 2: That was smart to add the extra G or else
Speaker 2: they might not have gotten what they were doing across
Speaker 2: very well if it was.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a website called mang gear that sells
Speaker 1: puba care shavers and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, who was that Robin?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, thanks a lot, Robin. That was a great shout out,
Speaker 2: and thanks to the people at mangear who are doing
Speaker 2: God's work and using GPS which we did an episode
Speaker 2: on and I guess if you want to get in
Speaker 2: touch with this like Robin did, you can send us
Speaker 2: an email to send it off to stuff podcast at
Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.