Roar: The Most Dangerous Movie Ever Made?

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I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too,

“and this is a good old stuff you should know, movie edition,”

which usually I have to say of generally been pretty good. - Yeah, had you ever heard of this movie? - No, I have it, had you? - Oh yeah, it's legendary. - Okay, you had, you had, I didn't know if that was right

or not, I looked up to see if anybody had written in and I guess somebody named Ian Tindall had recently. - Oh, really? - Yeah. - So in case, that happened sometimes.

People write in and be like, "Oh, thanks for doing the episode I suggested." It's something that's been on our list already, so they happen sometimes. - That just happened to somebody wrote in,

and I was like, "Hey, you didn't thank me for this one." And I was like, "Oh, sorry, I didn't, you know." (laughing) - Well, that is what happened. So if we don't thank you, there's a 98% chance

that we didn't, we already had it. - That's right, but I already had this one. This is a legendary movie known as the most dangerous film ever made from 1981, this big budget movie

that was terrible, then never shown in the United States

much, so it's no wonder that you hadn't heard of it. - No, but I guess, yeah, being a movie dude, this is the kind of thing, it's like a legendary movie, for sure. Especially, have you seen it? - Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

- Yeah, it's almost impossible to find. You could shell out, I think, 100 bucks on Amazon to buy a DVD of it. - Don't do that. - Alamo Draft House re-released it in 2015,

which generated a lot of buzz and interest in it, but they did it in such a way that people used to show the room kind of. - Yeah, and then it's just not anywhere, it's nowhere. You could see some trailers and clips and stuff like that,

but the movie itself is nowhere. That's kind of a shame, because from what I can tell from researching it, it would be something to see at least once. - Yeah, for sure, I don't feel like I'm missing out

having never seen it all, 'cause I've seen tons of clips

and read about it and stuff, and it's kind of one of those that to suffer through the entire thing, you know.

“I think that's the thing you should do with the room.”

- Sure, not necessarily with the roar. - Okay, fair enough, good. Well, then I feel a lot better. - Yeah, just my dumb opinion. - So, all right, Charles, let's tell everybody what we're talking

about. It's a 1981 movie roar. Like you said, a lot of people consider it the most dangerous film ever made. Why is it the most dangerous film ever made?

Especially considering there's been plenty of movies where people have died, making the movie. Like Noah's arc from, I think, the 20s, three people drown during the real day loosed that they filmed. You know, there was the Twilight Zone movie,

like people have died, no one died on this movie. So why do people call it the most dangerous film ever go? - Yeah, well, I mean, in other cases, there have been accidents on films that were all, you know, top quality productions

but in this case, the actors were purposefully put in peril,

“because it just the whole idea of the film to begin with.”

And there's really no way to talk about it without just sort of telling the story, I guess, from inception, which was a married couple in Hollywood. - Yeah. - The great Tippy Hadron from, you probably know her

from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds" most famously. - Yeah. - And her hubby, Noel Marshall, who was her agent and a movie producer, he was best known, probably still best known for the exorcist

and unfortunately, Rourer, he kind of rewrote his legacy after the exorcist, but they were married couple who thought of this idea because of a trip they took. - Yeah, yeah, so Rourer is essentially like, it's meant to generate like good will

and stuff among humans toward wild animals, right, to show them that wild animals are nothing to be afraid of. And Tippy Hadron and Noel Marshall had a shared love of animals in wildlife that dated all the way back to Marshall's youth.

“I think his teenage years, when he volunteered”

at the St. Louis Zoo, and I guess as he and Tippy Hadron got together, he kind of influenced her, she was already a champion of certain social causes, but she hadn't taken up animal welfare yet. - Yeah, for sure, she had an activist heart, I guess.

Always did. And they were in Africa. They were in Zimbabwe filming, she was filming a movie, there's a 1969, it was a movie called Satan's Harvest. So her career was at his zenith after the birds, I guess.

But while they were there, they went to Mozambique and went to a game preserve there. And a couple of sort of key things came out of that, a game reserve, I guess, preserve visit. I guess it's a reserve and a preserve, huh?

- Sure, the P is in parentheses before visit. - Right, they saw in a band in house that had a pride of 30 lions living in this home, sort of in and out, and they were like, huh, like what an interesting concept, to be put on film,

this looks really kind of strange seeing these big cats roaming around the home.

And then the second thing is that their guide there,

kind of educated them on what was going on with the poaching conditions back then. And that really inspired them to do something to drive some sort of awareness about these beautiful big cats. - Yeah, and it was kind of in the air at the time, too.

Like there was a big, like, jungle adventure in Africa, like theme going on in a lot of movies and TV. There's a very popular TV show called "Ductari" about a father and daughter veterinary team who worked with wildlife in East Africa

and get this Chuck. - "Ductari," which is a drama, was based on a movie called "Clarence the Cross-eyed Lion." - Well, poor Clarence. - I know, but how do you get Clarence the Cross-eyed Lion

“to the serious, like, animal medical drama, "Ductari"?”

That's a strange transition. - Yeah, I think probably a pretty smart one, 'cause "Ductari" was on for a few seasons. - Yeah. - You know, other stuff like neutral Omaha's Wild Kingdom

was big, and I think you're right. I think there was a general fascination with Africa in the United States at the time. So they were bitten by that bug. They get back to Hollywood, and they said,

"Hey, what if we do this movie? What if we do a movie about these big cats?" And they pushed the idea to some animal trainers, and they said, "That's a really bad idea." It's not practical, and it's, like, super dangerous.

And, but caveat, I suppose if you raise them together, and they'll new each other, and they were raised with humans, then it might not be as dangerous, or it's dumb of an idea.

- Yeah, and so this is the first step

that is actually a step backward, 'cause I get the impression they came back from Africa and just assumed they were gonna get a bunch of, like, rent a bunch of lions and tigers and stuff, but not together, you know, not this movie out in a year,

or something at the most. That is not the case, so they actually started from scratch. They got their hands on a lion cub named Neal, and they started raising it around the family, in the house with their teenage children,

one of whom was Melanie Griffith. She is a typical headruns daughter, and she was, like, 13 or 14, when Neal came into the picture, and they raised them from a cub into this 400-pound family pet, fully grown male African lion, main and all,

like sleeping in bed with Melanie Griffith at the time. - Yeah, and I mean, this wasn't, they didn't have a ranch out in the middle of nowhere.

this was in Sherman Oaks, and they're in Spanish home in Sherman Oaks, so I'm not sure about the laws at the time, we'll see that they were ordered to get rid of them about a year later. In fact, it was about a year after life magazine in 1971,

a big photographic feature that it was very sensational thing,

it showed all these amazing pictures of life

with this 400-pound lion living in the home, like you were saying, hanging out by the pool, the kids playing with them, and so about a year after that, I guess the city stepped in and said, you can't do that in Los Angeles even.

“- No, and in retrospect, I think in her autobiography,”

Tippi Hadron later wrote that she realized that this was stupid beyond belief to keep a 400-pound male lion in the house around her family. And there's pictures of her like lounging around with her, head on the lions, like chest and everything,

they're both laying on the door down together. It is, it's quite a photo spread, and it's also got that perfect late 60s, early 70s photo look. - Yeah. - You just could not possibly recreate it,

it looks like that, it's really cool. - Yeah, but yeah, so they were ordered to get rid of that, the animals, by this time they'd started collecting other lions and started raising them together. Again, with the ultimate goal of filming them all together

in this movie that they wanted to make, right? So instead of getting rid of their actors and pets, they bought like a ranch in Actin, which is in Solid Egg Canyon, I guess a little north of Los Angeles, I'm sure you know where that is, right?

I had never heard of Actin, actually.

“I said it's 40 miles north, but I think I had heard of Solid”

Egg Canyon, but Actin is new to me. I guess that's where you go when you want to raise lions. - Right, the locals leave you alone when you show up with a bunch of lions, right? And they bought a bunch of acreage and created a compound.

And even the compound was bought with an eye toward the ultimate goal of making this movie. - Yeah, I mean, they wanted to film it like, you know, as lions who lived in a house. And so they created everything was kind of built

as a movie set to be, so they landscaped it with, you know, it was supposed to be in Africa, set in Africa. So they landscaped it with plants and architectural styles that might have mimics Southern Africa. They put in artificial pond, and then eventually they would

move there a few years later in 1976 and live on the property

and kind of get to work on that movie.

- Yeah, that was about the year that they started with '76. - I say we take a break and we'll get into actually making the film because this is about the point

“where things start to get a little bonkers.”

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(upbeat music) - I'm check before we get back into it. I have a Tipee Hadron fact that I found. She is the only actress to be directed by Hitchcock,

Charlie Chaplin, and Ed Wood Jr.

- Nice. - Yeah, that's quite a career. - Yeah, I like that band diagram. - So yeah, okay, so we're at the filming, at the beginning of filming, the cameras are rolling,

and the cameras just kept rolling. - Yeah, they kept rolling, you know, by this point, they had more animals.

“I believe you mentioned they started collecting more,”

but specifically they had tigers, by that point, they had leopards, they had panthers, they had coogers, notably they had, I mean, this was self-described by Tipee Hadron, those were just sort of the big cats. They also had flamingos and ostriches,

and storks and swans and sheep, and they even had an elephant, which made an appearance in the movie, and these are all pets living there together. Again, with the aim that they would all know one another by that point and be, you know,

docile enough to be, you know, animal actors. - Yeah. - But as you would imagine, they had a hard time raising money for the project, because mainly they didn't have much of a project

except for a loose idea, I guess. - No, they had a bunch of real estate. They ended up self-financing this thing mostly. So they sold a bunch of their real estate to put the cash into this film.

I think Noel was one of the producers on the exercises, and he made a bunch of money off of that. He was an essentially an investor in it, so we got an executive producer credit, and I guess some of the back plum,

is that what it's called? - Back plum? - Yeah. - Back plum? - Sure, the back can, but it's plum-y.

Okay, anyway, he had a bunch of money from the exercises, they threw that into, and they were like, okay, this is gonna be such a cool movie that no one's ever done anything like this before.

We're just gonna make our money back a million times over.

And initially, the whole idea, remember they had seen that pride of lions living in this, and that was kind of what kicked this off. So the whole thing was very lion centric,

“but I think the working titles were lions”

or lions, lions, and more lions, those are definitely working titles, I think. - Yeah, but-- - It makes it roar look pretty great by comparison.

- It does. - That's a title. - It does. Yeah, you can see no like dropping his gin and tonic, thinking like, "I got it."

- Yeah. - But you said they collected a bunch of other animals, some of which do not live in Africa, like Siberian tigers do not live in Africa, but that didn't stop them.

So they expanded the scope of a mark, as they wanted their whole family of big cats and animals to be able to star in this movie, so they ended up kind of expanding the focus of the whole thing. - Yeah, for sure.

They didn't even have a script, and Marshall was not a writer. Like you said, he invested in the exercise. I don't think anyone ever confused him with a creative in Hollywood,

but he did write the script. He got some ideas from Tippy. He wrote the script, said he was gonna direct the film, and it was a family adventure. So he was gonna have all of his family

in it, which was young Melanie, and then he had two sons from previous marriage, Jerry and John, and they were all gonna be in it, but they were like, we need a real deal, like regular lead actor for the male role

to play the patriarchy of the family, but they could not get any actor to sign on, because again, I don't think even people thought it would be that dangerous yet. They just knew it was not a good idea,

and it was bad, the script was terrible. So Marshall was like, you know what? I'll just do that too. Right, I'm sure they were like, what is wrong with everybody

between not raising financing or getting a star? Yeah. So Noel wrote, directed and starred in this movie, like you were saying, and that from all of my experience,

is essentially going to be not as good as it would be

“if any one of those were taken out of that equation.”

Oh, you think? Yeah, because there's no one there to tell the director or the writer or the lead actor, don't do this. Like those things are supposed to be checks and balances, like the three branches of government in the United States.

So if you have all of them together as one, you got a big problem. All right, I disagree, but we'll just walk right past it. All right, that's fine. I mean, I think if you're terrible,

then it's a bad idea. There've been plenty of examples of greater director actors and great films. OK, name one besides her be the love bug. I act most anything Clint Eastwoods ever been in.

OK.

I don't fully agree with that, but OK.

Yeah, all right, I mean, that's fine. You can nitpick Clint Eastwood anyway. Like I said, we don't need to debate this point. Me and it's just simple. Like the pot is just just simmering almost over.

But we're going to walk past it like he said.

“Yeah, I think the point of why this is bad”

is because he was not a talented human being. Early on though, Melanie Griffith is like, I don't want to be in this movie. I think the direct quote was, to her mom, was I don't want to come out of here with half of face.

So she backed out. They got her friend to star instead or friend who was an actor. But eventually she was like, you know what? I guess I will be in the movie. So she came back on board and they completely

re-shot all the scenes.

They're just burning through money at this point.

But re-shot the scene. So Melanie could be back in the film. Yeah, that friend was Patsy Net, who went on to become an award-winning fully artist. And it's like you said, they're burning through money.

Because there's something to remember here that I didn't think about until pretty far down the research. Like they were not shooting video. They were not using SD cards. They were using actual film stock over and over like all sorts

of film stock. And that stuff was expensive, wasn't it? Oh yeah, I mean, they, you know, at one point, because they had to essentially just keep cameras rolling and wait for the animals to do something interesting.

Yeah, they were shooting, you know, six, seven, eight cameras at a time sometimes. And this was, I mean, this something you routinely see now. But back then, you didn't, you know, you maybe had three or four cameras max on like a huge, huge stunt.

But rolling that many cameras just wasn't what you did typically back then on films, especially films of the size. So that they were just burning money on film stock. Yeah, and like you said the reason why they were just running all the times because the cats had zero training.

Like you could not tell them, like, okay, we need you to jump at this person because in this scene, it calls for that. The cats would just look at you like I hear like, maybe a bit, and that's it, like I don't know what you're saying.

So occasionally, they would do something interesting enough to use in the film, and then they reverse engineered it and wrote the plot around the stuff that they had filmed the cats doing. Yeah, and all the animals, there was a scene

where the elephant destroys a boat. And that scene is in there because the elephant destroyed a boat. It was not planned, but they were like, hey, we got a little bit of production value out of the elephant wrecking that boat.

So we got to put it in the movie. The other thing was these animals were, they were raised in captivity, and we're used to laying around by the pool and laying in bed in a fairly sedate scene. So while they were pretty calm and chill,

as far as big cats go, in the movie when the real human actors are instructed to like yell and scream or to run away or something, that would incite or excite or rather these animals in ways that they weren't prepared for either.

I know, I felt bad about that, confused them,

“and let's say they were like, why are our friends yelling?”

Yeah, and we're going to get to some of the darker stuff later. This isn't all just like funny. No, good point. So this whole thing, the entire film, takes about five years to film.

And not just because the animals weren't doing what you'd want them to almost all the time. There were some real catastrophes that they ran into that were just totally unavoidable, but this is a very dangerous set.

Like that is the through line here. If you haven't picked up on that, people are interacting with, you know, domesticated to an extent, but they're still very much wild, fully grown lions, tigers, leopards,

and that's what's going on. They're filming that. They're filming the lines jumping on people and attacking people. And so this is like a really dangerous set at the same time, because they were using all this stuff.

especially the violence that the animals inflict on the humans,

because it actually was what was going on. Yeah, for sure. I mean, they had a hard time sustaining funding because of this. They had a hard time sustaining a crew because of this. I think it totaled over the five years.

They had about 140 different crew members, because people, you know, they would get on set. They would work for a little while, either they would be, you know, something terrible and horrifying would happen, or they would just realize, like, you know,

when you get on one of those shows where you're just like, this is not a professional outfit, right? So get out of there as quickly as I can get something else going. They're shooting at all at this compound for Africa. They're sort of deep outside Los Angeles.

And people started getting hurt.

“I think 70 cast and crew members ended up getting injuries.”

And if you look at the Alamo draft house trailer

that they put out online at the end, it'll show, as they're announcing the cast, it would freeze frame on that cast member and infernities, like give their name and then say kind of what their major, most major injury was on set.

- Probably the biggest one was Yanda Bons. You probably recognize him from such films as Heart of a Champion, the Ray Mansini story, or Roar. But he was the cinematographer for this movie, and he took it like three weeks after this whole thing started.

He got it bad, where a lion essentially scalped him from the back half of his head backward. - Yeah, 220 stitches, but he would complete the film. And before you start emailing us, I got a stem that I, Josh, unfortunately,

Yanda Bont is very much known for being a big-time action movie director. - Oh, yeah. - Yeah, I mean, you were kidding, right? - Yeah.

- Okay, just making sure, he directed speed and twister and some other very big movies later on,

but this was his first film in the United States.

“And I think that's probably why he kept coming back”

because it was his first film in the States, and maybe he didn't think it would be such I did to quit his first movie here. - Sure, yeah, because that's a really good point. He was a very talented cinematographer

by this time. Like, that's one of the other things he's very well known for, not just directing. So like this movie, like you said, completely unprofessional outfit,

where the writer, director, and star has no experience in any of those fields, has a world-class cinematographer working for it, which makes the whole thing even that much more bizarre when you watch it apparently.

- Yeah, for sure. So, you know, speaking of John Marshall, I believe he was one of the sons. He got a bit on the head. He tripped and fell during a scene.

And of course, again, that's, you know, I don't think we mentioned that not only were the animals not prepared for some of this stuff, but they didn't have a full staff of animal wranglers on hand, like any time you have a,

I mean, it really depends, but if it's like a big cat or something like this, you've got a team of people there for each one. And, you know, they had some help, but they weren't staff like they needed to be.

“- No, and I think those are also the same crew”

that kind of came and went over time there like, this is not student, I don't wanna have anything to do with this. - Oh yeah, they didn't want their name on this thing, 'cause they saw where it was going. - So Melanie Griffith, who said that she didn't wanna come

out of this with half a face, came very close to that, actually, she got um, clawed by her eye. She needed 50 stitches. She also had to undergo cosmetic surgery to kind of reconstruct that part of her face.

- Yeah. - That made it into the movie. - Yeah, that's in, I mean, that was a very believable, a Jackson. - Yeah, so you got a clumsy, clumsy plot in actors.

You have a great cinematographer. And now also, you have genuine terror and blood that shows up in this essentially what's supposed to be like a kind of wacky comedy family adventure. - Yeah, for sure.

There were two cases of gangrene from, you know, getting bitten by infected cat mouths. Tipee Hadron was one, she got a lion bite, got gangrene. I'm not sure where she got it, but she ended up getting skin grafts.

There was also a scene where she was riding on Timbo the elephant. And the animal wasn't used to being ridden and like have somebody like shouting and stuff like she was. - Right. - So it threw her off, fractured her ankle,

and then no, the star and the director and madman behind all this, he got the other case of gangrene. - Yeah, Tipee Hadron getting thrown from the elephant and breaking her ankle, that made it into the movie as well.

I know Noel got a bite on the hand trying to break up a fight between lions and start a bleeding.

So all of this stuff is just showing up

two crew members, lost digits. Like over a six year period,

“people kept coming back, like the core people kept coming back”

and coming back and coming back. There's one other thing to keep in mind two Charles. This was supposed to take place. The action in the movie takes place over what maybe, like a few days, weeks, months, tops.

The actors involved are all aging. Like over the course of several years. Some of them teenagers under, like you really undergo some serious like outward changes over like a few years in your teens

and they had to kind of like deal with that as well. This is like reverse boyhood essentially. - Yeah, for sure. There was also a flash flood which damaged some fencing. This was in 1978, so this is like two and a half years

into this thing and it damaged some of the fencing such that some of these big cats escaped. This is some of the darker stuff as far as the animals are concerned because they really played up the idea that like no animals were hurt in the filming of this,

like only humans, but they recovered most of those animals, but allegedly the deputies there ended up having to shoot and kill three lions. And there was also a situation where

“I think there was a disease that spread through the cat”

community and some of them died. It's hard to get like good verification on that, but I see plenty of places that claim that happened. - Right, and technically none of this happened during filming, but yeah, I think that's just part of a problem

when you have hundreds of like big cats all living together. That's not how they live. That flood you mentioned. They had like 20 minutes of filming left. I think when there was a wildfire,

they were down to like seven minutes, something like that, and it just kept getting set back and set back. That flood was so destructive that it destroyed a lot of the vegetation and that made up the set.

So they had to replant and then wait for it to grow back again. It just kept getting set back and set back. I have the impression, and I don't know if you got the same impression that Tipee Hadron and Noel Marshall were so deep into this financially.

- Yeah, they couldn't walk away. They had to finish this because it had to be a hit or else they were in serious financial trouble. Did you get that same impression? - Yeah, I mean, who knows what's going on.

It's either that or just like the madman thing takes over. But I bet I know that they certainly had no chance of recovering any money if they stopped and they knew that too, and they were close to being done. Like you said, they did finally finish

in the fall of '79, they had to shoot a little bit in Africa, but most everything was taking place there at their ranch. And they spent, and this was late '70s money

about $17 million, which is almost

what Raiders of the Lost Art cost. So they're definitely not getting their production value, and I'm sure a lot of that '17 million was just wasted money, like film stock, and rebuilding things, and just waiting around and waiting around,

and paying crew while you're waiting around. - Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I can't imagine that $17 million was a production value made it into roar from everything I've seen in it.

- I don't think $700,000 were the production value. Except, I guess Yon DeBont, shooting some nice looking stuff, probably. - For sure. So they finally finished filming.

They get it edited, it's all ready to go. They've got their hands together. They're rubbing their hands, they're ready to start making some money back, and they cannot find anyone in the United States to sign on as a distributor,

which is a huge problem, especially back then. You had no streaming services whatsoever. The way you saw a movie was to go to a movie theater, and the way you got your movie in movie theaters was by having a contract with the distributor

to get that movie out to movie theaters so that you could have money coming back in. They did not have that in the United States.

They never got it in the US.

- No, no release in the US. It was a non-union production, so that had something to do with it. But really, the deal was, it was just a really bad movie. - Sure. - And nobody wanted to release it.

“I think even at the time, they didn't think,”

like if a distributor doesn't even think, they can get it back based on how notorious you can trump up the advertising of the most dangerous film ever made, like it was really that bad that they couldn't even get like Colt B movie status going for it.

- No, and there was a lot of buzz too. I read some of the press tour that Tipee Hadron was doing in 1979 to help pump up the release of the movie. It was widely discussed, apparently it was shown widely in the UK and Ireland, but even all of that,

it was, I think it grossed $2 million worldwide.

and because it was never shown almost anywhere else,

“especially after it's first run, they had,”

like there's, that was it, that's all they ever made off of it. Like they haven't slowly been making their money back, it just ended its life right then and there after it limped up the last theater in the UK. - That's right, let's take our second break, yeah?

- Yeah. - All right, we'll be right back with a little bit more believe it or not about Rohr right after this. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

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(upbeat music) - All right, we're back, more about roar, which by the way was about a hundred minutes long. Olivia did the great service of trying to break down even without seeing it, the plot of this whole movie.

I don't think we should kind of go over that 'cause maybe spoilers if people wanna try and find this thing, but I'll almost certainly more because it's not a very good movie at all. But just loosely, it was a plot about an eccentric

American scientist who spent a few years living in Tanzania where it was set, and then having his family come out there, and it was really about that simple. Like these people, there's a mistaken communication where the family comes right as the dad has gone

to go to the airport, so they walk into the scene where all these lions, and it's really that bad, like that's kind of the plot of the movie. - Yeah, and the overall theme of the movie is that this doctor in the time that he's been living in Tanzania

has started living among the wild animals he's studying and become like a family with them.

is showing up, and this is, I think what I understand

is that you start to see the process of them kind of coming around through all the attacks and hijinks and all that stuff until the overall message is, if you treat wild animals in a friendly manner, they're gonna be friendly, if you're scared of them

and you treat them hostily, they're going to respond as such.

“The thing about this is, I think it was Richard Brody”

from the New Yorker. He points out that just consistently, throughout the movie, this message is contradicted time after time, after time, where people are being friendly to these animals and the animals are like drawing blood

and attacking them on screen in the movie. So the message itself was flawed out of the gate, even though it was an admirable one. - Yeah, another big flaw was that it was sort of a genreless film, parts of it seem like

home movies, parts of it seem like comedy, like a couple of the attacks are played as straight up comedic, parts of it are played up or the true terror, and the score even is all over the place. So the score sometimes feels like a horror movie

and the score sometimes feels like a comedy. I think Tippie Hendron says they base some of the stuff on old, slapstick, silent comedies. So it was completely rudderless in that critic that you talked about, Richard Brody.

One of his quotes was kind of back this up, he said Marshall doesn't quite seem aware of the forms he's using. So it was just a big mess.

“- Yeah, big mess, I think that should be like the tag line”

of the right. So yeah, I guess if you're like, I got to see this. There are stuff, there are things you can see on online, but you just, unless you're gonna show it, a hundred bucks, you're not gonna see the whole movie.

One of the cool things about this though is from the outset, Tippie Hendron and Noel Marshall were not just about, like, let's just make a bunch of money exploiting animals. They, one of their stated purposes of making roar

was to take some a significant amount of proceeds and put it toward wild animal welfare. And they put their money where their mouth is, even though they lost a bunch of money.

And they basically turned their compound into a place called

the Cats of Shambala, which is like, they presented as a place of peace between animals and humans where they can come together in harmony. It's still around today, and it's the home of the roar foundation, which is also still around today,

which is still promoting money and lobbying for legislation on behalf of animal welfare. - Yeah, for sure. I mean, that is one positive, they would get divorced about a year after this movie,

and he continued to support the Shambala project even after that, which was a good thing. But I don't wanna paint, Marshall is like some great dude because reading some of the accounts, it seems like he had a definite anger problem, was possibly violent

with his own family. Definitely there were moments where his 14, 15-year-old stepdaughter is like really upset and crying and doesn't wanna continue, and he's forcing her back into these scenes.

So he was not a good dude, so I don't wanna portray this is just like sort of a fun family project gone wrong. - Yeah, there was an interview with his son John around the time that this was re-released by draft house films in 2015 where John was like,

you know, we all had safe words that we could use when we were filming, if we were uncomfortable, that we could get removed from that situation and filming would stop. And he said there was at least one time

when Melanie used her safe word and no'll just ignored it and made everybody keep filming.

“So yeah, I think that's definitely worth pointing out for sure.”

But like you said, I mean, he's known for being an executive producer investor on the exorcist

and he's known for roar and he will always be known

for roar from what I can tell. - Yeah, for sure, that's his legacy. In 1985, it got a little bit more attention because the today show had Tippie Hadron on because she had written a book, her autobiography

or at least about this, the cats of Shambala. So she was on there promoting that. They showed clips from roar and so it got a little bit of attention in the United States at the time and then was kind of not heard from again

until draft house films came along like he said in 2015. And you know, played it up for what it was, which is a pretty bad, I mean, be movie at best. I think most be movies usually even have more of a plot than this thing did.

- Yeah, that's where the tagline, the most dangerous film ever made came from, which is very popular these days and they also were the ones that came up

But 70 members of the cast and crew were,

and Tippie Hadron apparently was not at all happy about the-- - I'm sure. - The portrayal and the roar foundation astronaut, not to speak publicly about it, apparently. She was that mad about it.

There is an animal plan at Dr. Menry. Couldn't find that either, but it was called roar, the most dangerous movie ever made. It came out in 2017 and then there's been reviews, especially after Alamo or the draft house released it

in 2015, a lot of like those kind of online reviewers who just love like terrible movies, really sank their teeth into this if you, if you'll excuse that.

“- Yeah, I think my favorite one is from Under the Radar.”

It's said based on its reputation alone, 1981's roar is the Citizen Kane of Films where actors were mulled by lions. (laughing) That's pretty good.

- Drew McQueen, he also had a pretty memorable coat.

They said that it feels like Walt Disney decided to make a snuff version of Swiss family Robinson. - That's kind of on point. - Yeah, and I mean, if you are like, I don't care about any of this.

I just want to help the big cats, like I said, the Shambala preserve is still around. roar, the roar foundation is around and they're accepting donations. I think they're down to like nine big cats now.

- Yeah. - They've definitely whittled it down. I'm guessing that the other big cats would have died of natural causes over time, hopefully. But yeah, there you go.

And Tippie Hadron still alive, she's coming up on her 100th birthday in 2030.

“- Well, I hope she doesn't listen to this.”

- I feel like we did it justice. - Yeah, which is exactly probably what she doesn't want to hear. - Okay, it's true. Well, if you're listening Tippie hats off to you,

and since I did our annual hats off to Tippie Hadron, I just unlocked Bliss in her mail. (bell ringing) - For a second, I thought you were going to say Tippie of the hat to you.

- Mm, mm. - After all the times we've done that to you,

I can't believe we've never come up with that before.

- I'm going to call this shouting out a good little thing that this company's doing because we heard from Robin about a company. Oh, let me just read it. Hey guys, you're listening to you

from the mountains of Western North Carolina in your Asheville. And I just listened to the mangroves episode, notably one of my favorite trees. And I wanted to share information that's me talking to you. - Right, right.

- I wanted to share information on a company called man, man, gear, M-A-N-G gear. They make SPF shirts and for every shirt they sell, they plan a mangrove tree. - Nice.

- It's a nonprofit started by two brothers. And when you do this, they send you a certificate, the GPS coordinates of the location. - Oh, cool. - Where your mangrove was planted.

After listening to the episode, it couldn't help but share in case you wanted to show some support to their work. Listen all the time every episode is a shockful of information, facts, and history.

And let's not forget you both are great host, and make the show so interesting. - Nice. - And that is from Robin Mottelick. And just go to mangear.com

that would be M-A-N-G, G-E-A-R, dot com. And check out those SPF shirts

“if you want to have a mangrove tree planted in your honor.”

- That was smart to add the extra G or else they might not have gotten what they were doing across very well. - If it was just mangrove, there's a website called Mangear that sells pubicure shabbers and stuff like that. - All right, yeah, who was that Robin?

- Yeah. - Okay, thanks a lot, Robin. That was a great shout out. And thanks to the people at Mangear who are doing God's work and using GPS, which we did an episode on. And I guess if you want to get in touch with us

like Robin did, you can send us an email to send it off to [email protected]. - Stuff you should know is a production of "I Heart Radio." For more podcasts, my heart radio visit the "I Heart Radio" app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

- Two percent. That's the number of people who take the stairs when there is also an escalator available. On Michael Easter, and on my podcast, two percent, I break down the signs of mevel toughness, fitness,

and building resilience in our strange modern world. - Put yourself through some hardships. And you will come out on the other side, a happier, more fulfilled, healthier person. - Listen to two percent.

That's TWO percent on the "I Heart Radio" app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. - On the serving pancakes podcast, conversations about volleyball go beyond the court. - Today we have a little best frame compatibility today.

As the lead one volleyball season heads towards its final stretch, there's no better time to tune in. You'll hear our unfiltered analysis behind the scenes stories

Whether you're following the final push of love season,

“or just love the game, serving pancakes brings you closer to the action”

and the people shaping the future of volleyball.

- Open your free "I Heart Radio" app,

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