El gran rugido

Descrita por algunos como la película más peligrosa de todos los tiempos (por la producción), El gran rugido es un extraño juego cinematográfico y la única creación de Noel Marshall, quien, junto con Tippi Hedren, quiso llamar la atención sobre los abusos que sufren los derechos de las majestuosas bestias africanas y su caza desenfrenada. La determinación y el compromiso de Marshall parecen casi maníacos: la producción fue tan peligrosa que solo pudo persuadir a los miembros de su familia para que actuaran, y ellos, junto con otros miembros del equipo, sufrieron múltiples lesiones durante el rodaje, aunque sorprendentemente nadie murió. La trama es prácticamente irrelevante y queda claro en cada plano que las bestias no se comportaron como se esperaba y cualquier dirección fue imposible, por lo que la trama es esporádica, los planos son a menudo torpes y el montaje distrae. Aun así, el espectador tiene que tragarse toda la película de principio a fin con la boca abierta y sentir cada temblor físico y psicológico de los actores en la pantalla, porque realmente no podían estar seguros de nada y su miedo es real. Un espectáculo extraño y angustioso de una época en la que la seguridad laboral no era un gran problema. (06.01.2019)

Roar is a film curiosity shrouded in so many crazy stories that I just had to watch it. The film was supposedly 11 years in the making. Actress Tippi Hedren (who apparently didn’t have enough with the grueling filming of the horror film The Birds) declared that it was probably the most dangerous shoot of all time and wrote a book about it. Reportedly, 70 crew members were injured during the filming of this animal “horror” movie. Why so many? Because when someone got hurt, they didn't see them on set the next day, so they had to replace them with someone else. All this was used to promote the film (whose trailer, for example, boasts about how many stitches and fractures the various actors sustained on set), but it didn't help its success and it was completely forgotten for many years. Now, distributor Drafthouse Films has rediscovered it and will release it on Blu-ray in the fall, and word is starting to get around again. This is not a good film by any means. The script has makes no sense, and the direction is rather chaotic. It's basically a high-budget, homemade amateur dream project by Hollywood agent Noel Marshall, who dragged (and nearly killed) his entire family (including wife Tippi Hedren and his stepdaughter, a then-unknown Melanie Griffith) into it. At the center of the simple story is a family that returns to Africa to visit the head of the family, a zookeeper (played by Noel Marshall himself) who lives in a wooden house with dozens of lions, tigers, panthers, and cheetahs that like to pounce on people for fun. The family arrives just as the father is gone, and the entire film is practically about the other family members running and hiding from his pets, because (until the end of the film) they have no idea that they're actually cute animals who just want to play. The film was made in support of African wildlife and is apparently meant to show how animals can coexist (despite, for example, scalping cinematographer Jan de Bont). The whole thing comes across as an incredibly bizarre amalgamation of grotesque action scenes, with actors and animals running around uncontrollably and getting into wild confrontations. At the same time, it's not entirely clear whether this is supposed to be slapstick or horror. And we are not worried about the characters, but rather the actors who play them, since what takes place in the film looks really VERY dangerous (the animals were not trained) and it's a wonder they all survived. For example, you'll see a huge number of lions jumping on a man, a tiger sinking a boat, while another boat gets crushed by an elephant and then Tippi Hedren sent flying (really) and breaks her leg – nothing was staged. It’s hard to know how many stars to give it. In any case, it's a fascinating spectacle that I'll happily repeat when I want to show something wonderfully obscure to a visitor. (10.07.2015)