FRANKENWEENIE (1984) - Tim Burton's original short

While I enjoyed the new, re-animated Frankenweenie in many ways, the original live-action short film remains one of Tim Burton's very best.

Just under half an hour long is all it takes for a compact retelling of Universal's classic Frankenstein (1931), staged in a slightly surreal corner of suburban California. Victor loves his pet dog Sparky, but after it's accidentally killed, the only thing that can lift the young boy out of his depression, is the possibility that he can bring his dog back from the dead...

At the time, Tim Burton had made something a little too weird for Disney to handle. It was certainly out of step with the studio's image at the time - they didn't even have a 'spooky Halloween' attitude to horror yet. So it snuck out as a support feature and disappeared from sight only until Tim Burton had left Disney and then had hits with Batman and Edward Scissorhands. Only then did Frankenweenie emerge from Disney's vaults to appear on home video (see the VHS cover above). I've heard this was slightly censored, but I've not yet done a comparison viewing.

Frankenweenie then appeared more proudly as an extra feature on laserdisc, DVD and blu-ray releases of A Nightmare Before Christmas, when Disney finally 'got' Burton and embraced a slightly darker side. I'm glad it's always been available, but without being displayed as part of the cover art, it's never really gained it's own identity. So much so, that the 2012 feature-length animated version looks like a new idea, rather than an expanded remake.

Even if you've seen the new film, the original short is certainly worth a visit. The ending is very different and live-action has far more emotional impact. The humour is more adult, with in-jokes about Hitchcock, and a super subversion of a famous scene from In Cold Blood. The characters are almost all changed. It's the same core story, but set in an alternate, Edward Scissorhands universe.

Considering this Frankenweenie was made before any of Burton's feature films, it's already consistent with the design and themes of his next several films. There's a shot of Sparky running off down the street that prefigures Edward Scissorhands, a wooden tower that echoes Batman's belfry climax, electric Christmas decoration reindeer anticipate A Nightmare Before Christmas, and there's a familiar-looking giant Felix cathead before they appeared as a motif in Batman Returns...

A young Barret Oliver milks far more tears for the death of his dog, and of course it's more icky to see a real youngster run off to the pet cemetery to dig him up again. Frankenweenie was released the same year as Oliver's most famous film The NeverEnding Story.

His mum and dad are played by Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern. Duvall had just had a great run with The Shining, Robert Altman's Popeye and a cameo in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits. Stern had recently done Diner and Blue Thunder, but was still years away from major recognition for Home Alone. The pair play the comedy suitably straight, setting the tone of normality before their son's mad science disrupts the neighbourhood.

Delightfully, it's Paul Bartel who plays the pivotal role as the science teacher, introducing Victor to the rejuvenating powers of electricity. At the time, he was making a string of cameos in other people's productions, but usually non-mainstream movies (Piranha, White Dog, Chopping Mall). Perhaps his films as a director are better known - Bartel was between Eating Raoul and Lust In The Dust. Though Death Race 2000 will always be his greatest film.

Bizarrely, the spoilt, Barbie-obsessed girl next door, a kid-who-doesn't-understand-weirder-kids, is played by young Sofia Coppola! Credited under her stage name 'Domino', she was only thirteen at the time.

The only thing I will say against the Frankenweenie short, is that the music is lacking. If only he'd found Danny Elfman a little earlier, this desperately needs him!

I think the new version overdoes the references to Universal's Frankenstein, with characters looking like Dwight Frye and Boris Karloff. But it's wonderful to see model animation, in gorgeous black-and-white, and tons more b-movie monster homages.

From WOODSTOCK to WOLFEN - the director Michael Wadleigh

A recent screening of WOLFEN (1981), introduced by the director

Wolfen is an extraordinary film that shouldn't have been sold as a werewolf whodunnit. Caught inbetween the releases of The Howling and An American Werewolf in London in 1981, I guess it was easier to go with the flow than attempt to ready audiences for a thoughtful, high-quality thriller.

Thirty years ago, it wasn't the horror film that I was expecting, but the performances and locations stuck with me, and warranted many revisits. Now came a chance to see it again on 35mm film. 

The Cigarette Burns event, at North London's Phoenix Cinema on May 3rd, gave us the opportunity with a very special bonus, the director was there to introduce the screening, watch it with us and answer questions afterwards. Though he was polite about sticking to the event's of talking about Wolfen, we were also keen to hear him talk about his previous, more famous document, Woodstock.

Wadleigh looked as if he'd just arrived from the Woodstock festival. But talking about Wolfen, made in the early 80s, convinced us that he'd remained as passionate about this very different project, injecting a consistent worldview into it. But he's also very aware of what audiences expect from a bloody, good thriller! 

Before the film rolled, he gave us some key insights. The decimated neighbourhood of the South Bronx was one of several key New York locations he wanted to show, illustrating the chasm between rich and poor neighbourhoods.

The opening scene of the windmill in Battery Park was much more than just a visual device, but a symbol of the early Dutch settlers, some of the European immigrants that cleared out the area's Native Americans. Some of the pioneers ended up as owners of multinational corporations, their headquarters standing only a few blocks away in Manhattan's financial district. These pertinent locations provide cinematic visuals, layers of subtext and a spectacular document of a recent time that now looks very different.

Wadleigh picked the cast of Wolfen based on their theatre experience, as opposed to any filmography. Luckily, Finney had both. Hardly bankable at the time but he was just starting a short roll in Hollywood.

I'd no idea that they'd filmed real corpses in the autopsy scene. The attendant talking to a corpse really worked there, and that's how he worked. One of several examples of the director using real people as themselves throughout the film. It was also realistic for the bodies to be laid out naked, without sheets over them.

The use of the gliding portable Steadicam camera mount in many scenes, worked exceptionally well. Inventor Garrett Brown was operating it and felt that he'd best achieved a point-of-view shot with his work on the film. It was certainly a fresh and thrilling experience to watch when it was first released, pulling you down to the Wolfen's rapid, roaming, low perspective. Whereas his work in The Shining was a detached 'eye of God', here he made the camera act like a beast, ducking around corners and hiding until it was safe to emerge.

We settled in for the screening, the atmosphere primed by Wadleigh's large dog also settling in the front row. The print was in good shape, which was good for us, but a bad sign that it hadn't been watched very much!

I've already talked about the story of Wolfen here, after watching it on DVD four years ago. But seeing any film in a cinema is an opportunity to concentrate on the story and drink in all the visual detail without any distraction. I finally followed the whole story, rather than waiting for the next piece of action, particularly the arc of the police investigation and its awkward interjection at the climax.

Because a powerful millionaire (and potential presidential candidate) has been murdered, the investigation is of the highest level possible. We see the use of illegal, experimental, scientific monitoring of suspects' interrogations, like invisible lie-detectors. The investigation has access to omnipresent surveillance, and an overriding control of the flow of news to the media, as well as a paranoia about it being a terrorist attack. With references to recent 'explosions' (I'm not sure what incidents they mean), it's all a reminder that terrorist attacks were nothing new thirty years ago.

After the screening, despite being well after 1am, Wadleigh indulged us in a lengthy Q and A session hosted by Josh, Mr Cigarette Burns himself, who'd had a long day and his mind blown by an earlier dinner with Wadleigh and his partner.

I was amazed that his Woodstock-era convictions were as strong as ever. Wadleigh is still figuring out he can save the planet from ecological doom. A positive, can-do, approach to a huge complex problem, fuelled by the foresight of what the endgame could be. As he put it, the planet ending like in a bad disaster movie.

He talked a little about making the documentary movie of Woodstock and how, even in 1969, the organisers had to resist corporate sponsorship wanting to exploit the event. He also applauded the current organisers of Glastonbury from resisting similar temptation. I'd no idea that Wadleigh now lives in England.

He admitted that he'd put many of his ideas into Wolfen, discarding much of Whitley Strieber's book, for which he later personally apologised to the author. But hearing where he's always been coming from made the links between the Woodstock and Wolfen worldviews stronger. Watching Woodstock beforehand helps solve Wolfen's mysteries.

While the high-tech system investigates, Finney's renegade character arrives at the truth. helped by several other individuals with wild ideas and counter-culture attitudes, like those played by Gregory Hines (Running Scared, Eve of Destruction) and Tom Noonan (Manhunter, The Monster Squad).

I was dismayed to hear that the iconic church at the centre of the desolate Bronx landscape was in fact a huge outdoor set, one of the largest ever built at that time. We also heard about the amazing scene where Albert Finney and Edward James Olmos clamber about on top of a Manhattan bridge without any safety wires. He applauded Finney's professionalism at agreeing to do it. Especially tough because it was very windy that day...

We were told how the original soundtrack composer had been replaced by James Horner, who already sounded like he was warming up to scoring Aliens, but that was a great decision that works for the film.

Also, Wolfen was recut for its release, shortened without the director's input. While it had been financed as a major film, even hoped to be an Oscar-winning 'message' project, the studio had lost confidence and releasing it under the werewolf angle. Such as a standard horror movie poster of a wolf with fangs dripping blood...

The DVD release has lost a further scene where Tom Waits sings in a tiny dive bar. Wadleigh said that he was also already friends with Edward James Olmos, who he'd seen perform as lead singer (with his rock band 'Pacific', the biggest thing on the West coast!).

After Wolfen, Wadleigh continued to play the Hollywood game for many years, with three more of his original scripts very nearly getting made. Instead, he's made more documentaries about the Woodstock era.

He was under no illusions that movies could make a huge difference in people's opinions, and regarded them basically as entertainment. Now, in an attempt to save the planet from climatic disaster, he runs lecture tours, talking to and with scientists, the people who have the data about what's happening to the climate, about how they might better persuade us all of the course of action that could save the planet.

Wadleigh's energy and motivation made me miss the optimism and problem-solving practicality of the hippy generation. So few people talk like this, it was inspirational to hear him.

So it was disappointing that more people hadn't come to see this and to meet him. He described Wolfen as a forgotten film, which is tough to hear about something I rate, but it appears he was very right!

Seeing this and The Keep screenings, have reminded me how much more I prefer the experience of film on 35mm, as well as the atmosphere of a midnight movie... at midnight.

Catch the latest screenings of films on film, at Cigarette Burns website, Facebook page or Twitter feed.

Great collection of Wolfen posters and promotional photos, here on The Wrong Side Of The Art.

My previous, illustrated preview of Wolfen is here.

Next up, I watch Woodstock for the first time...

BLOOD SIMPLE (1984) - the first from the Coen brothers

BLOOD SIMPLE

(1984, USA)

Dark debut for the Coen brothers...

Before I even knew who Joel and Ethan Coen were, Blood Simple was an immediately impressive first film, with visual storytelling, brutality and wry humour. While their later Fargo (1996) was celebrated widely, I didn't enjoy it as much. It felt similar to Blood Simple, funnier, but not as strong.

A small town love triangle turns murderous. But these are ordinary folk, not clear-headed professional killers. They get careless. It's even necessary to go back to the scene of the crime and mop up the loose ends...

The twisty plot requires your attention. Though this time around, I was picking up on some of the characters mistakes as they happened. Don't trust him, check it now! Check inside! And C.S.I. fans will be appalled at the criminal sloppiness at the crime scenes.

What has always impressed me is the suspense wrung out from simple situations. Brutal, will-they-be-caught-dragging-a-body-around suspense. The kind of tension when you find yourself worried for the murderer. The Coens' strong storytelling techniques depend just as much on the visual, rather than over-explaining everything in dialogue. 

At the time, I didn't know who Frances McDormand was, but here she is, already starring in a Coen film. I knew M. Emmett Walsh from Blade Runner, here playing a slimy private detective, hired by a similarly slimy Dan Hedaya (the lead baddie from Commando). Fourth corner of this triangle is John Getz, who's just as good, but the only lead I've not noticed in anything since.

I was looking for Sam Raimi's name in the credits, because there are several signature camera moves lifted from The Evil Dead by cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld (before he nervously moved into directing with The Addams Family). Here the athletic tracking shots are confusing because of their misplaced motivations - the characters aren't being stalked by spirits of the forest, these are just cool-looking dynamic shots. However, Blood Simple is bloody, with a Day of the Dead-strength shock in the mix...

This obvious borrowing from Raimi, who occasionally collaborated with the Coens, overshadows Sonnenfeld's own considerable work with stark compositions, maximising the use of darkness and low-key lighting.

I watched it on this Universal DVD, though it's now also out on blu-ray in the US.

Blood Simple has rarely been out-of print on DVD, though it was pointed out to me on Twitter that we've been watching a director's cut for many years. The original cinema version is now locked away in the VHS era. The changes are subtle, slight scene trims, little more than an overall retrospective tidy up, which I wouldn't have noticed, not having seen it in years. Here's the breakdown of differences (with spoilers)...

Some filmmakers get better with practice. The Coen brothers started off good. So don't be afraid how far back you explore their filmography. 

BREAKING GLASS (1980) - a pivotal time in music, fashion and politics

BREAKING GLASS

(1980, UK)

This was England

When Breaking Glass was playing cinemas in late 1980, I'd already seen Stardust, also a drama warning us of the machinations of the music industry, but set in the world of rock bands. Recently, I caught up with Slade in Flame which also preceded it. But I found this far more engaging, the main difference being the punk attitude and birth of several music genres. Back in 1980 though, this music could be heard all over the radio and even on Top of the Pops and the movie Quadrophenia (1979) had already captured the attitude effectively.

So instead, that month, I opted to go see the very different musical movies Can't Stop The Music and Fame, ahem. With the gift of retrospection I should've seen  Breaking Glass.

I remember songs from the soundtrack being in the charts and hadn't realised that singer/star Hazel O'Connor has been recruited for the film, which launched her as a pop act in parallel with the plot! The songs 'Eighth Day' and 'Will You' were the strongest, but it's fair to say her career as a singer and actor floundered soon afterwards.

Film Review, August 1980

The story is a small idealistic band being gently bludgeoned into shape as a pop product by a record company (an insight I'd like to see dramatised again in the present music industry). As in Stardust and Flame the various players all look deadly accurate, no doubt modelled on key characters of the time. What sets this apart is the year, 1980, a transitional time when British bands were finding their feet post-punk. New wave and new romantics were getting started and cheap electronic keyboards added a new important new sound to garage acts.

Janine Duvitski and Hazel O'Connor

Amazingly, this emerging minority music scene is reflected in a slickly-produced amply-budgeted movie. Smooth crane shots at odds with the grotty, non-spectacle of North London locations. We see the Camden Town that Withnail & I have only just vacated. There's added grottiness from the dustmen strikes and power cuts from the end of the 1970s which, synched with the nihilism of punk, suggested that society was breaking down.

Full page ad from Film Review, October 1980

The end of the 1970s also marked the rise of Oi! bands, music for skinheads, some of whom supported racist extreme-right organisations. The punk fashion use of swastikas had blurred their politics in the eyes of the media. So, in the movie, fictional post-punk band Breaking Glass take a visible and vocal anti-fascist stance, reflecting the time when young anti-Nazi groups emerged to face off against the rise in organised racist rallies around Britain.

While the story has few surprises and the dialogue more than a few unintentional laughs, the rare representation of the political, musical and fashion scenes are a valuable snapshot of what was going on at the pivotal dawn of the '80s.

Hazel O'Connor's many images includes one that predates the scary Pris (Daryl Hannah) of Blade Runner and a glowing circuitry suit and helmet before Tron had been made.

Phil Daniels plays the band's manager, linking this movie to Scum and Quadrophenia, making a violent and cynical trilogy of young people finding out about the system in place. Inexplicably, this was his last great role.

Jonathan Pryce (just before Something Wicked This Way Comes, Terry Gilliam's Brazil) has a good, but largely mute, supporting role as a deaf saxophonist. The enigmatic Jon Finch (The Final Programme, Frenzy, The Vampire Lovers) struggling to avoid TV roles. Jim Broadbent and Richard Griffiths have pre-fame cameos, as well as future feature director Jonathan Lynn. There's also the original Zaphod Beeblebrox (of radio and TV), Mark Wing-Davey, and Gary Tibbs just before he joined Adam and the Ants.

All this and a beginner's guide to rigging the pop charts...

Breaking Glass has recently been restored for DVD and blu-ray in the US, with a longer 'uncut' edition released on DVD in the UK. Unusually for downbeat British cinema, it was shot 2.35 widescreen.

"THE SCARIEST FILM IMAGINABLE" - radio ads from the 1970s

My YouTube playlist of how the movies were sold with sound...

This year's long term project has turned out to be listening through all my old audio cassette recordings. Besides reviving huge dollops of nostalgia, reminding me of music I'd forgotten, I've found that I used to keep rather a lot of radio adverts for movies, marking their initial release in the UK.

TV ads were often too expensive for the distributors to pay for every week, so many films would have radio ads instead. Against considerable odds, like having no images to work with, these can still be very effective at conveying action, excitement and horror. Though for some reason, trying to make funny ads for funny movies rarely succeeds.

Jaws 2 is a good example of these as short bursts of excitement - a great combination of dramatic narration, dialogue, sound effects and music. 

There's completely ridiculous hyperbole in the voiceovers, often reading out the classic taglines off the posters, "The lucky ones died first". Plus dialogue, music and sound effects (not always taken from the movie). These radio 'spots', together with just a poster, could be all that was needed to send me scurrying to the cinema that week. I've usually used the UK release poster to illustrate each clip.

In the 1970s, the UK often debuted films around six months after the US. The wide release was further delayed by being shown exclusively in London for a few weeks before opening around suburban London cinemas. The ads sometimes pinpoint the year they were first seen in the UK (I've included the month and year if I noted it back then). Interestingly Zombies: Dawn of the Dead only hit the UK in June 1980 (two years after its widely-quoted official release date on IMDB). 

The fun ad for Friday The 13th is an example of the publicity gained from opening the film on an actual Friday the 13th. I love the way they drop in the "X" rating at the end - certainly carries more punch than "18" would do a couple of years later.

Nostalgically, many adverts even mention the London cinemas that they first played in (many of which are no longer there), and give an idea of how wide the initial release was.

Double-bills were still very common with shorter movies, at the end of the 1970s, but were often made up differently for each cinema. Sometimes they were presented as a 'package' and the same two films played across the country. But note the disastrous change in tone as the music changes between Tentacles and Mr Billion, or from Damnation Alley to Thunder and Lightning.

The later ads, starting in 1980, sound like a lack of care is going into them - or maybe it's the movies! This one for North Sea Hijack uses a poor choice of dialogue clips, slackly leaving in some unexciting pauses, Roger Moore apparently stumbling over his lines. 

The one for J. Lee Thompson's WWII adventure The Passage still makes me laugh. Christopher Timothy trying to stir up excitement with a ghastly little script, the overacting in the movie leaping out of the radio "Where is the Bergson family?". Admittedly, listening to this through the years, I succumbed to its hard-sell charms and eventually saw it.

There are also ads that you could only get away with at the time. The superdeep voice for Death Wish paraphrases the story as, "He got himself a gun and went hunting for muggers". The atrocious 'kung fu' noises overused for the Bruce Lee double-bill. And I doubt the script for the softcore Bilitis would get daytime play nowadays.

Patrick Allen (Alien), Ed Bishop (Twilight's Last Gleaming), Michael Jayston (Apocalypse Now) are among the recognisable voices pimping the adverts that were made in the UK. But often big-budget American films provided their own trailers, leaving a British announcer to tack on local details at the end. 

You'll hear Mel Brooks (High Anxiety) and Michael Winner (The Sentinel) as rare examples of directors who personally recorded their own adverts. I'd also love to know who the very, very deep voice was in this classic one for Rabid...

It was unusual that London's Capital Radio ran adverts, but they were also the first to broadcast in stereo. Many films weren't even screened in cinemas with stereo audio at the time! To catch these off the radio, I'd leap at a tape deck and 'pause punch', usually missing the first couple of seconds. As you'll hear. Sorry, I was as fast as I could.

Also included are a couple of mono trailers, like The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. These have been culled from old complete radio shows that surfaced online as examples of how jingles, ads and DJs used to sound.

I've not finished sweeping out my archives and still have much 70s radio to listen to. So I hope to add more to this playlist - it contains all my movie-related adverts in one continuous playback. Enjoy...

Or click here for the playlist on YouTube.

ROAR (1981) - lion and tiger mayhem... for real

Animals attack - the making of ROAR...

I was half-interested in The Life of Pi, once again drawn in by the promise of 'a true story' of a man trapped with a wild animal in a rowboat at sea, with Ang Lee directing. But the trailer put me completely off it, because of the overuse of a CGI tiger, completely sapping the elements of danger and wonder.

Obviously there are many sharp and pointy reasons why actors and even stunt performers won't interact with tigers. But a large part of the spectacle, for me, is seeing wild animals. Real ones.

The illusions of actors and wild animals in the same scene has been achieved with every special effect in the book. Split screen (Bringing Up Baby), full body animal suits (Gorillas In The Mist) animatronic replicas (Jaws), the animal's trainer doubling for an actor (Live and Let Die)... all usually in quick cuts. The lure of long and complex camera moves achievable with CGI leaves us staring at a fake shot for far too long. I'm not interested in how amazing the CGI replica is, I want to see how amazing a tiger is.

Real lions investigate real actors - that's entertainment!

My apathy towards fakey CGI has been coincidentally countered by my enthusiasm for a 1981 film that took far too many risks. No faking in these scenes, only that these animals aren't wild, so much as mildly tolerant of humans, sometimes. I'm not saying that we should throw actors to the lions, (tempting though) but it's far more entertaining.

It's risky for an actor to be confined with huge predators in small spaces. But Roar is precisely that from start to finish. With the entire cast not doubled by stuntpeople, and not just one wild animal, but over a hundred...

ROAR

(USA, 1981)

Tigers, in Africa?

A lion conservationist in Africa, fighting for funding, has to leave his lodge to capture two escaped animals before the local poachers kill them. But while he's away, he misses the arrival of his family, visiting for the first time. His wife, two sons and teenage daughter are unaware that he shares his home with a hundred lions and tigers...

The story is slack, with several long set-ups and few payoffs. But I started enjoying it as a series of spectacular set-pieces with a family of mad people who actually lived with lions. Roar barely works as a narrative and many of the performers aren't very experienced actors, but it's no more staged than the True Life Adventures that Disney used to sell as 'documentaries'.

Director/producer/actor Noel Marshall (left) about to get bitten

The action is literally jaw-dropping. Only slightly less foolish than shooting Jaws with real sharks. An early scene has a delegation of potential investors arriving at the lodge. The lions and tigers get riled up and one jumps in a small boat with two guys in it and the whole thing sinks in seconds. Shot for real.

The scenes of people surrounded by big cats makes the lion tamer of the circus shows look really, er, tame. We get more lions, more people and no cages.

My favourite scene is when the family arrive and don't notice the lions sleeping around the grounds. Inside, they spot a leopard in the house and panic, their screams attracting dozens of lions who immediately charge inside as well. The following chaos as everyone tries to avoid a houseful of lions is brilliantly and dynamically shot, tightly edited into a unique and extended nightmare chase. Rooms full of lions, a whole pride charging upstairs together, tigers jumping in through windows... quite astonishing.

Exciting, amazing, cute... but the amount of accidents and injuries sustained by the cast and crew makes this an extended 2.35 widescreen YouTube 'look at that!' clip, or a lost episode of Jackass.

I missed Roar in the cinema, only recently seeking it out after seeing Tippi Hedren, the star of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Marnie (and subject of this year's The Girl), in conversation. She talked about her charity project, a preserve for unwanted big cats. From the name, Shambala, and even after watching Roar, I assumed that the preserve was somewhere in Africa. Not at all, it is in fact just outside the city limits, just north of Los Angeles. If I'd read the book before our recent holiday, we'd have dropped in for a tour.

Impressed by the film and curious about the IMDB comments about injuries, I bought Tippi's 1985 book The Cats of Shambala, which is all about the fascinating eleven-year project to make Roar. A story which would make a far greater 'film about the making of a film' than Hitchcock.

In the late 60s, while on location in Africa, Tippi and her then husband Noel Marshall, a movie producer, saw an abandoned game warden's lodge that had been taken over by a pride of lions. The image inspired the two of them to make a film. Noel, who was working as an executive producer on The Exorcist tried to put a deal together while Tippi started collecting lions!

Through the early 1970s, she welcomed unwanted lions and tigers into their Beverley Hills home, mostly unwanted pets and cubs from zoos that couldn't afford to expand. Living with the animals, the family were aiming to become so familiar with them that they wouldn't be attacked when it came to filming.

Ex-circus elephant Timba destroying a boat

After a few accidents, like when lions escape and roam the local residential streets, the family and their 'pets', moved to a large enclosure in Soledad Canyon, not far from where 60s TV series Daktari was filmed (now available from Warner Archives). The idea was to landscape the barren land, planting it with trees to look more like Africa, and building a purpose-built lodge for all the lion action scenes. With the extra acres of land, Tippi and Noel could also take in dozens more rescue animals, including a giant circus elephant. The new animals were written into the script, as were any unusual habits of the lions.

Having accumulated 132 lions, tigers, leopards, cougars and jaguars, filming began in 1976. By this time, Tippi's daughter Melanie Griffith was also getting high-profile credits, helping the publicity of this multi-million dollar production, made outside of the studio system.

Melanie Griffith getting bitten

But the shoot was plagued by disasters: including the compound being damaged by a brush fire, and a flood that washed away cages, hundreds of trees and part of their set. A few escaping animals (we're talking huge male lions) were tragically shot down by panicking police officers.

Several entire camera crews walked out when members of the cast were injured on set, including Tippi breaking a leg, Noel and Melanie receiving nasty bites. Several closer calls and the near scalping of their cameraman made them think the production was cursed. Or maybe they'd bitten off more than they could chew (sorry). The weeks Tippi spent filming the gruelling attack scenes in The Birds were a walk in the park compared to her injuries and heartbreaks making Roar.

Jan De Bont, with 200 stitches

The cameraman whose scalp had to be stitched back on was Jan De Bont, shooting his first American picture. He survives to go on to work on Cujo (1983), Die Hard (1988) and Basic Instinct (1992), before his brief run as a director that started with Speed (1994) and Twister (1996). Even after that mauling, he completed shooting the picture over the next few years. Respect! It's his coverage that makes the footage so exciting. Tight camera moves shot from close to the action. Too close!

Disasters, injuries and problems with financial backers delayed the film's completion until 1981, by which time 'animal attack' movies were old hat and studios weren't interested in what they saw as an animal-oriented family film. (Times have certainly changed to where we're lucky to get anything but). As a result Roar didn't get released in US cinemas, only in a few countries including the UK, Japan, Germany, Italy and Australia... It was then lost in the huge glut of variable quality VHS and home video releases. I have to say, the poster art I've seen didn't do them any favours either.

Roar wasn't a box office success, and Tippi and Noel's marriage broke up after a decade of stress. Impressively, Tippi stuck with the Shambala reserve and continues to round up and take care of unwanted big cats as a registered charity. The main 'set' and shooting location of Roar is still out there and running tours, thirty years later.

The book, 'The Cats of Shambala' could easily be retitled 'The Making of Roar -the Movie' as it details the project from start to finish, with many photographs of the key players, human and animal. It's an easy but engrossing read, Tippi's love for the animals is clear, as are her keen observations of their behaviour. Lots of hot tips about how not to get attacked by lions. Out of print, secondhand copies are easily available through online stores and eBay.

The movie is still independently owned and proceeds from Roar DVDs continue to help fund the Shambala preserve. The website is here.

More behind-the-scenes photos are in this Flickr account, including shots of the fire, the flood and some of the scars!

If you're near Los Angeles, here are details about visits and tours around Shambala.

Filming Location: BODY DOUBLE - the Chemosphere House

Movie Location - The Chemosphere House

(seen in Body Double (1984), The Outer Limits (1963))

Retro-futuristic architecture is even more fun to visit if it's appeared in a movie. This octagonal house, built on a single stilt, looks too visually interesting to be true. I thought it might even have been a special effect, when I saw it in Body Double. It certainly looks like it's been drastically enhanced by matte painting in this grab...

Brian De Palma's sexed up reworking of Hitchcock's Rear Window certainly intends that we're more interested in what the occupier is looking at out of such a structure. With a view of half of Los Angeles, one window catches Craig Wasson's attention, as it provides a steady stream of nudity, sex and violence...

Body Double also stars Melanie Griffith, Gregg Henry and, Frankie Goes To Hollywood! An explicit, sexual thriller, De Palma attempts to outdo Dressed To Kill and give his critics the finger at the same time. It's most famous for a ridiculous murder weapon, more fearsome than a chain saw but barely portable...

In the 80s, I'd originally assumed that De Palma was the first to use such a great location, and that it was also a relatively new building. I was in for a surprise when watching the second series of the original The Outer Limits. 'The Duplicate Man' episode had used it first, twenty years earlier, with a tale of a psychotically violent, escaped alien prisoner, the Megasoid...

Yes, that's a Megasoid...

Honestly, it's more fearsome in the story, (primarily a take on the dangers of cloning). The episode also shows the lift that allows access to the house from ground level.

The design inspired the look of Sam Rockwell's house in the first Charlie's Angels movie (2000) - but updated it with a more futuristic look.

The Chemosphere House was built in 1960, designed by architect John Lautner. It's also been called 'the flying saucer house', despite the angles. The unusual design partly inspired by the need to build on a 45-degree slope! Besides looking great, the views from inside must be glorious.

Our recent trip to Los Angeles involved driving over the Hollywood Hills a few times. Near the Universal City Overlook, an official observation point on Mulholland Drive, there's a turning for Torreyson Drive along which you can find the Chemosphere. Its single stilt now largely obscured  by trees.

Here's the location on Google Maps, note the Chemosphere is bottom left. But obviously have a little respect, it's still a privately-owned house.

And here's a well-illustrated article with more spectacular views of the house...

(Top photo and last two photos taken by Mark Hodgson and David Tarrington.)