Roar!

Roar (1981) is what you get when big-cat-obsessed filmmakers make what is essentially a 17-million-dollar home movie: pure insanity ... and lots of big-cat wrestling and puncture wounds. The plot doesn't even matter (and frankly doesn't make sense anyway). Come see the weirdest, wildest movie we'll screen this year and wonder, like we did, how and why this film was ever made. The only thing that would make this oddity any better would be a voice-over from Werner Herzog.
Here's some supplemental reading:

Grantland interviews John Marshall (great read!)

The Washington Post, The Guardian, Screen Crush.

Roar poster contest: is your pet scary (or cute) enough to be on a Roar poster?

Fun fact: director Noel Marshall got a taste for working with animals at a summer job at the St Louis Zoo.

Workin' on the movie? 1971. Photo by LIFE photographer Michael Rougier.