'TIPPI' REVIEW......THE ONLY ACTRESS GROPED BY HITCHCOCK, BIRDS AND LIONS....

'TIPPI'  by Tippi Hedren (2016) serves as a distinctly one-of-a-kind memoir from a distinctly one-of-a-kind actress. Plucked from fashion modelling by Alfred Hitchcock to star in "The Birds" and "Marnie", Hedren survived her director's creepy obsession, sexual harassment and employment blacklisting. She went on to endure an even more bizarre cinematic adventure.....making the legendarily notorious "Roar" with her late husband Noel Marshall, a film in which Marshall, Hedren and her family(including daughter Melanie Griffith) cavorted with all their adopted felines. Sounds cute, huh? The felines we're talking about were over a hundred untrained wild lions and tigers.

           Being a Hitchcock freak and having plowed through all the books on the director, we found the Hitchcock chapters in 'Tippi' a huge disappointing letdown, skimpy and rushed. (Considering the debate and controversy swirling around the making of the two movies,  Hedren could have easily devoted an entire book to this subject). But the eleven year strife, calamity and insane danger involved in the making of  "Roar" are fully chronicled here......Hedren, Marshall, Griffith, cinematographer Jan De Bont all ended up seriously mauled and wounded by the cats, along with numerous crew members. Their financing for the film evaporated frequently,while floods and fires afflicted their California canyon home, where most of the film was shot,  A completed cut of the film finally emerged in Europe in 1981.....it never had (as far as we know) any exhibition in American theaters.

           Fascinated by Hedren's account(it makes the filming of "Apocalypse Now" look like an episode of 'Happy Days'), BQ sought out the infamous "Roar" for a viewing and had no trouble finding it....anyone can stream it on YouTube.  What we watched almost defies rational description.....shapeless, plotless, embarrassingly acted, it's a 95 minute demented home movie in which Hedren, her daughter, her husband and his sons get chased, wrestled, bitten and pummeled by what looks like an endless herd of lions and tigers...(no bears, oh my). No CGI fakery here, when the actors scream and bleed from their wounds( as does Melanie Griffith), it's the real deal. Incredibly, the film mostly plays this stuff for slapstick laughs, except for a sequence dropped in the middle where the cats rip apart two villains who've been shooting at them. (apparently the only scene where both the cats and humans fake their deaths.)

            We certainly admire the filmmakers for their obvious deep love and care for these animals......but the sheer madness of the people involved in "Roar" blots out whatever environmental message they tried to get across.  Watching this film, you're not worried about the preservation of wildlife.....you're too busy wondering if Hedren and company went completely out of their minds.

            In the book's final chapters, Hedren includes one single stunning insightful paragraph......in which she realizes that the total lack of a compelling script for "Roar" doomed it to its status as nothing more than an unwatchable oddity, a vanity piece set apart only by its makers foolishly putting their lives at risk.  That's a brutal moment of self-awareness that rarely occurs in the rest of the book. But 'Tippi' does fulfill its promise to take you through a remarkable life and we wouldn't have missed reading it......like all survivors, Tippi Hedren got in the last word on her old nemesis Hitchcock......with Hitch most likely spinning in his grave as Hedren enjoyed an acting gig on a network revival of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents."   For its vivid account of the "Roar" experience alone, we'll give 'Tippi' 3 stars.***