The Pitch: A septuagenarian (Lincoln Maazel) buys a ticket for an amusement park, solely to enter a hellscape the place he’s ripped off, humiliated, assaulted, accused of crimes he didn’t commit, and finally left to rot. A metaphor for a way society treats the aged, it’s the newly restored “misplaced” movie by the late, nice horror legend George A. Romero, a PSA he made in 1973 as a job for a Lutheran charity. Upon seeing it, their members have been so horrified they ensured it might by no means see the sunshine of day — till now.
Survival of the Useless: Romero by no means advised anybody The Amusement Park was prime shelf him. Maybe he didn’t assume it was. Possibly recollections of constructing it had soured him on the mission as a complete. It wasn’t precisely a contented expertise, and it wasn’t even a correct movie; it was a gig. Early in his profession — effectively earlier than his debut characteristic, Evening of the Residing Useless, earned 250 occasions its puny price range — Romero had the foresight to co-launch The Latent Picture, an organization wherein he’d mortgage out his cinematic providers for industrial movies, PSAs, and some other for-hire one-offs that will put meals on the desk in between ardour tasks. (The most well-known of those was what he known as “Mr. Rogers Will get a Tonsillectomy” — a section for the guy Pittsburghian’s beloved youngsters’s present that includes simply that, and his first paying movie job.)
The Amusement Park got here 5 years after his first of six Useless movies, which made a mint but failed to show Romero right into a Hollywood jet-setter. Certainly, he spent the subsequent decade as a struggling regional filmmaker, eking by in Western Pennsylvania. Across the time of 1973’s The Crazies, he was approached by an area church group to make a movie about ageism and the difficulties of getting previous in America. They clearly gave him free rein, with one caveat: It should finish on an up-note, providing “Christian” recommendation on how the aged can cope. Romero ignored that caveat. Bleak and horrifying (although by no means Romero-style grisly), The Amusement Park so depressed its backers that they by no means aired or screened it. Over the a long time they held onto the rights, protecting it not solely from its audience however from its maker’s completists.
In keeping with his widow, Suzanne Desrocher-Romero — who launched the belatedly restored model of The Amusement Park at MoMA’s annual restoration fest To Save and Undertaking — Romero casually screened a private copy of the PSA for his household not lengthy earlier than his demise. They have been flabbergasted. Why had he stored one in every of his masterpieces a secret? He shrugged; to him, it was just a few odd, previous job. They knew it was greater than that, and so they set about scrubbing it clear for public view.
George A. Romero’s “The Amusement Park”
A Circle of Hell: The Amusement Park opens and closes reassuringly, with Maazel — 4 years later the doubting uncle in Romero’s vampire opus Martin — in Troy McClure mode, prepping the viewers for some rip-roaring edutainment. What we get as an alternative is a relentless nightmare, freed from hope. Maazel’s unnamed every-geriatric is launched in an existentialist white room, bruised and despondent, hunched over in a chair. A second Maazel, recent and chipper, enters, conversing along with his alter ego concerning the world simply outdoors the door. “You received’t prefer it on the market,” the fallen Maazel warns his doppelganger.
He doesn’t. After coming into the native, off-brand park, full of generic sights and thick crowds, our hero immediately finds himself out of his aspect, alternately ignored and preyed-upon as he tries to navigate a world too busy and hectic for his superior age. Romero filmed, partly guerilla-style, in an actual park with actual individuals, however the conditions are absurdist/satirical; the road to a rollercoaster is decked with indicators that learn issues like “Should make $35,000 a yr to experience,” whereas bumper automobiles are manned by fellow olds moving into slow-motion wrecks.
Issues flip steadily worse. After being crushed by bikers, our protagonist makes his technique to a hospital tent, solely to search out his determined cries for medical consideration handled with indifference. By hour’s finish, he’s diminished to the shell of a person we noticed at hour’s begin, revealing a mobius strip of limitless despair and dehumanization, day in, day trip, with no sign of ending.
George A. Romero’s “The Amusement Park”
Previous Man, Have a look at my Life: Romero was 33 when he made The Amusement Park — 4 a long time shy of the movie’s abused hero. His personal autumn years wouldn’t be so unhealthy: Not solely was he acknowledged as each a style legend and a real auteur, however he continued to crank out photos into his late 60s, refusing to relaxation on his laurels. However The Amusement Park screams worry. Romero is aware of that American society disposes of its least productive members, and who, other than infants, are much less productive than the aged? In fact, not each previous timer is identical.
At one level Romero contrasts Maazel’s character, clearly of modest means, with an getting old richie, who’s served lobster by doting waiters, all whereas Maazel eats slop on a paper plate. Later, we see a younger, upbeat couple visiting a fortune teller, who serves them not what they wish to hear however the reality: They received’t age effectively and, when he suffers a coronary heart assault late in life, docs shall be too busy tending to their rich sufferers. Life is difficult, except you’ve cash.
(Learn: The 100 Scariest Films of All Time)
The Horror, the Horror: What makes a film “scary”? The horror style has lengthy laid declare to that adjective, largely on the premise of monsters, homicide, and boo! scares. However what’s really scary are movies about actual, looming calamities; docs about environmental disasters, illness, demise, and different issues we are able to’t, or received’t, fight spring to thoughts. Lump The Amusement Park in with these.
On this case, the message is life and the societies purportedly designed to maintain it don’t privilege the meek, the weak, the enfeebled, the down-and-out — that existence, for many, doesn’t get simpler with age however more durable. It’s a pessimistic worldview, however pessimism, like hope, is important; it shocks us out of believing solely within the lies we inform ourselves, even when we’re solely telling them to ourselves we are able to survive.
In that sense The Amusement Park is the scariest movie Romero ever made — an unsentimental, unbridled, bleak-o-rama reminder that, previous a sure age, we might all be discarded, except now we have extra money. It doesn’t want such Romero frights as zombies or vampires or poison gasoline or sinister helper monkeys or murderous alter egos to scare the Dickens out of us; it simply wants the chilly, onerous reality concerning the worst case state of affairs that will befall any of us.
George A. Romero’s “The Amusement Park”
Or possibly the easiest way to explain The Amusement Park is as probably the most excessive instance of Romero’s worldview, which was at all times pessimistic. His Useless movies aren’t solely about flesh-eating zombies; they’re about society falling aside, about survivors dropping their humanity, concerning the risk that the species itself is doomed. The Crazies isn’t solely about nerve gasoline decimating a small city; it’s concerning the authorities and the army epically failing to include it, then making it worse.
All Romero movies are scary, not due to their style components, however as a result of they present how society is merciless and inhumane, and held collectively by Scotch tape and bubble gum in addition to. Maybe The Amusement Park hurts probably the most as a result of the monsters aren’t supernatural creatures. As an alternative, they’re simply individuals.
(Film Review: Evening of the Residing Useless Will Scare the Hell Out of Each Technology)
The Verdict: Barely seen and even heard of because it was made, this “misplaced” Romero movie doesn’t disappoint, and although it’s not technically a horror movie, it can scare you into spending any and all free time tending to anybody over 70 for worry of karmic retribution.
The place’s It Taking part in? The Amusement Park is at present making the rounds at sure repertory packages, comparable to MoMA’s aforementioned To Save and Undertaking. It could wind up extra extensively accessible at a later date, although its future availability is at present unclear.