Crazy curio packs an unnerving punch
The Amusement Park
(Not Rated, 53 mins) Directed by George Romero Reviewed by James Croot ★★★ 1⁄2
It’s the public service announcement its commissioners never wanted you to see. A 1973 project aimed at highlighting ageism in the community that ended up horrifying those who had bankrolled it.
After deeming it too disturbing and gruesome, the Lutheran Service Society of Western Pennsylvania simply decided to cut their losses, their brush with Hollywood a disaster in their eyes. But what did they expect when they hired the man responsible for Night of the Living Dead, Season of the Witch and The Crazies?
Thought lost until two badly faded 16mm prints were discovered in 2017, this crazy curio has now been lovingly restored and, almost half a century after it was shot, The Amusement Park still has a relevance and unnerving impact on the viewer today.
Bookended by direct-to-camera scenes featuring its 70-year-old ‘‘star’’ Lincoln Maazel (a singer who didn’t find success as an actor until his mid-50s), it aims to ‘‘illustrate some of the many problems people my age face on a daily basis’’. These include loneliness, inadequate housing, transportation and access to medical care, improper nutrition and a lack of compassion from young members of society.
‘‘We ask for your sympathy as you watch and hope you have concerned interest enough to take action,’’ Maazel intones, before we’re transported to a sterile white room where his initially ebullient character, dressed in white from head to toe, encounters a battered, bruised and broken version of himself.
Despite a warning that there’s nothing for him outside, the unbloodied ‘‘younger’’ man follows the sound of screams out into the busy park.
Initially, the frustrations are minor, a group of people around his vintage lamenting not getting the price they want for selling their treasures in exchange for tickets and rides whose list of restrictions include requiring participants to have a regular income and not ‘‘a fear of the unknown’’.
But when our protagonist sees older guests struggling with luggage being ignored by staff and witnesses a dodgem-car ‘‘accident’’ that was clearly the result of a younger person’s inattention, he begins to feel more uneasy in his surroundings. Called a degenerate for the ‘‘crime’’ of talking to a young child, he’s then punched by a young man upset at what a fortune teller has suggested might be in store for him when he reaches his own dotage.
Now starting to see the park’s true horrors, he notices his brethren are being encouraged to visit the Boot Hill and Davey Jones’ Locker rides with some of the stars of its regular Freak Show. There are even unscrupulous people who will relieve you of your money and your faith.
Feeling as much like an episode of The Twilight Zone as a public service announcement, The Amusement Park is kind of a cross between Looper and Florian Habicht’s Spookers. Like the latter documentary, this offers an interesting meditation on the nature of fear and mental health and uses its setting (Pennsylvania’s now defunct West View Park) to all its atmospheric potential.
If some of the scenarios feel a little too obvious and clunkily brought to life, partially the result of Maazel being the only real actor, they still drive home their point in chilling ways. And viewed almost half a century later, it’s fascinating to see the same concerns and generational tensions as today, albeit with the now much-maligned Baby Boomers presented in their prime as boorish, uncaring, privileged youth.
As with Night of the Living Dead and his later Dead movies like Dawn, Day and Land, Romero displays a knack for mixing unsettling material with highlighting social issues. This might not have the impact or thrills of some of those classics, but Amusement is nonetheless a fascinating time capsule that fully deserved to be unearthed.
The Amusement Park is now available to stream on Shudder.